Tunbridge Wells Borough Council: 2022 will be interesting!

 In 2021 the Conservatives lost control of the council, a control only possible with the deciding vote of the Conservative mayor.  The Conservative Leader of the Council retained his position as did his Cabinet.  It is anticipated the Tories will lose seats at the May 2022 elections and power will transfer to the opposition councillors - Liberal Democrat, Alliance, Labour and one Independent. The Conservatives have only themselves to blame having ousted Roy Bullock and replaced him with a dithering nonentity who promptly lost his seat to UKIP.  On his departure he was replaced by a councillor who lived in East Sussex (although qualified to be a councillor),  was certainly more dynamic, and managed to split his party before losing his seat. Since then there have been Leaders who to put it mildly have overseen drift and decline.

It remains to be determined if the current three opposition parties will be able to form a coherent controlling group.  Prior to the May elections what are these parties going to do?  Will they agree on electoral pacts as after all they will have to unite behind one set of policies post the elections?  Will the parties stand on a policy platform agreed before the elections and placed in the public domain?  Or will we see squalid secretive deals done after the elections thus making the electorates' choices irrelevant?

Opposition is easy, promises can be made, negative criticism aired, outlandish assertions made all of which will come back and bite.  Will the new 'management' be up for the fight or will it succumb to in-fighting and thereby lose the trust of voters?

We may be amazed of course by the Tories pulling off electoral victory!

Are we over-governed?

Where I live we have a parish council, above that a borough (district) council and, at the top of the local government tree, a county council.  Then there is the Queen in Parliament and finally the albatross of Brussels.

Do we need them all?  One of the reasons plans were abandoned for elected regional assemblies was the public's perception that we could do quite nicely thank you without any more decision making bodies.

A few questions.

Do we need both district and county councils?

In some areas unitary authorities have been created.  They are mergers of district and county councils.  Why not extend unitary authorities to other areas?

Do we need an English parliament?

This is the 'West Lothian Question.  There are devolved governments in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, so why not England?  It does seem barmy that an MP from a Scottish constituency can vote in the House of Commons on English health issues, but not on Scottish health issues as such matters are for the Scottish Parliament.

Why not abolish the second chamber?

Do we need a second chamber to 'revise' bills?  Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do not have second chambers, nor do any local authorities.  What should be happening is that House of Commons select committees, the committee stage of bills etc are beefed up so that legislative proposals are subjected to rigorous analysis.

Local government financing

I came across this article recently:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/transport/8933384/Local-councils-turn-to-the-bond-markets-to-pay-for-infrastructure-projects.html#disqus_thread

It will be interesting to see if many councils go down this route.  It has attractions as it will enable capital schemes to proceed without making serious inroads into a Council's reserves.  All it requires is a modicum of creative thinking.  Ah well, sounded like a good idea.

Kent Travels

For the past month I have been touring Kent on a bus promoting the work of voluntary sector organisations and volunteers. The bus has been to all the district council areas in Kent. What has impressed me has been the welcome and goodwill we have received from residents across the county: from Dartford to Dover and Sheerness to Tunbridge Wells.

The voluntary sector is expected by central government to play a major role in delivering the localism and Big Society agendas. Councils for voluntary service and volunteer centres have a crucial role to play: the former as a catalyst to connect front-line charities and community groups to government agencies, the latter to recruit and place volunteers.

The government should be encouraging local authorities to ensure there are sustainable CVSs and VCs across the country. Without them the localism and Big Society agendas will flounder.

Civic Pride

Chesterfield has an imposing town hall and residents took pride in it, as well as the corporation's bus services, swimming pools, parks and other amenities. Queen's Park was (is) the jewel in the crown. Derbyshire County Cricket Club plays matches in the park and many a journalist has observed that the ground and its environs are amongst the most pleasant in England where county cricket is played.

Matches against Yorkshire and Lancashire were always very keenly contested affairs and I remember watching Clive Lloyd, Brian Statham, Brian Close, John Hampshire, and Fred Trueman playing and getting the 'bird' from Derbyshire followers. My earliest memory is watching the West Indies team which included Weekes, Walcott and Worrall.

In the 1960s the government moved the Accountant General's Department to Chesterfield and built new premises for it in the former goods yard of the Lancashire Derbyshire and East Coast Railway (which terminated at Chesterfield at one end and on just outside Lincoln at the other!) A new housing estate was built by the Council to house civil servants from the South-east and Harrogate. There was immense civic pride in Chesterfield over these developments.

Fast forward 40 years. Is civic pride what it was then? Did the insistence of the Thatcher governments that councils tender for services and privatise lead to a loss of civic pride? I believe it did and this is reflected in the nose-dive in the number of people voting at local elections. I read recently that Suffolk County Council plans to outsource virtually all its direct delivery functions .

