Category Archives: Government

Immigration becoming yet another elephant in the room

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Unashamedly lifted from the Conservative Home website, as I could not have put it any better myself.

Immigration comment
“The Coalition has declared its intention to get net immigration down from last year’s level of nearly 250,000 to the tens of thousands. But even that will not be good enough. In order to avoid the population reaching that 70 million, we have to get immigration down to 40,000 a year or less.” – Nicholas Soames and Frank Field in The Telegraph
“To put the matter brutally, neither David Cameron nor Theresa May has to live in Southall, Bradford or Tower Hamlets. They do not experience at first-hand the bitterness of traditional English people, who see their communities overtaken, their culture pushed aside, by people who force a path into Britain without the smallest desire, or even willingness, to embrace our ways or share our values.” – Max Hastings in the Daily Mail
“Ministers in the Home Office, from the Home Secretary downwards, should be under absolutely no illusion that failing to achieve the modest target set for them well before the next election will have a consequence: the public outcry they have faced these past few days will be as nothing to the wrath that unfolds.” – Express leader

What chance for the Big Society

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Two issues I’m dealing with in the ward at present, offer a demonstration of the challenges involved in making David Cameron’s Big Society work on a practical level.

The first one is a fairly minor matter in the great scheme of things, but to the person affected it is a very real problem and one that is leading to some distress for the lady concerned. Her problem is with a neighbour who is neglecting his garden to the point that it is spoiling hers. Having spent good money getting her front garden made low maintenance, she now finds it blighted by wind blown weeds from the neglected garden next door.

Despite the best efforts of council officers to persuade the gentleman to do the right thing, he continues to do the bare minimum. This means that he doesn’t really fix the problem, but his neglect isn’t bad enough to justify any sort of legal action.

The second case is more serious, because of the activities of another bad neighbour. In this case, as well as having an impact on their neighbours, these people are allegedly carrying out certain illegal activities. Numerous comings and goings, often for less than 5 minutes at a time, suggest that these people are not coming around for a cup of tea. A large number of different vehicles, often taking up other residents’ parking spaces, also suggests that these are far from your normal neighbours. Some residents also report seeing scrap metal, farm equipment and even red diesel being handled at various times. It seems that our local police are ‘aware’ of these people, but have been unable to catch them in the act.

If we are struggling to deal with people who fail to be good neighbours and who spoil the quality of life of those around them, with our current but reducing resources, will the Big Society offer better or worse solutions?

The unacceptable face of localism?

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The story from Spain about a British couple dying in a flash flood has a nasty sting in its tail when you look at why it happened. Apparently, the local council ignored instructions from central government to improve the drainage in the area, that would of prevented this event. They were also ‘ordered’ not to allow any further public events in the area until the work was carried out.

Spain has a much greater level of local autonomy it would seem, with central government making lots of noise, but local government ignoring them when they choose. Is this what we can expect as localism takes hold in England?

Tear up all planning policies, then blame councils for the lack!

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The government are looking at how to introduce a transition period to give councils time to produce a local plan, but they are resisting any attempt to introduce a reasonable time period for doing so. One excuse given by one of their tame peers, is that councils have had 8 years to produce plans, but the majority still haven’t, so why give them any more time now?

This reasoning, which is actually no reasoning at all, but simply a smoke-screen for wanting to get their own way as soon as possible, ignores the fact that the whole process of plan making is extremely complicated and highly expensive. It also ignores the fact that, until recently, councils could use the default position of using the national policies detailed in planning policy guidance and statements. Unless there was pressing need, such as special local circumstances, why would a council spend large amounts of their taxpayers money producing a local plan?

Successive governments have lulled councils in to what now appears to be a false sense of security, by burying them under multiple layers of planning policy and guidance, for the last 60+ years. Now the current government is throwing all that policy in the bin and then blaming councils for not having any of their own policies. Just to add insult to injury, the government has now produced the sloppily worded NPPF, as a replacement for all that planning policy, with a statement in it designed to ‘punish’ councils that don’t have their own policies; where a plan is silent, indeterminate or out of date, planning permission should be given without delay.

