Ipswich Borough Council – ‘Selling off the family silver without consulting the family’

Posted on January 15th, 2010 by Joe Laking

In June 2009 David Cameron gave a speech to the Local Government Association. He spoke about the importance of transparency, stressing that transparency of local government would be key to ushering in the age of austerity. This transparency should be particularly important when considering taking public services out of the hands of the public and yet the Tory/Lib Dem Council Leaders of Ipswich Borough Council seem to disagree.

Ipswich Borough Council are considering selling off one of the last municipally owned bus services. The reason that I linked to an agenda rather than a consultative document or public announcement is that this agenda is the only thing the council have published that is available to the public. All discussions are being carried out behind closed doors.

This is a decision that could seriously impact residents living in rural areas around Ipswich as Ipswich Buses Ltd run several rural routes; as the Commission for Rural Communities highlights, access to transport can be a contributing factor to rural disadvantage. With this in mind surely it would seem incumbent upon the council to take heed of Mr Cameron’s words and show some degree of transparency. The Leader of Ipswich Borough Council, Cllr Carnell, has been quoted as saying that the privatisation of Ipswich Buses would “improve services and fares for local people”. However it is worth noting that the favoured company is Go Ahead who also own Brighton and Hove buses who have increased prices by just under 12%.

The discussion surrounding the privatisation of Ipswich Buses Ltd was not even open to all of the council instead it took place in a meeting of the executive, made up exclusively of Tories and Lib Dems. One possible reason for this disregard for openness could be the public outcry that surrounded Plymouth City Council’s decision to sell off it’s municipally owned bus company.

Ipswich Borough Council is ushering in Cameron’s age of austerity, public services are being sold off but there is none of the promised transparency – only closed doors and private meetings.

Thanks to Cllr David Ellesmere and Cllr Alasdair Ross for their help with this post.

“Failure of leadership, culture and governance” at Surrey County Council

Posted on December 26th, 2009 by Jeremy Cliffe

“I want the Conservative Party to learn from what local Conservative councils are doing right now” George Osborne said in September 2009. Surrey County Council (SCC) seems to agree: its Conservative leader recently said that he wanted “David Cameron to be coming to us for advice”.

It wouldn’t be the first time. David Cameron was in Surrey in May 2006, inspecting the council’s new ‘Pegasus’ school bus scheme. He told ITN that “Here in Surrey the council has actually spent five million pounds of its own money […] to expand these school buses and it’s cut the number of cars at the school gate in the morning by twenty percent. […] It’s a really exciting agenda and one that I am determined the Conservative government is going to pursue.”

The council, however, seems less determined: three years later, the very school where Cameron launched Pegasus found itself fighting the scheme’s termination. Having considered four possible options for its future, the Conservative council opted for “maximum savings at the earliest possible date”: ending the service in July 2010 and selling the twenty-two buses at a loss of £1.7 million. This was a controversial decision, it being noted that “withdrawing Ride Pegasus would affect access to learning for those students not statutorily-entitled to transport” and that, as the council’s cabinet member for transport conceded “there is no doubt that this is a very popular service”. By the date of the council’s decision 1,500 signatures had been gathered in opposition to Pegasus’s discontinuation.

The move came shortly after the council had allocated a 2009/10 budget of £147,000 (the cost of roughly two months of Pegasus operations) to preparations for the 2012 Olympics, employing a 2012 ‘Coordinator’ at £46,000 per year. No part of the games will take place in Surrey. SCC has also been criticised for taking Ofsted to court to overturn a one star rating it gave the council. The unsuccessful appeal, opposed by all non-Conservative councillors, cost £10,000 in legal fees and almost £5,000 in costs paid to Ofsted. In particular, Ofsted had criticised SCC’s children’s services, concluding that “The contribution of local services to improving outcomes for children and young people at risk, or requiring safeguarding, is inadequate.”

All this begs the question of whether or not the council is serving the county well. Its former interim CEO Michael Frater does not seem to think so. In his July 2009 handover report he accused the council (on which the leading Conservative group holds 56 of 80 seats) of a “failure of leadership, culture and governance”, describing a “macho” culture of “blame and bullying” and a “breakdown in trust”.  The council, he said, was “very internally focused, obsessed with itself, with its own processes and bureaucracy”.

“A complication to this attitude is an implicit, and often explicit, attitude by some Members that could be summarised as ‘private sector good – public sector, bad’” Frater wrote, also criticising a “highly centralised model of control” which “has encouraged micromanagement and ‘control freakery’”.

