brennon

As the cabinet member with responsibility for Performance Monitoring, I received the following email from the officers.

The Audit Commission has looked at our performance figures (for a selection of indicators) for 2006 - 07 and compared them to all other districts.

• 77% of our indicators have improved over three years which ranks us 6th out of 238 districts and is above average.
• 59% of our indicators are in the top quartile (authorities with a CPA rating of "Excellent" have, on average, 38 % PIs in best quartile).
This selection of PIs is used to inform the Audit Commission judgment on whether to allow councils to go forward for re-accreditation for CPA and from a performance point of view clearly puts us in an excellent position if we were interested.  

The following PIs improved over three years and are in the top quartile:  determining planning applications, homelessness PIs, score of environmental best practice, tenant satisfaction and satisfaction with cleanliness, waste collection, recycling and leisure facilities.

Although we as a council have always been confident in continuous improvements we have been making over the last 8+ years and especially the last 4, it's nice to see it acknowledged at last.  We have always insisted that chasing nationally set performance figures is not the way we want to be as a council and that the most important thing for us is to make sure that we are hit the targets that local people want us to - not the government.

Given that, we now have to decide whether or not to go for the reassessment so as get the rating we actually deserve.  Given that we've been getting some flack in the press recently, it might make sense to put ourselves through the process again just to prove the point. 

It's a bit like the epitaph that Spike Milligan apparently wanted on his grave stone ‘See I told you I was ill!'  However, in our case it won't be a gravestone, it should be a big banner across the front of the council offices shouting, ‘See, we told you we were doing well!'.

Incidentally, performance monitoring is all about collecting the data, turning it in to information, and then making sure it's presented in a way that people can understand and more importantly make effective use of.  The moral of this bit of my tale is - 'don't shoot the messenger!'

Following my positive (for me!) comments on the LGA chairman's speech in yesterday's blog, I've been pondering the issues (I should really find something better to do at the weekends shouldn't I!) and I'm afraid I'm now going to revert to type (grumpy old sceptic, with a large dash of cynicism).

Yesterday, I felt that Sir Simon had struck just the right chord with the points he made - making 'local services' answerable via those who have been elected to represent the interests of 'local people' is a given - and I continue to have no argument with that.  However, I still see Local Area Agreements, which put district councils as second fiddles to county councils, as instruments designed to aid in the eventual abolition of district councils.

Now back to my rethinking on the content of Sir Simon's speech. 

Having read Christopher Booker's pieces in today's Sunday Telegraph, about the ongoing transfer of power to the EU and EU attempts to gag 13 rebel MEPs, I had an awful feeling that the push for 'localisation' and local accountability was just a great big confidence trick on us all!  (and that includes the LGA and Sir Simon Milton).  A con that is designed to distract us from fighting this loss of democratic accountability.  Give us some little tit bits to play with, the ones they don't want anyway, whilst they grab all the big stuff, that doesn't actually involve them dealing with real people directly.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/27/nbook127.xml

Whilst local government politicians are all busy chasing new goals and challenges set for us by central government, getting excited about the 'new deal' between central and local government and the promise of gaining 'real' control over local service delivery and trying to understand what devolving power down to 'local people' as referred to by Yvette Cooper recently, our Members of Parliament are busy giving away more and more power to the EU and unraveling more and more of our 1000 year old constitution. 

That is when the MPs are not debating how to give themselves an above inflation pay rise, gold plated pensions and enhanced allowances that is.  Of course, by the time our MPs have finished devolving all the boring stuff down to local government and flying all the important stuff across the channel to Brussels, I'm not sure what they'll actually be doing to earn any of it!

The rebel MEPs have had the temerity to campaign for a referendum on what is potentially the final nail in the coffin that will be used to bury all remaining vestiges of British sovereignty - the EU Constitution.  They are being threatened with 'substantial fines' for daring to challenge the almighty, yet ineffective, EU Parliament.  How dare they try to put something as inefficient and inconvenient as the democratic process in the way of the way of the EU's bureaucratic steam roller!  http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/politics/danielhannan/

I have just read an edited version of a recent speech made by Sir Simon Milton, Local Government Association (LGA) Chairman. The article can be read at http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/core/page.do?pageId=140352. 

