Month: February 2011

Categories
notes from JK

Royal Alex conversion plans approved

Today I spoke to the Planning Committee about the site of the old Royal Alex Hospital, and how the proposals before them were imperfect but a decent compromise compared to all that had gone on before.

You will be able to view the speeches and deliberations on the webcast site soon (it takes about 24hrs to become available).

Yes neighbours on all sides are affected. There’s less affordable housing than I’d like. There’s no GP surgery. The new build designs are not as good as I’d like. The Victorian villa is being demolished. But overall the main building has been saved, there are decent section 106 contributions, many changes have been made to the plans to accommodate neighbours’ concerns and there will be some good green space on the site.

The plans were approved and I’m relieved. The site will not be decaying for much longer, Taylor Wimpey have said they are keen to start work quickly. The sooner it’s over with the better.

Categories
current affairs

Royal Alex complete demolition plans withdrawn!

It’s a crunch week for me — working on the council budget, a raft of exciting Open Knowledge Foundation work plus the planning applications for the site of the old Royal Alexandra Children’s hospital coming to Planning Committee this Wednesday.

Today I was informed that finally Taylor Wimpey have completely given up on their scheme to totally demolish the existing buildings on the site. For at least four years they have been presenting applications depending on razing the whole site — which the clear majority of the community opposed. In 2010 they submitted a new complete demolition scheme along with, for the very first time, a conversion scheme.

The full back story can be followed in my previous blog posts but most recently both Green MP Caroline Lucas and I had separately written to Taylor Wimpey’s CEO asking for them to drop the divisive and unwelcome complete demolition plans. Today, only a day before the hearing at planning committee, officers have confirmed that the demolition plans have been withdrawn.

So only the conversion scheme remains to be considered. Already a victory for the many residents and their associations who have worked so tirelessly over the years, as well as planning officers, to secure a better outcome for the site. The conversion option isn’t perfect but we’ve come a LONG way from what was on the table four years ago.

Click to read the submission to the Planning Committee I penned on behalf of Green councillors for the two wards the site borders (PDF).

Categories
notes from JK

Cynical, irresponsible, gimmicky – take your pick!

On Friday the Tory administration finally published the budget papers for the 2011/12 financial year. The papers claim the reason for the unacceptable delay in publication was late information on government grants. I don’t buy it and have asked the Chief Executive for an explanation. Since Tuesday we were told the papers were coming out the following day. Everything I hear lends me to believe that these were down to the administration – either playing games or struggling to come to a final decision.

Regardless their budget is breathtaking. It slices HUGE chunks of budgets for children’s services and social care. Almost £5.5m from Children’s & Families services, about £6.1m from Adult Social Care as well as smaller but harmful cuts from planning, licensing and central services including, for example, health & safety support work. Additionally the Tories propose to spend £1.1m capital funds removing cycle lanes from Grand Avenue & The Drove. Yes, that’s right, removing cycle lanes. They also wish to borrow just over £4.5m to refurbish car parks.

This is the year of the biggest cut in our central government grant, the cuts were front-loaded, so you’d think they’d hang onto every penny. But no, in a cynical gimmick to cling to power, the Tories propose a 1% cut in council tax plus a 5% reduction in resident parking permit costs. This is utterly irresponsible – and as there are waiting lists for residents parking permits this will hardly help manage that demand.

If one uses the admittedly imperfect analogy of a household income… Then this is like a family member getting a pay cut, and knowing more cuts are due in the future, voluntarily giving up MORE of their income. But when one of the family loses their job or gets a pay cut you focus on reducing spending, not reducing income! Income is the thing you absolutely need to stay afloat.

For the next two years the Tories are forecasting 2.5% tax increases, so the 1% reduction is very much a short-haul gimmick for election year. Furthermore they are making some very risky assumptions about inflation and waste tonnages, which are critical to their budget balancing. They are counting inflation to be 2% for the next three years, yet it’s currently 3.7% / 4.8% (CPI / RPI) which is quite some distance from their predictions!

On waste they are saying that they can save on the waste contract because waste tonnages are down due to actions by the council including promoting composting. Yet when I challenged the council about declining recycling rates, they claimed reduced tonnages were due to the recession. Which is it? There has been no major fundamental shift in supermarket’s dependence on packaging (though some incremental improvements by some of them) which leads me to believe that economic growth will also bring growth in waste tonnages again.

That’s it for now. I’m meeting officers next week to run through the many detailed questions and thoughts I have on the Tory budget. My colleague Bill Randall and I have asked to meet Labour councillors to discuss any joint amendments we might be able to agree on. We have until 28th February to submit amendments for checking by finance officers. Watch this space for more updates.

Categories
notes from JK

Reform of councillor allowances & webcasts rejected

So, as I posted previously, I have been pursuing two reforms on the council: Firstly, that councillor allowances be fairer and meet government guidance, in other words simply adopting the report of the council’s own independent panel on allowances rather than sticking with the old regime. Secondly, given my successful tribunal over the use of YouTube, that councillors no longer be unfairly restricted from their freedom of political expression in reusing public webcast video.

Unfortunately at last night’s Governance Committee the old guard kept things just the way they are. My detailed request on webcasting arrangements was batted away with effectively a non-answer saying that the Tribunal judged me on a previous version of the webcasting protocol. True, but the Tribunal essentially found that a restriction on councillors using the webcast, which didn’t apply to members of the public, would be an unreasonable restriction on councillors’ freedom of political expression. And that is exactly what the new protocol does, it requires councillors to seek written permission to use a clip, when a member of the public under copyright fair dealing rules could do so anyway. I will keep trying on that.

With the Green attempt to implement the Independent Remuneration Panel’s report of March 2010 I’m afraid there was a heavy dose of condescending and patronising remarks from the old guard. Of course they don’t want to change things, that would remove some of the feudal control they have over their groups by handing out posts (with allowances) to folk they want to toe the line. So the Labour and Conservative councillors voted against my amendment seeking to implement the long overdue changes to our systems of allowances.

It’s worth noting that the Panel’s report to the committee last night, an excellent piece of work in its own right, roundly rebutted all the reasons Tory and Labour councillors had used to reject the proposed reforms at last year’s council meetings. It’s a shame the other groups can’t agree to change on this, especially when we have such strong work from our independent panel to lead the way. I can’t say I was surprised by their vote against change though, those two parties have been taking turns running the city like and old club for years and they want to keep it that way.

One more point: Last night’s meeting also briefly discussed the move to individual voter registration. I do have some concerns about the changes planned with this reform, but overall it is a long overdue move which will help improve security. Keep in mind this was a policy passed by the previous Labour government, the timetable has just been brought forward by a year by the new government. So I was surprised to see Labour group leader Cllr Gill Mitchell trying to make something of this with a press release attacking the reform “Labour fears consequences of new electoral system“!

In the piece Cllr Mitchell attacks the lack of pilots – when there are pilots scheduled, the lack of additional funding – when there is £104 million of additional funding for this work, and suggests that this could undermine the integrity of our democracy – when ‘ghost’ registrations (the polite way of saying fraudulent entries on the register) have been a major problem especially with postal voting. So not exactly the most apposite comments I’ve seen. It does sum up how Labour will attack anything if they think it will get them something, even if it was their idea in the first place! I’m more than happy to accept that all parties have good ideas sometimes. I’m pleased the government have abolished ID cards, plan to scrap the councillor Standards regime and will introduce individual voter registration. There, I said it!