He argued that “The most striking aspect of the management style in Surrey is how bureaucratic it has become as a result of an obsession with the control of inputs and resources […] which is then mistaken for a focus on efficiency. This is perhaps inevitable given the lack of a clear vision and strategy […]”

Frater’s comments were supported by Surrey County UNISON, which congratulated him for speaking out and described his report as “entirely accurate”.

All eleven of Surrey’s MPs are Conservatives, four of which (Chris Grayling, Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt and Philip Hammond) are in Cameron’s Shadow Cabinet.  David Cameron and George Osborne surely have plenty to learn from their colleagues in Surrey, but precisely what is a matter for debate.

Boris Johnson: too busy lobbying for bankers to stand up for London’s businesses

Posted on December 26th, 2009 by Jeremy Cliffe

“As Mayor I will be a champion for all London business”, Boris Johnson wrote in his 2008 manifesto, adding that “[London’s] success is not just powered from the glittering citadels in the square mile”.

From his choice of priorities since taking office, one might be forgiven for thinking otherwise: financial services represent 17.1% of London’s output, yet some have criticised the Mayor for displaying an insufficient commitment to the remaining 82.9% of the London economy. Johnson, it is said, “wants to support the super-rich and leave the vulnerable to struggle.”

In September 2008, as the government injected billions into the banks to prevent wholesale economic collapse, Johnson railed pre-emptively against ‘vindictive’ regulation and ‘neo-socialist claptrap’, telling people to stop “whingeing [...] about house prices boosted by City bonuses”.

In April 2009 he described the 50% top rate of tax as a ‘gimmick’, in September he called EU regulation of private equity and hedge funds “a naked piece of commercial warfare by France and Germany upon the City of London”, in October he used his conference speech to attack ‘banker bashers’ and in December he broke ranks from his own party to oppose the government’s 50% bonus tax. When challenged to suggest an alternative to the tax he replied “Well I think that [the bankers] should have shown much greater self-restraint. What kind of impost, what kind of tax you come up with, I don’t know.” The Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman has described Johnson’s analysis of the financial crisis as ‘economically illiterate’.

Interestingly,  Johnson has received substantial sums of money from financial organisations and wealthy individuals. A 2009 study by the Party of European Socialists found that private equity and hedge funds donated 77% of his 2008 campaign budget (much of which he failed to declare). The paper also revealed that in the first half of 2009 46% of all individual donations to the Conservative Party (£3.26 million) came from managers in the hedge fund and private equity industries.

Elsewhere, Johnson has been accused of neglecting other sectors of the London economy. In March 2009, nineteen leading figures from London’s retail, tourism and cultural sectors wrote to the Mayor to express disappointment at his response to the recession. This came after he had abolished London Unlimited (established under Ken Livingstone to promote London internationally) and cut the budget of Visit London to help cover the £50 million of annual revenue forfeited by cancelling the £25 congestion charge for ‘gas guzzlers’ and the £70 million lost by halving the congestion zone.

Boris Johnson’s response to the financial crisis therefore seems to belie the varied make-up of the London economy, craven to those ‘glittering citadels’ that bankrolled his mayoral campaign.

Boris Johnson’s fare increases

Posted on December 26th, 2009 by Joe Laking

“I will…put the commuter first” Boris Johnson 2008 Travel Manifesto

The day after thousands of people pay for the train home from New Years Eve parties across London for the first time since 2003, those relying on public transport will be hit with another nasty shock. Their fares are increasing. Again.

In Johnson’s 2008 Travel Manifesto he pledged to put the commuter first, his goal was to make sure that our transport system improved our quality of life.  As time has gone on we have begun to see that when Boris said ‘commuter’ what he actually meant was car driver.

There will be a 10.5%-18.2% increase in tube fares paid for with an oyster and a whopping 20% increase to bus journeys paid for with an oyster.  It is of note that people on lower incomes tend to use the buses.

Boris claims that these increases and the cancelled free transport on New Years Eve stem from a black hole in the TfL budget. However he seems to have no worries about the revenue that will be lost from scrapping the Western extension of the Congestion Charge. When the costs of this escapade were put to the Mayor he had the nerve to talk of “abundant” economies being available to offset the annual loss of £55m-£70m.

The Mayor can’t have it both ways: either there are abundant economies, in which case the need to raise fees to create excess revenue seems questionable. Alternatively there is a black hole to be filled and the GLA can’t afford to spare a single penny; if this is the case then how can the Mayor justify scrapping the western extension that would bring in tens of millions and encourage Londoners to use more sustainable public transport?