The whole speech can be read at http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/aio/136128. 

One particular paragraph jumped off the page at me and gave me some hope that the LGA was still willing to fight the good fight on behalf of local government and more importantly elected members. 

"Councils are the means of engaging and involving communities, they are the forum through which local needs and ambitions are given a voice".  The editor obviously thought that this was a good comment as well because he/she choose to highlight it as a bye line (is that the right term?) to the article.

I still have significant concerns about the ever growing elected member elite that is being created by the way local government is going and see the LGA as the pinnacle of this elite.  However, the LGA is not the problem as such and what is happening at the grass roots and regional level is of much more concern. 

The cabinet and de facto regional government systems has encouraged and continue to promote a growing elite of elected members who can afford to devote what the rest of us call the working week, to council work and become an inner circle of the ‘all knowing and all powerful'.  

Unless the points Sir Simon Milton has raised are pursued to the highest levels, one of his other comments is only likely to increase in relevance - "Democracy is sometimes inconvenient, but it is a thousands times easier for people to understand and get involved with compared to the confusion of boards, authorities, trusts and agencies that exist at present".  

Local area agreements are being promoted as a way to breath new life into local government and the role of elected members.  The danger is, that so much will be tied up in them and so much power will be devolved to them, that only the elite cadre of ‘full time' elected members will be trusted to take the lead.  Meanwhile, the rest of us will be left chasing their coat tails and wondering what's really going on!

If you are at all worried about the direction the government is taking in respect of local government, please read the article and please write to Sir Simon supporting his comments - that's what I shall be doing.

I did actually start to complete the questions, but then realised how often these same questions had been asked and answered before.  None of the issues raised in the past seem to have been addressed and it is therefore unsurprisingly that those same issues are being raised yet again.  So I eventually threw the questionnaire in the bin!  I also threw away the letter I started to write to the Councillor's Commission, as I felt that it would serve little or no purpose.

Incidentally, I think I and all the other elected members, who ‘failed' to return their questionnaires, recently received an admonishment (via our CX) from the government dept that issued it.  In response to some of the questions asked, my letter was going to say the following:

Why do people become councillors?  That's a very good question, but one that I would like to ask in a different way.  Why do certain people become councillors and why do some of those people, who on the face of it started out in exactly the same place as me, seem to rise up through the ranks to become some sort of super-councillor, remote from us ordinary beings and somehow specially selected to talk on my behalf and on behalf of my constituents, to the higher levels of government?    

Even when you look to the real world i.e. a small rural council on the fringes of Lincolnshire, one begins to see the creation of an ‘us and them' culture.  Those who have the time and resources to make this supposedly voluntary service to the community a full time job, walk amongst the great and the good in the corridors of power, at both regional and central government levels, attending conferences, seminars, presentations and launches of various government initiatives. 

These self created elite accumulate knowledge and connections and build a power base of expertise that those of us trying to do a days work for a days pay can only dream of.  No doubt I could sound incredibly knowledgeable about numerous local government issues, if I had the luxury of attending, at the taxpayers expense, every special briefing, conference and seminar that came along.

What would inspire an individual to become a councillor if they actually knew how the system worked?  Short answer is, nothing, as the current system works.  Only if you were completely fulfilled by getting Mrs Smith's bin emptied, or the bit of road outside Mr Brown's house swept more regularly, could you possibly feel that you were really making a difference in the local government environment we now have.

I have lost count of the numbers of bits of paper I receive weekly telling me that I am now an influencer, enabler, facilitator, partner, stakeholder, etc, etc.  What I cannot seem to do anymore is get anybody to spend money of making something happen, at least not at the district council level.  It all has to be a partnership, or a demonstration of joined up thinking, or a cross border working agreement, with everybody from the local vicar to the head of the Primary Care Trust coming together to create a ‘sustainable relationship, that demonstrates joint working via a shared vision and promotes community cohesion and advances the diversity and equality agenda!'.  Fine words, does anybody know what they mean?

With local government starved of any flexibility in way they spend 95% of their funding, is it any wonder that people say to me at public meetings, when asking how to get something done and being told its either, not possible because there's no money available in our budget, or it's somebody else's responsibility, "Well what's the point in talking to you then?".

