Category Archives: Government

Local government has another 10% to find – for starters

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I’ve borrowed this from the article published in today’s Sunday Telegraph – thank you ST. The further 10% cut in funding to local government, has been on the cards almost since the last cuts were announced, so that’s not the interesting bit.

What is interesting, is the Telegraph’s assessment that this is a defeat, I assume for the DCLG and Eric Pickles, as that couldn’t be further from the truth, given Mr Pickles constant eagerness to please his bosses. Let’s not forget, he was the first minister to settle, if that’s the right word for it. It’s more likely that Pickles was actually waiting outside the front door of the Treasury on the first day of this spending cuts round. He was probably like one of those over excited shoppers on the first day of the January sales, but in reverse. Instead of grabbing the bargains, as he burst through the doors, he leapt in, gleefully spreading local government grant funding around like confetti.

Dept of Communities and Local Government – Budget £25.92bn – Minister Eric Pickles

Battlegrounds Local authority budgets will bear the brunt of savings. The Local Government Association warns that children’s centres, museums, roads and bus fares will suffer cuts in the range of 10 per cent to the money local authorities get from Whitehall. Louise Casey, head of the Troubled Families Unit, is said to be behind moves to “take over” billions of pounds of spending from other departments.

Outcome – No deal yet. – Verdict Defeat

Nick Boles is from Venus, everybody else is from Mars

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Below is a perfect example of how those in charge of our planning system, are speaking a totally different language from those raising major concerns about the impact recent changes to the system are having.

It’s not even a case of one speaking English and the other French, at least there’s half a chance of getting some understanding when you’re both from the same planet. Unfortunately, when it comes to the planning system, government ministers are from Mars and the objectors are from Venus. Indeed, some objectors might wish to suggest that ministers are (talking) from Uranus.

Anna Soubry, a Conservative health minister, wrote to Eric Pickles saying:

“planning inspectors are forcing local councils to accept more housing and build on Green Belt.”

“Notwithstanding the localism agenda, the National Planning Policy Framework, the abolition of the RSS [regional spatial strategies] and the repeated assurances of your good self and the Prime Minister”…………….. “local authorities like Rushcliffe and my own are unable to determine their own housing needs, set their own targets and protect their Green Belt land from development, ” she wrote to Mr Pickles.

Nick Boles, Eric Pickles junior minister for Planning replied:

Local councils are in control of their Green Belt boundaries, through local plans, which this Government put at the heart of the planning system to allow communities to deliver the right development for their local area.”

The key phrases here are “…unable to determine their own housing need…”, from Anna Soubry, compared to, “…to deliver the right development..”, from Nick Boles.

The clear lack of comprehension, let alone understanding, is that one wishes to reduce or even prevent development, whilst the other is saying, you can control where and what, but not if, or when. PINS understand this, but are currently being made the villains of the piece. All I can say is, don’t shoot the messenger.

Recycling week – stop binning the bucks

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Recycle Week celebrates its 10th Anniversary this year. From Monday 17 June, the annual event encourages people, local authorities and businesses to recycle.

In the past decade alone the UK has recycled 50 billion plastic drink bottles, enough to reach the moon and back over 10 times. Across the UK, local authority recycling schemes have collected materials like card, paper, plastic and glass worth £2.4 billion.

This includes:

Paper and card worth around £1 billion
Plastic worth around £339 million
Mixed cans worth around £174 million
Mixed glass worth around £153 million
Textiles worth around £124 million

Defra Resource Management Minister Lord de Mauley said:

Dealing with waste and recycling properly not only makes environmental sense but also good business sense. We’ve made great strides in household recycling and over the next decade we can look forward to doing much more to reduce waste in the first place.

Reusing and recycling products and materials will also open up new avenues for UK businesses in growing domestic and export markets.

More ideas and information for consumers is available from http://www.recyclenow.com including a postcode locator to enable people to check what they can recycle in their area.

Join in the twitter conversation #recycleweek2013.