The double whammy of no plan and no time to produce one, is potentially as damaging as the presumption in favour statement that we are all getting so hot and bothered about. I hope as much effort is put into getting a sensible timescale put in place, as has been expended to date, in exposing the NPPF as a flawed document.

Government Tries to Speed up Local Plan Examination to smooth #NPPF Transition

Local involvement in the NPPF

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This afternoons #NPPF DCLG Select Committee – Practitioner agrees to need for transition
by andrew lainton October 17, 2011

In the second session Cllr Gary Porter – one of the practitioners group 4 – was entertaining. Not the sort of cllr you would want to cross at 11.00pm at the end of an exhausting meeting. He sees everything in very black and white terms and gets angry at other views.

He conceded the need for a transition – not just for putting plans in place but for updating plans to include things like parking standards. He also criticised the 20% rule saying the figure should be set locally.

The committee was rather slack jawed at his bizarre suggestion that local authorities should be able to choose from several competing sets of guidance on matters such as how to set housing targets – how could any plan be found sound by an inspector – or not have the decision challenged in the courts – in that set up.

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Eric Pickles won’t be issuing any press release on this!

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Media outrage about public sector manager salary increases is “unfounded” according to private sector research published this week.

Income figures from Hay Group’s salary database shows senior public sector employees have not received disproportionate pay rises over the last decade and continue to earn 33% less than private sector colleagues.

The data also shows front-line public servants are now better off than employees in the private sector although the management consultant’s pay experts have predicted this will be reversed as the government’s austerity drive takes effect.

However, Hay Group’s reward information consultant David Smith, said: “Our data shows that the media furore over public pay is unfounded, with percentage rises at senior management level largely identical to those in the private sector.

“Public sector managers should arm themselves with reliable and robust figures, particularly around the value of the total package, to help support their decisions about pay in the public domain.”

Communities secretary Eric Pickles has been a particularly vocal critic of “exorbitant” pay deals for town hall chief executives. Last year, he told the Daily Telegraph: “There is widespread public concern about soaring salaries in local government, with chief executives moving from council to council like football managers.”

Hay Group data for senior managers in the private and public sectors shows senior pay in both the private and public sectors has risen in line with each other between 2000 and 2011.

While private sector senior salaries rose by 62% to a current average of £176,498, public sector salaries rose by 61% to the current average of £118,673.

LGC’s Salary Tracker research, published in July, showed the average salary of chief executives appointed in the previous 12 months was 18% lower than their predecessors’ salary.

Hay group’s data shows a different trend for front-line and support staff in the public sector who now earn more than their private sector colleagues after average public sector salaries rose by 13% more than private sector wages

In 2000 average public sector salaries were £12,035 compared to the marginally higher £12,652 private sector average.

After more than a decade of Labour government public sector spending policies and following a drop in private sector wages since the recession hit in 2009, that position has switched with the average public sector salary of £18,027 compared to £17,332 in the private sector.

However, Hay Group predicted private sector salaries would soon be outstripping public sector salaries at all levels.

Mr Smith said: “The public sector was not directly affected by the global economic downturn, unlike the private sector. But with government austerity taking hold, many employees are beginning to feel the impact of cost cutting in their wallets.

“With pay restraint taking hold in the public sector and pensions set to become a less valuable benefit, we predict that the salary gap will start to widen at all levels in the next couple of years.

“In these tough times, the challenge for the public sector will be to contain costs yet still be able to attract and retain key talent.”

Regional government mark II

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An interesting item in today’s press about more squandering and waste of EU funds. Most of the blame seems to fall on the regional government offices put in place by the last Labour government, with their inadequate accounting and poor auditing practices.

I’m told that one of the justifications for the introduction of regional government was the need to have a mechanism by which European money could be channelled to specific areas of the country, rather than to central government for redistribution. This is now the same rationale being applied to the introduction, by Eric Pickles ( the man who killed off regional government) of localities directors and localities partners. However, this time, instead of 8 government offices, in a ridiculous piece of government double speak and seemingly in order to avoid using the Labour government’s EU inspired terminology, we are now to have 14 ‘localities’.