I'm told that yet another new initiative by central government, some sort of ‘localisation agenda' (no doubt somebody gets paid a fortune to think these terms up) will empower local people and put elected members at the forefront of their communities - funny I thought that's what the local elections did!  

We had a presentation by representatives from Lincolnshire Police at full council on Wednesday night and they laid out some very stark choices to be made on behalf of the people of Lincolnshire.  The basic facts are that Lincolnshire gets the lowest grant of any police service, some £11,000,000 less than they should. 

Pay more for less; pay even more for the same; pay a lot more for some improvement.  The root cause is central government's funding formula, an impenetrable set of calculations that are used to determine how much Lincolnshire Police receive in grant each year.  This produces two thirds of the funding needed, with the rest coming from local council tax payers. 

Part of the formula used to come up with this under-funding looks at how well off the people of Lincolnshire are and it would appear that we have a higher than average number of wealthy achievers!!!!  I didn't realise that working shifts in our fields and food factories was so well paid!  Apparently this lops a whopping £7 million off the grant. 

You don't need to be genius to work out that if the two thirds isn't big enough, then the one third has to get bigger or, our already minimal policing service (no longer a force I'm told) gets even more minimal.  The police authority are making various representations, but told us tonight that they have been required to submit a three year financial recovery plan. 

I questioned the fact that they appeared to have produced a document that offered only Hobson's choice i.e. raise the precept that is the police element of the council tax, rather than pointing out that if the funding levels were fairer, then there wouldn't be any need for a financial recovery plan!  I asked them to consider submitting all 3 of the options that were detailed in their presentation, not just the one that raises the council tax!

However, nobody is holding their breath for a better deal in the short term, it's going to take a huge change of attitude by central government to rural services funding, or maybe a change of government!

If you want to see more details and take part in a survey see SECURING OUR FUTURE at the Lincs Police Authority website. 

Copy and paste this link to your browser address bar http://www.lincolnshire-pa.gov.uk/pages/SOFsurvey.asp

Nothing like a bit of exaggeration to get people interested, hence the title.  However, the concerns about pedestrian safety in Wygate Park are not exaggerated and continues to be a real worry to parents going to Spalding Primary. 

Through the planning process we obtained funding for not one, but two pedestrian crossings and yet nearly two years after getting that funding from the developers, nothing has happend.

The bizarre thing is, that when I made enquiries about this and the improvements to the Pinchbeck Road/Woolram Wygate junction in the middle of last year, it was the junction work that seemed to be stuck in the slow lane (sorry, couldn't resist that one!).  So when I received a list of the latest planned highways works last week and the junction work was on it (provisionally), but the pedestrian crossing wasn't, I had a mixed reaction to say the least. 

I've been trying to get the junction work underway for the last 3+ years (again, since we got the money from the developers through the planning process (they're such generous people these developers!).  So seeing this work on the list was a big (good) surprise.  However, NOT seeing the pedestrian crossing on the list was very much the opposite.

Once again I've written to Boston (Lincs highways dept for the area is located there, for reasons best known to them!) to ask what's going on.  Watch this space, or rather this blog, for developments (I hope!).   

Well not just water unfortunately, but also raw sewage.  Despite an assurance that the last time it happend (July 07) was an exceptional circumstance and therefore the problem would not be treated as a priority, part of Woolram Wygate in Spalding was awash with sewage system overflow caused by the heavy rain.

Even worse, I understand from the two local residents who alerted me to this situation, that the local primary school became flooded again by the toilets backing up and had to be closed, just the same as last time. 

Understandably, residents are demanding action and asking how the district council can continue to allow more house building to add to the pressure on the local infrastructure when it cannot cope the the existing demands.  Future development is always controversial with existing residents and Anglian Water have a duty to make sure that their existing systems and any new ones can cope.  I have again written to Anglian Water seeking answers and demanding that they re-prioritise the work to stop this happening again.

I will also be writing to the education authority to insist that they put pressure on Anglian Water to fix this problem once and for all and stop more tax payers money being wasted on the cost of cleaningup each time and more importantly, to stop the damage to the children's education everytime the school is closed.