Internet porn is damaging our kids

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Internet porn is damaging our kids and restrictions are needed, but what about their exposure to music? Viewing pornographic images online when you are only ten or eleven, or even younger in some cases, can twist the attitude of a young person to sex for the rest of their lives.

Boys exposed to this stuff, can turn into the men who carry out the assaults and rapes we read about everyday. Within the home, they can often be the ones guilty of domestic abuse, or even worse, if there are children in the family. Girls become the unwitting victims of this exposure, firstly by being pressed into viewing it by the boys they are so eager to please and then as either the girlfriend, or wife of a man with all the wrong attitudes when it comes to women and sex.

Sadly, it’s already be too late for many of the young people who have grown-up with such easy access to pornography and we can only hope that they have not suffered long term damage, or that they are helped in the future if problems arise. The controls on access to Internet pornography, that are being talked about, will almost certainly take time to be implemented and will have only limited effect, but at least it’s a start.

What worries me, is that whilst this attempt to deal with the tide of visually unacceptable material is being made, we are ignoring what our young people can listen to. In its own way, this aural pornography is nearly as bad when it comes to the long term effects it can have on the attitudes of young people to sex. How many of today’s modern pop songs have more than one version available on the Internet? One version will be suitable for broadcasting by the radio stations that promote the music and bring in the money. However, the other version, always listed with the tell-tale ‘explicit’ marking, is just as available to underage young people via the Internet.

One of the most striking things about any young person these days, is the photographic like memory they have for the lyrics of the songs they like. Given that many of these songs are almost unintelligible when listened to and unlikely to have readily available written lyrics, it’s likely that the kids have listened to them over and over again. it’s also more than likely that the version listened to will be the one flagged ‘explicit’. It therefore follows that these kids are potentially being exposed to exactly the same negative and destructive attitudes to sex and women, as those portrayed in pornographic images.

If you don’t believe me, try listening carefully to a song like Starships by Nicki Minaj. Even worse than the use of every sexual swear word imaginable and in the context of some form of sexually activity, is that many of them are sung, with great enthusiasm, by young woman. So, having seen woman subjected to all forms of sexual activity, in the pornography imagery that is so readily available on the Internet, our young people are also able to listen to young women endorsing this treatment via their favourite music.

Is it too late to address such issues, given the financial implications and the powerful lobby the music industry can present and the fact that much of the worst stuff originates in the USA? Put another way, if there were significant tax revenues to be gained from pornography, in the same way as there are from gambling, drinking and even payday loan companies, would the government be as keen to clamp down on Internet pornography as they now seem to be?

Wind farms – power to the people?

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Although my last post highlighted the supposed new powers being given to the public when it comes to wind farms, I don’t believe it.

Just like Localism, the public are being mislead and sold a pup. Unless the government intends throwing all previous case precedent out of the window and telling a PINS that appeals by wind farm applicants are now out of bounds, people are going to be very disappointed by the outcomes from this latest bit of planning system spin.

Locals to get wind farm veto

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Daily Telegraph 6th June 2013