I recognise that municipal ownership and operation of services is not always the most efficient or cost effective way of doing things. I do think though that too often we fail to distinguish between price and value and fail to recognise hidden costs and benefits.

I await with interest the development of the Big Society and Localism concepts of the current government. Will they lead to an increase in civic pride and participation in civic life, using the term 'civic' in its broadest sense? I hope so, but I have my doubts.

Parish Council for Rusthall: process rumbles on.

Today I received a letter from Tunbridge Wells Borough Council informing me of the next stages in the process to decide if Rusthall should have a parish council. My main concern is that parish councils have very few powers and if it is worth all the cost and effort that is entailed.

However, I have been encouraged by noises emanating from, amongst other, the Local Government Association, proposing that parish councils be given additional responsibilities to deliver the Big Society (a vague concept in many respects). How this would be achieved is uncertain, but it would be a challenge for parish councils and might attract more people to stand for election. We shall see.

Rusthall Council proposal rumbles on

As regular readers of my blog know I am not renowned for my enthusiasm for a parish council for Rusthall. Parish councils are restricted in what they can do by legislation: they cannot do much. What is needed is a neighbourhood forum with teeth. There are many examples of successful groups who have brought significant improvements to their communities which are way beyond the capacity of a parish council to achieve.

A parish council is the second best solution; second by a long distance. Radical transfers of power, funding and collaborative working cannot be achieved within the strait-jacket of the parish system.

Congratulations to the Council

Last Saturday morning, at around 3.30AM I was awoken my music being played close by to my home. An e-mail complaint to Tunbridge Wells Borough Council set in train a process culminating in a visit today by a Council officer to the miscreant noise creator. Impressive response.

Consultation: Should Rusthall have a parish council?

As mentioned in an earlier blog some people in Rusthall have been agitating for a parish council. Tunbridge Wells Borough Council has commenced consultation and should the eventual decision be to form a parish council the first elections are likely to be in 2011.

I have been a parish councillor and have attended meetings of numerous parish councils. Town councils have the same powers as parish councils and if the shenanigans at Crowborough and Southborough Town Councils are anything to go by we do well not to have one. Fortunately most parish councils act in a non party political fashion.

I think the misty-eyed enthusiasm of those promoting the idea of of a parish council for Rusthall will disappear once the reality of the what parish councils actually can do sinks in.

I would much prefer a community council which would not be inhibited by the statutory framework within which parish councils have to operate.

Comprehensive Area Assessments to be abolished.

Excellent news:

Mark Wallace: The abolition of Comprehensive Area Assessments is to be welcomed
Mark Wallace of the Taxpayers Alliance welcomes the abolition of Comprehensive Area Assessments.


ConservativeHome has broken a lot of surprising stories over the years. Here’s another one: I agree with the Local Government Association about something.

Shocking, isn’t it? I almost fell off my chair myself, and I’m sure the LGA will be no less surprised.

Fittingly, as the Coalition Government is all about bringing together unlikely bedfellows, it is one of their policies that has put both me and the LGA on the same page: the abolition of Comprehensive Area Assessments (CAAs).

I wrote here back in December when the CAAs were launched that they were a pointless, uninformative exercise. It’s nice to know that Eric Pickles not only reads ConHome but apparently agrees with my observation!

The Comprehensive Area Assessment was introduced to replace the old, failed star system of grading council performance.

The stars just didn’t work. The Audit Commission cost every council a fortune chasing up statistics and strategy documents, only to give them a relatively meaningless star grade that swiftly became devalued as almost every council got either 3 or 4 of the possible 4 stars.

Councils that local residents felt were overcharging and underperforming were able to rebut all criticism by pointing to an arbitrary grading of their work given by a distant quango.

Due to the obvious flaws in the star system, the Audit Commission and the Brown Government eventually gave in to public and town hall pressure and scrapped it.

Of course, it was never going to be that simple.

Having got rid of a bureaucratic, uninformative process that encouraged councils to jump through arbitrary hoops set by the Audit Commission rather than the people, and which then gave the public limited information that was far too broad, they replaced it with the CAAs – a system which took those very problems to a whole new level.

Instead of being ranked out of four stars, the CAA rated each council with either a red or a green flag, signifying whether they were “good” or not. Fairly obviously, this was even less precise than before.

While extending the depth of information gathered and the number of forms that needed to be filled out by council officers, the public got data in an even more limited resolution than previously.

For these reasons, both I and the LGA – as well as thousands of council officers – are happy to see the CAAs crumpled up and thrown in the Whitehall wastepaper basket where they belong.