As with just about every other public utility that is now in private hands, the public has little or no confidence in their service delivery ethic and with some justification now feel that these companies have only one master - the shareholders.   

As chairman of the development control (DC) committee I get lots of invites to attend conferences and numerous publications about all sorts of planning issues. 

I received one today called Green Futures and it suddenly occurred to me that this document, along with the many others, shouldn't be coming my way at all.  I've never really understood why people credit the chairman of DC with so much power, even to the point where some people actually express a certain level of hatred for the person in the post.

Having given it some thought, it seems that people don't realize that, these days, the chairman is only responsible for ensuring that the council's development control policies are applied in a fair and consistent manner and committee meetings are run in the same way.  It is probable that, in ‘the good old days', when development control policies were either vague or even non-existent, the chairman had the opportunity to apply a lot more influence over what the final outcome of a particular planning application was.

These days almost all councils have up to date and comprehensive planning policies in place and the leeway for interpretation, bias or even undue influence is (thankfully) very much reduced.  When attempts are made to continue this 'tradition' in the chamber I call it ‘the good old boy' effect - ‘he's a good old boy, he's lived here all his life, give him his planning permission!'.

Based on this, my point regarding the conferences invites and planning publications is, that the professionals seem to suffer from the same outdated view of the role of the DC chairman as some of the public.  The target for all of this should be the portfolio holder for Strategic Planning.  This is the role that is responsible for formulating and developing planning policies and this is the position that can gain the most from understanding all these emerging issues.

Put simply, the message to the public is - don't shoot the messenger, he's only overseeing the application of the council's adopted planning policies.  To the professionals - it's time for you to review you're understanding of the different roles that now exist in cabinet style local government.

I see Tesco are now taking an interest in those lower end supermarkets that are popular with the careful shoppers amongst us.

It's fantastic to have a successful British company like Tesco and to see it going from strength to strength.  I'd like it better if they were doing it by trading with other countries and feeding it back into our economy, like many of the foreign companies we see taking over one British company after another.

What does concern me about Tesco is their continuing hunger for success based on getting into other people's business, as in this latest story about the Aldi and Lidl supermarket chains.  I know these are also food businesses, but the danger is, that once they have a virtual monopoly, the temptation will be to set prices that suit them, not their customers.

Tesco are already into all sorts; electrical goods, every sort of insurance, financial services, legal services, DVD rental, mobile phones, the Internet, flowers delivery, contact lenses, gas & electricity supply and more.  If you look at their website, there appears to be no limit to their determination to take other people's business.

I don't pretend to understand high finance (crickey, I don't even understand my own low finances half the time!) so this constant push for more and more growth, with companies considered to be failing if they don't increase their profits year after year after year, is a bit of a mystery to me.  All that appears to happen is that whatever one company gains, another company looses and that's seems to be the Tesco business philosophy.  Despite already being top of the tree in the supermarket business, they've decided to muscle in on everybody else's business. 

Notwithstanding the increasing migrant worker population, the market for most things doesn't expand at a huge rate, unless it's a brand new product or service.  So the only way for Tesco to continue to increase its £2 billion a year profits, is to take away other people's business (on top of squeezing the last drop out of every farmer forced to do business with them).  So despite the fact that they are British and continue to experience world class success, I'm not sure I like this company anymore - they just seem greedy.  No wonder I'm not a businessman!                       

I really will have to stop reading the newspaper, it just gets me going!  The Bishop of Rochester has expressed his concerns that the more multi-cultural we become, the less integrated we are.

Just like the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Philips, this gentleman is fortunate enough to be non-white and therefore not instantly open to the knee jerk accusation from the liberal lefty brigade, of being a racist.

Live and let live must be applied equally, but doesn't mean don't criticise anybody who isn't white and anybody who wasn't born here, no matter what they do or say.  Neither does it mean that we should allow things, that we consider to be part of our British way of life, to be swept away because they might ‘upset' those who do things differently.  (Despite having a very large British expat community, the Spanish don't seem prepared to scrap bullfighting (although I wish they would!)).