By Robert Winnett, Political Editor

LOCAL communities will be given the power to block wind farms under planning rules to be unveiled today.
Senior Conservatives claim the move will effectively end the spread of the controversial turbines which have been blamed for blighting picturesque landscapes.
Ministers will announce that residents will have to be consulted over new wind farms with applications barred if there is significant opposition.
Councils are currently prevented from even considering applications for larger turbines.
However, under the plans, energy firms will be able to offer “incentives” – such as discounts on electricity bills – to persuade communities to agree to new wind farms.
When planning applications are submitted, officials will have to take into account topography and the impact on “views” and historic sites. Inspectors will also have to assess the “cumulative impact of wind turbines” amid fears that some areas are being overwhelmed by applications.
Currently, councils can be forced to accept new wind farms as national planning guidance states that renewable energy schemes should usually be permitted.
A senior Conservative source said: “The Prime Minister strongly feels that this is a real local issue and if people don’t want to have wind farms they don’t have to have them. This is a bombproof set of safeguards to protect the wishes of local people.”
Eric Pickles, the local government secretary, will today announce that legal planning guidance is to be altered and he will write to all councils and the Planning Inspectorate demanding that they use the new principles in current decisions.
Last night, Mr Pickles said: “We want to give local communities a greater say on planning, to give greater weight to the protection of landscape, heritage and local amenity.”
Despite senior Conservatives heralding the end of new onshore wind farms, the Liberal Democrats – including the Energy Secretary – believe that the new system of incentives could actually lead to an increase in turbines.
The Energy Department says that a community agreeing to a modest wind farm could see their power bills fall by an average of £400 per household.
Ed Davey, the Energy Secretary, said: “We remain committed to the deployment of appropriately sited onshore wind, as a key part of a diverse, low-carbon and secure energy mix and committed to an evidence-based approach to supporting low carbon power.
“This is an important sector that is driving economic growth, supporting thousands of new jobs and providing a significant share of our electricity and I’m determined that local communities should share in these benefits.”

Crisis leads to council tax referendum call

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Copied from Local Government Chronicle online
30 May, 2013 | By Mark Smulian

Herefordshire Council could become the first to hold a council tax increase referendum after an emergency meeting over a budget crisis.

This followed a review by incoming chief executive Alastair Neill, which found the budget set only in February contained errors and weaknesses.

It must now save an extra £8.4m this year and make 290 job cuts, against some 120 originally intended.

The council has saved some £21.1m over the last two years, and must save a further £32.2m over this year and the next two.

Mr Neill’s review found areas in the February budget “where the plans were not sufficiently resilient and [where] additional savings need to be made to ensure that the council delivers its plan within its budget”.

This included £1m of procurement savings which had “slipped and needed to be tackled” and £3.8m of learning disabilities grant which had in effect been counted twice.

Tony Johnson (Con), the council’s new leader, said: “We are facing a very challenging time over the next few years and as such we need to consider alternative approaches to delivering some of our services.

“Inevitably, non-mandatory services must bear the brunt of the cuts and although this will unfortunately involve job losses, it does not automatically mean the loss of services.”

The extraordinary council meeting agreed that the cabinet would consider holding a referendum to increase the 2014-15 council tax above whatever cap level is imposed.

Some 25% of Herefordshire’s income comes from council tax, which it had frozen from 2011-13. It increased it this year by 1.9%, equivalent to £1.5m.

Cllr Johnson said: “We must consider the possibility of raising council tax responsibly and proportionately across the county, as we begin to consider next year’s budget.”

Before doing so, he wanted to gauge whether residents “would be prepared to vote in favour of raising taxes to protect the county’s vital services”.

The coalition dropped Labour’s council tax cap, but substituted a system where tax could be raised above a nationally defined level only following a local referendum.

No council has yet held such a referendum, fearing both the cost and the likely outcome. In Herefordshire’s case a referendum would cost £100,000 to conduct.

In a joint statement with Unison, Herefordshire said it had agreed to reduce from three to two the number of days of unpaid leave to be taken during the Christmas period and to increase redundancy terms from the statutory minimum to 1.5 times that level.

Unison would prefer to keep in-house provision but will engage “fully in consideration of alternative business models that may be required in areas of service, where the council has to reduce or withdraw funding”.

The 13 NOC counties and unitaries: who will govern?

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Copied from Local Government Chronicle online
28 May, 2013 | By Chris Game

Interesting comment regarding the current situation on LCC. Highlighted in bold below.

In May 2010 prime minister David Cameron and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg took just five days to form their national coalition. By contrast, starting in June 2010, the Belgians took 18 months to form theirs. English local government falls between the two.

Three weeks after the local elections, most of us still don’t know, for at least some of the nine counties and four unitaries conveniently lumped together as ‘NOC’ (No Overall Control), the answer to that basic question the elections were supposedly about: who will actually govern?