The simple fact is that even when they were first launched, they were already obsolete.

Councils like Windsor & Maidenhead were producing detailed, real information about their spending and policy decisions. They were even publishing half-hourly readouts on their energy meters (saving 15% on their bills).

By the time the CAAs were launched in December 2009, W&M had already commissioned an online transparency tool to give unparalleled insight into what and how they do their work, and provide comparison with other councils nationally (you can see it here).

Essentially, by launching Comprehensive Area Assessments the Audit Commission had brought an Etch-a-Sketch to an iPad convention.

Their abolition – and the parallel policy of every council publishing all spending over £500 - heralds a real shift in local government’s priorities. Instead of running themselves ragged conforming to the often bizarre private expectations of a quango like the Audit Commission, now they will answer to the people in their local area.

When you think of it like that, it becomes clear that it was mad to move away from that principle in the first place.

Doncaster Disaster

What can one say about the shambles at Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council that is not said already in the Audit Commission report. published today?

Compulsory reading if you want to learn how party politics at local level can damage the very communities councillors are supposed to serve. The report highlights also the tensions that existed between the elected mayor, cabinet and councillors. It is highly critical of members of the scrutiny committee seeking to act as an alternative executive.

Doncaster Council has 'form'. What is surprising is that it has taken so long to put in direct control by central government.

A Magna Carta for Localism

Just came across this very interesting document published by the Centre for Policy Studies. Well worth a read.

Well said Peter Gilroy

Peter Gilroy, the Chief Executive of Kent County Council, was interviewed by the local BBC News today as part of a report on safeguarding of children in Kent. In particular, reference was made to the death of Tiffany in Sherwood at the hands of her father.

Peter Gilroy stated, quite rightly in my opinion, that we should not hound a social worker who in 30 years made one mistake. He went on to say that the social worker in question had saved many lives during her career.

Well said! It is encouraging to hear the head of an organisation robustly defend his staff against the rabble. It has been reported that the member of staff had been 'disciplined' and then retired. I think an injustice has been done to her. Decisions should be reviewed.

More rubbish from the Government

Hot on the heels of the Total Place nonsense the Communities and Local Government Department has delivered a dollop of tripe on petitioning. The new measures will add to councils' costs for no tangible benefits.

There are plenty of opportunities for people to complain about services and this latest wheeze does little of significance to add to them. The claim by the Department that the petitioning process has real teeth set to bite is a bad joke - more like hens teeth. After Total Place we now have Total Tripe.

Let's be clear: the process is not user friendly for hard to reach communities.

Details can be found on the Department's website . For the anorak, the statutory guidance can be read here

Strategic Housing shambles in Labour Copeland

Where is Copeland I hear you ask? It is on the west coast of Cumbria and the largest town is Whitehaven. The Audit Commission's Housing Inspectorate has published its report on a Strategic Housing Re-Inspection of the Labour controlled council.

Its conclusion: we have assessed Copeland Borough Council as providing a ‘poor’, no-star service that has poor prospects for improvement.

What a shambles. Public money is paying for this. Will there be resignations by councillors and/or officers? There should be.

Watford Woes

No, not Watford Football Club, but the elected Mayor of Watford, a Liberal Dozycrat, Dorothy Thornhill. A good looking wench.

I quote from her blog:

What has happened to the world!!! When a council fails to safeguard children they are, quite rightly pilloried in every newspaper. Yet, when we take a positive decision to safeguard children, by ensuring that all children left at a supervised play session are only left under the care of qualified CRB checked and legit staff, we get hounded for it! One journalist even declared we were breaching the human rights of the parents we don’t want hanging around!!!!!!!

We run two great adventure playground facilities that operate as a drop off for parents after school and at weekends. We have done this for years, no worries, parents happy and appreciative.

At one playground a few parents started to stay around for all the sessions, this increased to the extent that staff felt they were spending more time worrying about what the parents were up to rather than watching and supervising the children!What has happened to the world!!! When a council fails to safeguard children they are, quite rightly pilloried in every newspaper. Yet, when we take a positive decision to safeguard children, by ensuring that all children left at a supervised play session are only left under the care of qualified CRB checked and legit staff, we get hounded for it! One journalist even declared we were breaching the human rights of the parents we don’t want hanging around!!!!!!!

We run two great adventure playground facilities that operate as a drop off for parents after school and at weekends. We have done this for years, no worries, parents happy and appreciative.

At one playground a few parents started to stay around for all the sessions, this increased to the extent that staff felt they were spending more time worrying about what the parents were up to rather than watching and supervising the children!

