Havant Borough Council – the secrecy continues…

Posted on January 27th, 2010 by Joe Laking

Recently we highlighted the plans that Ipswich Borough Council (lead by a Tory/Lib Dem coalition) were considering selling off the municipally owned bus company Ipswich Buses Ltd. This decision was taken behind closed doors, in spite of the principles of transparency espoused by Cameron. It is a shame that when the Tories are in power in a local government context they do not seem to share their leader’s passion when it comes to transparency and the decentralisation of power.

In July 2009 Havant Borough Council Strategy and Regeneration Board, a scrutiny board set up to make recommendations to the executive, published their recommendations on the continued use of Capita for the delivery of revenues and benefits services (their contract running out in 2013). The recommendation rejected the extension of Capita’s contract, calling for the Council to consider alternative options such as a shared provision of customer services with Hampshire County Council. Although scrutiny committee recommendations are not binding they should surely hold some weight, they are a cross party group and in this instance the scrutiny committee was chaired by a Tory (Cllr Gwen Blackett).

However the executive of the council decided to ignore the committee’s recommendation and put the eight-year extension of Capita’s contract to a vote at a full council meeting. Not only did the executive undermine the scrutiny board, a key democratic tool that aims to hold the executive to account, they then excluded the public from the debates. This debate wasn’t an uncontroversial one: a petition calling for the council to hold public consultation on the contract garnered over 900 signatures.

Once again the Tories show that in spite of Cameron’s rhetoric when push comes to shove they will hold commercial interest above democratic accountability. If your local council is in the habit of excluding the public then let us know, you can send any tip-offs or suggestions for Tory stories to info@torystories.com.

Brighton and Hove City Council – failing to deliver vital services

Posted on January 6th, 2010 by Nancy Platts

Britain’s population is ageing.  As a result the care that the Government provides for the elderly is going to become a more and more pressing issue as time passes. Even if it cannot be agreed on whether the Government should take on more responsibility for the provision of care, surely it should go without saying that cutting current levels of adult social care is a bad idea?

The Tories became the largest single party on the Brighton and Hove City Council in the local elections in 2007; before that the Labour Party had either been in overall control of the council or at least formed the executive. Since the Tories have been in control of the council the standard of adult social care has slipped according to several reports (see the CSCI reports from when Labour controlled the Council, compared to 2007-08).

The Council report on adult social care and health services notes that: “The outcome of these various judgements is that the Council has been judged to be 2 Star overall as against 3 Star in the previous two years”. In spite of this the Tories continue to slip the possibility of front line service cuts into reports.

Worse than the reports hinting at the Tories’ dark intentions is the most recent budget. This budget outlines cuts that have threatened 160 jobs: in all 51 jobs from the Adult Social Care and Health Department were singled out in the December Cabinet Paper leaving it the worst affected department so far (the full 160 jobs likely to be cut are identified on p.13).

When something as important as adult social care is getting worse you would not expect those in charge to make significant and damaging cuts to the Adult Social Care and Health department; yet here we have the Conservatives of Brighton and Hove City Council doing just this. Once again cuts hitting the most vulnerable in society in order to make savings that will benefit the richest most.

The Tory ‘ideological’ revolution: more spin, less swim

Posted on January 2nd, 2010 by Jeremy Cliffe

“Like any distinctively Conservative discourse, Cameron Conservatism is radically pragmatic rather than radically dogmatic” – Oliver Letwin, 2007

In May 2008 ‘Cameron Conservatives’ in Southampton ousted the Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition on the city’s council. Alec Samuels became the new council leader, and in October that year outlined his party’s ‘Southampton Revolution’: “We do not in principle favour “free this and free that”, eg swimming or transport, school means or computers or whatever it is”, he wrote, adding: “For ideological reasons we are going for outsourcing, externalisation, privatisation, wherever possible and sensible” and “Unless we have a pressing need for retention, we are disposing of assets”. In line with David Cameron’s aspiration to unload service provision onto the voluntary sector, he defined charitable organisations as a low-cost alternative to the public sector: “but for [the voluntary sector] the local authority would have to provide the service, which would be not so good and more expensive”.

Samuels and his team wasted little time in rolling out their ‘ideological’ revolution. Within weeks of the election the new council was arguing that its “capacity to undertake effective media liaison is not seen as being adequately proactive […] This area needs to have priority attention”. The proposed solution: a £100,000 image consultant. The following year the council also created a new £85,000/year communications role.

Other areas, it seems, were not deemed worthy of such ‘priority attention’. The 2009/10 budget proposals comprised cuts to the council’s family crisis intervention service, its road safety camera scheme, maintenance support for the poor, elderly and disabled, home improvements for the vulnerable and disabled, city bus services, libraries, neighbourhood wardens and an advice centre.

The council has since attempted to sell off art from the popular City Art Gallery (an “unethical, undemocratic and ill-thought through” move criticised both by residents and the media), privatise leisure facilities and close three Family Centres and the two most cost-effective residential care homes in the city. The latter measure, entailing the loss of 80 beds and 70 jobs, came up against substantial opposition: 5,000 people signed a petition calling for the homes to remain open, yet the council described Labour proposals to retain or replace the homes as “unrealistic”.