This column attempts to fill some of the gaps. It’s a kind of ‘runners and riders’ guide to the 13 county and unitary councils in which no single party has a majority of seats: how they got that way, and what will or might happen in the near future.

The county councils
First, the counties. Cambridgeshire was one of the previously staunchly Conservative counties that became hung largely through being UKIPped. This was actually a much patchier experience than some commentators suggested – with 7 of the 27 counties still having no UKIP councillors at all and only 4, all in the south and east, having more than 10.

In Cambridgeshire, the Conservatives’ new leader, Martin Curtis, favoured their carrying on as a minority administration, but the Independents ruled that out, while Labour and the Lib Dems refused to join UKIP in supporting an Independent-led non-Conservative rainbow coalition. Eventually, the Conservatives got half their cake: Curtis will head a minority administration for 12 months, but then UKIP’s preference, for ‘opening up’ council decision-making, kicks in and cabinets will be replaced by all-party committees.

In Cumbria, the elections reversed the standings of the Conservatives and Labour, the latter regaining their customary position as largest party, leaving the slightly strengthened Lib Dems as potential kingmakers. Under a new leader, Jonathan Stephenson, they opted for coalition with Labour, deputy leadership of the council, and four cabinet posts.

East Sussex is much smaller than Cambridgeshire, but the party arithmetic is broadly similar. Here, though, the other parties seemed readier to accept a Conservative minority administration, and, as in Cambridgeshire, although a Conservative-UKIP deal could have produced a majority, none was apparently seriously pursued.

Gloucestershire was hung from 1981 to 2005, with Lib Dems generally the largest group – before, in 2009, the Conservatives suddenly took 42 of the then 63 council seats. With the reduction of 10 seats and accompanying boundary changes, those observers predicting a return to NOC were proved right. The Conservatives, though, will continue as a minority administration, and the Lib Dems as the main opposition, miffed at a suspected Con-Lab deal over Scrutiny Management and other committee chairs.

Lancashire is Labour territory, and the party was hoping to regain majority control in one go. Sensing a lifeline, the Conservatives tried talking with anyone who might be interested in a presumably anti-Labour coalition. But the Independents don’t want an alliance with anyone and the Lib Dems seem undecided, which leaves a Labour minority administration looking the likeliest outcome.

Lincolnshire Conservatives are unused to coalition politics, but they reacted quickly to their heavy loss of seats by negotiating a Con/LD/Independent coalition. Splitting the Lincolnshire Independents in doing so was a bonus: three of them signed up with the coalition, one with a seat in the cabinet, and there are rumours that others could follow.

In equally traditionally Conservative Norfolk, life for the dominant party is more fraught. At a full council meeting, the Conservative leader, Bill Borrett, apparently thought he had an agreement that the Lib Dems would at least abstain in any vote, enabling him to head a minority administration. He hadn’t, and nor could he nail down a more explicit coalition agreement with the Lib Dems involving some key specified posts. For the present, then, the running of the authority is, as the phrase goes, in the hands of officers.

Before the Conservatives took control in 2005, Oxfordshire had been hung for 20 years. Labour’s comeback was limited, and, on a smaller council, the Conservatives came within one seat of retaining their overall majority – a position they’ve restored through a Conservative/Independent Alliance. No cabinet seats are involved, but three Independents will work with a Conservative minority administration in the kind of ‘confidence and supply’ arrangement that many thought was as far as Cameron and Clegg would dare to go back in 2010.

In Warwickshire Labour, though never the majority party, have regularly run the council as a minority and were hoping to regain this position. They didn’t, but they did do a deal with the Conservatives, the outcome being a Conservative minority administration, headed by the council’s first woman leader, Izzy Seccombe, with Labour holding the Scrutiny chairs, and the Lib Dems and Greens out in the cold, complaining of a stitch-up.

The unitaries
Now to the four hung unitaries. In Bristol Labour became again the largest single party and, reversing its position last November, agreed that two of its members should join mayor George Ferguson’s all-party cabinet, which will now comprise 2 Labour members, 2 Lib Dems, 1 Conservative, and 1 Green.