Dear me. The suggestion that every parent is a potential paedophile is insulting. More than that, it shows an authoritarian streak which is the opposite of what 'liberal' means to me. I would have thought parents should be encouraged to take an interest in their children, not use the playground as a means of off-loading them. There has been a spate of cases recently where children have been abused, starved, beaten and killed by their parents/guardians. In all these cases statutory organisations failed the children. Now we have a Mayor who encourages separation of responsible parents from their kids. Bonkers.

Total Place Spin

Total Place to radically reform local services for all is the boast of the government. It claims also that the idea is new - but go back to the 1970s and the same concept was tried.

In 1972 there was an 'initiative' called 'total approach' which looked at six cities and examined 'total resources and how to transform them'.

The challenge is not to improve delivery of failed policies. The challenge, which the dozy lot at the Communities and Local Department have not grasped, is how to sweep away the policies that have failed and put in their place ones that work.

Total Place is a cruel diversion from the task of developing and implementing policies which tackle deprivation in our society. The last thing we want is to make the old, tired, failed policies work better. Not really worth the effort, but if you want to read the latest Total Place rubbish follow this link.

Putting a few myths to rest

Visit the Communities and Local Government site and you will find a document which seeks to debunk various myths about public funds going to faith groups. One section of the document states:

Myth:

"If you engage with one faith community you will have always to engage with all the others in the same way, and all together."

Fact

Not true. Whilst public authorities must not discriminate against religion and belief organisations in matters of engagement and the letting of contracts, there are great differences in scale, capacity and skills between faith communities in different parts of the country, just as there are across the wider third sector. Faith communities should be engaged with as appropriate to this context. For example, in some regions or sectors a faith community or religious organisation may be able to take on a large service contract while another community in the same area, or the same community or organisation in another region, may not yet be ready to do so.

Now some of us representing Christian organisations in Tunbridge Wells have been saying this to Tunbridge Wells Borough Council for years, as has our excellent MP, Greg Clark. But would the Council agree? Of course not, the Council claimed spuriously that equality legislation demanded a faiths forum even though non-Christian faiths have very small numbers and lack the capacity, skills and track record of Christian groups.

In Tunbridge Wells, despite the immense amount of work it undertakes in the community, there is no faith representation on the local strategic partnership as faith groups are lumped in with the voluntary sector.

Think I'll start stirring it up!

Here we go again

A fairly recent 'initiative' from the government is called Total Place. Some bright spark had the idea that it would be sensible for statutory organisations to work together to deal with problems as this might save administrative costs and target support more effectively.

It struck me then that the Maude Committee (1967), the Bains Report (1972), and the Local Government Act 2000 with its provision for community plans had all been there before.

Back in 1972 there was an 'initiative' called 'total approach' which looked at six cities and examined 'total resources and how to transform them'.

So, nothing new in Total Place.

The real issue though is not the better delivery of services. The issue is the policies behind the services. If the policies are wrong (which I believe to be the case), then it is the policies which should be changed, only then should consideration be given to the most effective means to deliver them. Simply delivering failed policies more effectively doesn't help the people or areas the services are intended for.

Total Place is yet another Labour wheeze which should have been strangled at birth. It diverts attention from the failed policies which blight communities and the lives of individuals. It is a pity Kent County Council has enthusiastically participated in this latest Labour initiative, but we should not be surprised. After all KCC is renowned as a willing lap-dog to this government.

Blurred at the edges?

When local government was 'reformed' in 1974 there was a massacre of council seats. District councils replaced borough councils, urban district councils and rural district councils. The new councils cover a wider geographical area than the ones they replaced. The new councils often have artificial boundaries that do not reflect patterns of living. Thus in Sevenoaks District Council's area there is little to bind Edenbridge and Swanley together. Likewise there is little to connect Snodland with Tonbridge which are in Tonbridge & Malling Council's area, or Speldhurst with Sandhurst (Tunbridge Wells Council).

The Local Government Act 2000 swept away the committee structure of local authorities. It was replaced in Kent by the cabinet system which places power in the the hands of a very few councillors. The dangers inherent in this are obvious particularly when one political party has a huge majority, as is the case with Kent County Council and some of the district councils. Non-cabinet councillors are confined to community liaison roles and pleading for scraps to be fed to their electorate.

When a party has a huge majority the risk is that the cabinet system may politicise local government officers, particularly senior officers who work closely on a daily basis with cabinet members.

It is vital that the role of elected councillors is kept distinct from that of officers. Officers must be independent and give impartial advice and not act as the administrative wing of any political party.

Has this distinction been blurred since 2000? Is the current relationship, behind closed doors, between officers and cabinet members too cosy?