Residents and staff at the homes led the protests: 96-year old Les Proctor, a former Spitfire engineer, said “I just cannot think what’s going to happen. It’s too good a place to shut it down. I cannot fault it in any way.” Concerns were raised about the effect of all this on residents’ health, whilst the council also faced accusations of deliberately under-investing in the homes in order to justify their closure and of doing so in order to cash in on the value of the land. Nevertheless, in June 2009 the cabinet voted unanimously in favour of evicting the residents, claiming that the private sector could provide cheaper care (despite having had to suspend a private domiciliary care provider only months before).

This ideological commitment to private provision also cropped up with the issue of free swimming. In July 2008 the government made new funds available to help councils modernise pools and provide free swims for the under-16’s and over-60’s, all as part of a £140 million scheme to improve the health and wellbeing of these groups. Southampton was offered £56,199, but the council – opposed to “free this and free that” – not only rejected the money but also axed free swimming lessons for the under-12’s (a programme that had been introduced by the Lab-Lib administration). Under pressure from locals and an Olympic swimmer, however, it was later forced to perform a U-turn.

Is this apparently dogmatic Tory behaviour restricted to the ‘Southampton Revolution’? The statistics on national take-up of free swimming funds suggest not. Swindon’s ruling Tory councillors have only part-implemented the scheme and, in the words of Labour MP Anne Snelgrove, “seem to go to any length to avoid working with the Government”. Meanwhile Basildon’s Tory council entirely forewent the £47,714 it was offered, describing it as a ‘gimmick’.

In fact, as of December 2009, 49 of the 64 councils to have rejected the money are Conservative-controlled whilst all Labour-controlled councils have implemented the scheme. In April, May and June of 2009 it provided 4.5 million free swims via 253 different councils, a figure that (at an average of 17,800 swims/council) suggests that over the same period some 870,000 free swims fell victim to “radically pragmatic” Tory councils.

“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.

Green energy and green jobs – “Not in my back yard” say Isle of Wight Tories

Posted on December 26th, 2009 by Jeremy Cliffe

In a forward to his party’s paper on The Low Carbon Economy, David Cameron presents his “vision of a Britain which leads the world in new green technologies” and is “the world-leading economy for green innovation”. This aspiration is shared by the Conservative-run council of the Isle of Wight, whose “inspirational vision” it is to turn the Isle into an ‘Eco Island’ with the lowest carbon footprint in England by 2020.

In 2006 the council was given an opportunity to make its vision a reality when it received an application from Your Energy to build six wind turbines with the capacity to power 6,500 homes (10% of the entire island).

The application was backed by the South-East England Development Agency, which reminded councillors that the local Vestas turbine blade production plant was “critical for future growth on the island”, that there was “a commitment by Your Energy to source the turbine blades from Vestas” and “an agreement in place to use one of the turbines for further R&D purposes.”

SEEDA’s advice concluded that this was “a key opportunity for the island to show proactive and responsible leadership in addressing some very challenging issues both for the island and the region’s future prosperity.” In two local surveys a majority of respondants expressed support for the application, whilst Vestas itself warned the council that without a concrete local commitment to wind energy it would consider moving the blades factory elsewhere.

But the council rejected the application, describing it as “the wrong thing in the wrong place”.

The actions of the council and the island’s Conservative MP in opposing this and other wind farm applications persuaded Vestas (citing a lack of “political support at a local level”) that circumstances would be more favourable in wind-friendly Colorado. And so the plant – and 425 jobs – went west.

In response to this news, Council leader David Pugh insisted that “nothing could have been done to prevent the loss of those jobs” and later claimed that “that planning refusal had no connection with the blade factory whatsoever”.  The council then attacked protesting workers, Vestas and later the government’s planning regulations.

Since then the council has also rejected a motion to sign up to the 10:10 campaign, turned down another turbine application on grounds of “insufficient […] socio-economic benefit” and proposed the closure of half the primary schools on the island, a record which, although arguably consistent with the views of Tory councillors such as Ian Ward (“global warming is vastly exaggerated by those with a vested interest in conning the public into believing that we humans are to blame”), sits less comfortably alongside the council’s pledge to turn the island into a “skills-based […] centre of excellence in renewable energies”.

This is not an isolated example. Of the 51 councils that have signed up to 10:10, only 11 are Conservative-led, and Tory members of the London Assembly recently walked out on a motion to introduce the scheme in the capital. Such prominent Tory MPs as Andrew Lansley, Ken Clarke and Peter Luff have all expressed opposition to wind turbines. In fact, since David Cameron became party leader, Tory councils have rejected 80% of wind farm applications submitted to them, in contrast to Labour councils, which according to SERA have approved 70%. In 2007 alone, 740 megawatts of clean energy generation fell victim to Tory councils, enough green energy to power 400,000 homes.