In Cornwall a much-discussed multi-party rainbow coalition has become in practice an Independent/Lib Dem coalition with the more or less positive support of Labour, UKIP and Mebyon Kernow (the party for Cornwall), the Conservatives having rejected as tokenism a scaled-back offer of two cabinet seats.

The Isle of Wight will be run again, for the first time since 1973-77, by what are nowadays known as the Island Independents, but this time as a minority administration.

Having dominated the former county council, Labour will run unitary Northumberland for the first time as a minority administration, with the support of the three independents – one of whom will be back as chairman of audit, the post she held as a Conservative councillor before resigning from the party following alleged victimisation by a senior colleague. And to think, there are some who say the local government world is boring.

Chris Game, Institute of Local Government, University of Birmingham

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Trafford biomass plant gets the green light on appeal

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Copied from Planning Portal

The highlighted paragraph, is of particular relevance to the current PREL application at Sutton Bridge for a biomass power station on Wingland site.

Trafford biomass plant gets the green light on appeal

Peel Energy has won its recovered appeal over its proposed 20 megawatt biomass power station earmarked for a site south of the Manchester Ship Canal at Davyhulme in Trafford, Greater Manchester.

The scheme – the Barton Renewable Energy Plant – was opposed by Trafford Council, many local resents as well as environmental groups.

However, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has allowed the appeal, acting on the recommendations of the inspector who held a public inquiry last November.

The Secretary of State agreed with the inspector that there was “a pressing national need for the development of renewable energy capacity”.

The decision letter said the SoS had taken account of the particular concerns which have arisen over the project but added “he sees no reason to disagree with the inspector’s conclusion that these concerns are not supported by any substantial evidence of any actual harm to health”.

Pickles added: “It is clear that in considering planning applications for waste management facilities, waste planning authorities should concern themselves with implementing the strategy for the development plan and not with the control of processes which are a matter for the pollution control authorities.

“The Secretary of State has attributed some weight to the strength of local feeling against the proposal but he agrees with the Inspector that it remains a fact that an Environmental Permit has been issued and that he must proceed on the assumption that the relevant pollution control regime will be properly applied and enforced”.

The letter went on to conclude: “Like the inspector, the Secretary of State considers that the perception of harm on the part of a large section of the local population does not outweigh the presumption in favour of granting permission for development which accords with the development plan”.

Roger Milne – 23 May 2013

Letter to local newspaper – PREL, Sutton Bridge

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Dear sir,

With regards to the PREL planning application at Sutton Bridge. This application was not for an incinerator. An incinerator has only one purpose, to burn waste material. The Sutton Bridge installation will burn wood that has not been used for any other purpose. Wood is being burnt in order to produce electricity, not to dispose of it.

At the first meeting, I did not suggest that residents should have made clear that they did not want an incinerator, so no previous crystal ball gazing was required. My comments related to objections regarding increased traffic. I suggested that if residents had concerns about the Wingland site generating more traffic, these should have been raised when the site was allocated for employment use, some 10 years ago.

Some committee members suggested that they did not understand every aspect of the background information provided. I don’t feel that this undermined their ability to determine the application. Much of this information dealt with matters that were outside of the immediate planning issues and was therefore not vital to the reaching of a sound decision.

Some parties have suggested that SHDC will gain financially from this application. The district council does not own any land, or have any other financial interest in the Wingland site.

I’m mystified by the accusation that the deferment was a ruse. A discounted electricity supply, for residents, mentioned at public meetings, was referred to in lobbying letters and emails I received. Details were not provided to the committee at the first meeting. I felt it was therefore prudent to ensure that the details of this promise were clearly understood and even more importantly, the promise delivered.

Finally, the Environment Agency will be responsible for issuing the operating licence for this wood burning power station and air quality monitoring. Anybody with concerns regarding emissions from this process, should ensure that these concerns are submitted to the EA.

Councillor Roger Gambba-Jones
Chairman, Planning Committee
South Holland District Council