It's time for ALL our politicians to line up behind people like the Bishop and Trevor Philips, to make it clear that the British way of life take precedence over the self(ish) interests of minority groups.  These groups just keep pushing and pushing for their own way and their supporters amongst our own people (those liberal lefties again!) claim that any attempt to maintain our traditions and prevent theirs taking over, amounts to some sort of racism.

I like seeing people from different counties in my country.  I like it that these people think my country is a good place to be and I like it that these people feel safe here.  A small minority are out to take advantage of our country because we have an NHS or pay benefits, but every nation has it users and losers - it's the price we pay for being an advanced and caring nation.

We need to safeguard what we have for the benefit of everyone.  To those who want to set up their own ghettos, whilst at the same time demanding that we change to their way of doing things, my message is simple - NO, NO, NO - if things here aren't good enough for you, please take your extremism somewhere else, there's no room for it here.

Recent newspaper stories about school discipline issues, gives me the chance to offer a very personal opinion as to why it's all gone so wrong.  One of my favourite phrases is ‘I blame the parents' and although this is a huge simplification, I do believe that there is some truth in it, when applied to some kid's attitude to school these days.

However, in my opinion the way some parent's influence their kid's attitude to school, may actually go back to their own experiences of school - at least in part.  Based on my own experiences at school, I always promised myself that no teacher would get away with treating a child of mine in the way I'd seen some of my fellow pupils treated!

My personal memories are of the pervert music teacher at junior school, who always made sure the girls stood very close to him at his desk and often had only one hand visible!  He also nearly blinded the class bad boy by losing his temper with him one day and hitting him across the face with a 6ft cane (there may of been some natural justice there, as this was the same kid who got the class trip to the Cutty Sark cancelled by nicking all the money from the teacher's desk draw the day before!). 

At senior school, there was the thug of a PE teacher, with his special pinch point for those not trying hard enough and the sadistic Catholic priest who taught RE with the edge of a wooden rule across the back of your hand when you weren't expecting it and your handwriting was poor!

Personally, I don't believe in corporal punishment (and yes, I do have some personal experience - enough said!).  The examples I've given above were nothing to do with the school's discipline system, these were just crap teachers abusing their positions, which brings me on to the second part of my theory on the breakdown of pupil discipline. 

Just suppose you were one of those kids who had been physically abused in the ‘good old bad days' of teachers getting away with murder.  Now imagine that having survived school, you have become a civil servant or even a politician responsible for education policy in this country.  Given such power, wouldn't you be tempted to do all that you could to ensure that today's teachers weren't able to treat school pupils the way you had been treated when you were at school? 

Enter a whole raft of rules and regulations giving pupil's rights, introducing parent power and an appeal system in every school.  Worst of all, we also have a no win, no fee legal system that encourages people to sue for 'hurt feelings'.  It's hardly surprising that today's teachers feel powerless and the yobs rule the classroom, with little fear of any meaningful form of discipline restricting their constant bad or even violent behaviour.

We had a special meeting of the cabinet today, mainly to approve various financial papers.  One of these was a consultation document on the Draft General Fund Revenue (GF) account.  Just like all things financial in local government, including the names they call things (GF!) the information (sorry data, information suggests useful data that makes sense!) is pretty impenetrable, unless you happen to be an accountant.  In my case, having the numeracy skills of a flip flop doesn't help, so I'm normally the one asking the stupid questions.  Anyway, one of the items in the document was the Spalding Special Expenses and this is the prompt for my latest ramblings.

Spalding doesn't have a parish or town council, but it does have the equivalent of a parish precept called Spalding Special Expenses (SSE).  This amount makes up a very small part of a Spalding resident's council tax bill, but actually generates a great deal of debate at this time of year.  The proposed increase this year is about 4.17% or 1.6p a week, making the average total SSE this year £21.49.  Chicken feed most people would say, but even a small amount collected from a lot of people adds up to quite a bit of money (approx £183,000).   However, the underlying issue is how this figure is arrived at, who decides it and what it should be spent on.

The final decision rests with the district council, because Spalding doesn't have a parish or town council and this is where the debate really gets going.  We have a Spalding Town Forum made up of elected members and some local organisation representatives.  However, it has no executive powers and can only make recommendations to the district council, which can of course choose to ignore them.