Quite apart from the ludicrous situation of having to set up a completely superfluous level of bureaucracy, in order to get back a fraction of the cash we give EU, we now seem destined to see regional government mark II.

How many of those working for these localities directors, as they inevitably build their individual local empires, will be ex-regional government employees? Many of whom will have, by right, recently collected redundancy and severance payments, compliments of the British taxpayer. Having had a nice little break, they can now rejoin the public payroll, compliments of the rash and ill considered decisions of the same man who is now introducing these localities directors – a rose by any other name.

A timely warning to all of us

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Here’s an interesting piece (for those of us interested in planning issues that is) from a planning website where local government planners pose questions to colleagues. It should serve as a timely warning to any council concerned about how to deal with neighbourhood plans. For those who don’t wish to read the whole thing, it’s all about neighbourhood plans being used by some parties as a way of promoting their own vested interests.

Having found no interest in these at all, suddenly here in (location deleted for obvious reasons) we’ve got 3 suggestions coming forward and need to act fast if we are to bid for CLG grant – assuming they could be runners.
What worries us is that they all propose housing developments that run counter to our recently adopted LDF (Core Strategy, Development Policies and Allocations DPDs) and therefore could fail at the first hurdle of not being in general conformity with the strategic policies of the local plan.
Being a large rural area we have a sustainable settlement hierarchy in our core strategy to promote development in the towns and larger villages with a good range of services, etc and we severely restrict new housing development elsewhere, including small villages. We now have a small village of 20 houses with a supportive parish council (covering a wider area) wanting to promote 2 dwellings for the families of well respected local business people, whose planning applications have previously been refused.
So only 2 dwellings – hardly a general conformity issue you might think? but it could be repeated and it undemines our strategy of delivering sustainable development, yet is probably in line with national policy.
What do you think? Anybody else proceeding with a neighbourhood plan for 2 dwellings? The other 2 proposed neighbourhood plans relate to secondary service villages with no housing allocations and tightly defined development limits and developers wanting to promote relatively large sites.
One sites was even rejected for allocation by the LDF Inspector last year. It’s not certain they would get 50% community support, but with a referendum not until the end of the process it’s an unknown and potentially a waste of money.
In one village several members of the parish council have direct interests in the site promoted, so presumably couldn’t vote. Is anybody else struggling over how to proceed with neighbourhood plans that don’t comply with the LDF and have PC members with vested interests?

May says we’ve changed, Maude suggests not

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Theresa May is making a valiant effort to shift the public’s view of the Tory Party, by being brave enough to go on the record, saying that the Party has changed and is no longer, ‘the nasty party’.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/8801264/Not-the-nasty-party-the-Conservatives-have-changed-significantly-says-Theresa-May.html

Unfortunately, Francis Maude seems hellbent on dispelling that view by laying in to the National Trust and by inference it’s many hundreds of thousands of supporters, including many Tories no doubt.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/francis-maude-big-society-its-nothing-to-do-with-us-2364350.html

If you can’t bring yourself to read all of this pompous blurb, I’ve repeated the relevant section below.

‘………. Then, in the next breath, he is vowing to take on the unions, accusing the National Trust of peddling “bollocks” about planning reforms,……’

Time to target MPs on the NPPF

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With the likes of Francis Maude thinking he can say what he likes about those have the temerity to challenge the National Planning Policy Framework CONSULTATION document, perhaps the emphasis should now shift towards individual MPs.
Members of those organisations currently being slated by various CLG ministers and others who should know better, should now start filling their MP’s postbags with letters of protest at the intemperate and now insulting language being used against those who are exercise their democratic right to comment on a government policy document that is, after all, only out for consultation.
That is of course unless the consultation exercise is actually nothing but, to quote Francis Maude, the new foul-mouthed fishwife of Westminster, ‘bollocks’.