Should Spalding have a parish/town council?  I joined the district council in May 99 believing that Spalding should indeed have its own council, after all, how could so many people, 22,000+ then, be so under-represented compared to all of out smaller towns and villages?  However, now that I've doing this for a while, I'm less sure of the merits of this, especially when it comes to unravelling the finances, setting it up and paying the admin costs.  A major cost would be employing a clerk in the same way parishes do.  How much? £10k, £15k, £20k, who knows until it actually happens?  Finding a place to call home (an office) could cost anything from £2k to £10k.

What will the people of Spalding get for their money if they had a town council?  Apart from direct control over some very limited areas of council business, maintenance of Spalding Cemetery, Monks house Lane, Hailey Stewart and the provision of Christmas decorations to name a few, not a great deal as it stands!  However, once you have a parish or town council, theoretically the sky's the limit (that's a scary thought in itself).  

So, as far as I'm concerned the jury is still very much out on this issue and given the lack of feedback from the public of Spalding, I think it's going to remain out for some time to come! 

If you want to know more about the issue of creating a parish/town council see: http://www.nalc.gov.uk/About_NALC/What_is_a_parish_or_town_council/What_is_a_council.aspx

I don't know what the outcome of the planning application to be considered on 9th January will be, that's for the committee to decide.  However, what I do know is that we could have done things a lot better from the outset. 

One of the biggest failings on our part as the local planning authority, was not insisting on the production of a comprehensive development brief for the site, as soon as soon as the applicant made their intentions known.

I have made it clear to as many people as possible, that as long as I retain any influence over such things, any future applications for important sites, wherever they might be in the district, must be supported by a comprehensive development brief for that site.   I have already written to a number of our local civic society's asking for them to suggest sites that should be subject to development briefs, as they are the ones with the intimate local knowledge that can identify sites that are of great importance to the local community.

A development brief is not just a bigger and better planning application that merely details the developer's proposals for the site.  It must look at the context of the development site and its relationship to its surroundings and it must discuss what the best use of the site would be.  In some cases this could well lead to a different sort of use for the site or a use that doesn't necessarily fit exactly with the applicant's plans, so there is potential for some very 'interesting' discussions between the applicant and the planners.  However, done properly, it can make things go a lot more smoothly later on in the process and more importantly, avoid much of the controversy that was experienced with the Bull and Monkey site (and it's not over yet!).

Ideally, development briefs will always be produced at the expense of the person wishing to develop the site.  However, there may also be an occasion when the site is of such importance, that the local planning authority needs to produce a development brief before any proposals are brought forward and this is where the real challenge comes, given the increasing pressure on the council's budget. 

• Joined the Council 19/5/99
• Member of Development Control Committee since 19/5/99 (Chairman from 16/8/00 - 29/5/02, 28/5/03 - 16/5/04 and 20/7/05 - Present date)
• Member of Environment & Leisure from 19/5/99 - committee ceased
• Member of Housing Services from 19/5/99 - committee ceased
• Member of Policy & Best Value (Vice-Chairman from 19/5/99 - committee ceased)
• Member of Strategic Planning - 19/5/99 (Vice-Chairman from 4/10/00 - committee ceased)
• Member of Business Unit Management Board - 19/5/99 - committee ceased
• Spalding Town Forum - Chairman from formation 9/2/00 - 21/6/05
• South Holland Local Plan Working Party - 9/6/00 - Vice Chairman
• Member of Plans Sub Committee - 9/10/00 - Chairman
• Member of Standards Committee - 22/3/02
• Cabinet Member from formation 11/6/02 (Deputy Leader 11/6/02 - 16/5/03) (Portfolio Holder for Regulatory Services 16/5/03 - May 05, Portfolio Holder for Customer Services May 05
• Cabinet Member May 05 to present - Portfolioholder for Strategic Planning, ICT, Operational Development, Member Development (HR, Performance, E-Government, Projects)
• Spalding Town Forum - Vice Chairman - May 06 to present 
• Local Development Framework Working Party - Chairman - May 06 to present  
• Member Development Working Party - Chairman - May 06 to present 
• ICT Member Working Party - Chairman - May 06 to present