John Field's News & Views

My Annual County Councillor’s Report to Gipping Valley 2011-12

We have had another difficult year as coalition government spending cuts reduce the County budget a further £15.6m. A grant of £7.3m to keep council tax rises at 0% helps but inflation at £5.3m, service demand at £6.9m and other cost increases of £5.9m leave a £26m budget hole.

In response directorates have absorbed their inflation increases, cut senior management costs, and are being re-designed to raise efficiency, a process we Liberal Democrats have advocated for years.

Many services are being “externalised” under the new leader, Mark Bee and Chief Executive, Deborah Cadman, the aim is to maintain services at “the front line” cutting “the back office”. However there are potential problems with lack of democratic accountability in externalised services.

The following have been externalised or set on that course:

· Youth Clubs
· The Library service
· Highways to a private contractor set to start in April 2013
· In-house Bus and Coach Fleet to Norfolk’s Norse
· Archaeology and Records with MEAL to a New Heritage Organisation
· Supporting Families Delivery Agency
· Adult Employment Advice, Guidance, Learning and Skill Service.
· Eastern Facilities Management set up as an external company.
· The County’s residential care homes

Concessionary Bus Pass time limits have been a problem since the County take over. Cllr Caroline Page and I submitted a motion to Full Council calling for a change.

We wanted to remove all time limits for bus pass holders with disability easing their problems getting to training or jobs, and to allow those over 60 to travel from 9am. Full Council recommended that the Cabinet look once again at their decision and after one year Cabinet will think again on 10^th July.

The incinerator site on Bramford Road has been cleared and the construction is well under way. At the SITA liaison meetings that I chair we have explored many aspects of the project and are watching construction closely. So far the company has been open and honest about our issues and is responsive to local concerns.

The waste partnership is currently considering if it can collect kitchen waste separately on a weekly basis and treat it by anaerobic digestion or in-vessel composting. The hope is that funding from Eric Pickles for weekly rubbish collection can be used for this.

Bramford Household Waste Recycling Centre was finally closed after attempts to get it run by Bolton’s and the local communities. The basic economics defeated the parishes involved. The County would not pay the disposal costs of residual waste and green waste but they do pay if it goes in your bin or to other sites. Such payment would probably have kept the sites open.

Barham and Bramford Parishes are taking over their Picnic Sites after last year’s County decision to offer its parks and picnic sites to any group that could make a good proposal to run them for the benefit of the public. The alternative was closure. These sites are vital to promote exercise and relaxation, improving health and wellbeing and reduce the demands on the health service.

Bramford Parish is taking over its water meadows and picnic site. Barham Parish is taking ownership of its picnic site with the intention of leasing it to Claydon Football Club for conversion to several pitches. I have been pleased to help Barham with the process.

The behaviour of a small percentage of drivers continues to be a problem and issues like the recent spate of accidents on the B1113 need investigation and action. However this year Highways have been through major re-organisation which has limited activity.

The vehicle activated signs I managed to obtain are still having a positive effect. I am arranging for second mounting posts to be put in place to allow signs to be moved temporally to the other end of villages where local people want that. My “Quality of Life” road improvement budget is very limited but there may be enough for a further sign this year.

As most children in Gipping Valley go to two-tier schools the impact of the County’s move away from the three-tier system has been limited. However the County has been focused on that change at the expense of action to improve attainment at key stage two and we still lag national performance we are now 141st of 155 authorities. Each time we improve, they improve as well, . This is vitally important for Suffolk children and the County must do better.

At secondary level there has been a rapid move towards academy status although not at Claydon High. This increases local accountability and shifts overall control from the county to central government via providers of differing types. We hope the new organisations will be effective.

Scrutiny on 1st May: Suffolk Circle and Demand Responsive Transport

On the 1st May we shall be looking at the Suffolk Circle (a membership scheme for the elderly to provide help through a token system), and Demand Responsive Transport. We will be assessing how successful each service is, and make recommendations about how the Council should proceed.

Our interest in demand responsive transport revolves around the great emphasis that is being placed on this as a solution to the problem of providing adequate public transport in rural areas.

In order to get a good picture of how these service are actually functioning we have decided to launch a brief consultation. We want to know what you think works and what needs to be improved. You can respond by heading to the link below and filling in the short survey, by post, or e-mail. The deadline is the 20^th of April. http://www.surveymonkey.com/demandresponsive

Management Saleries at the Council

The last Full Council on 29th March had a small agenda, but included the Pay Policy statement, which the localism act requires. This highlights the number of people in managerial positions, what they are paid, and the ratio between the highest and lowest paid at the County. You may find these facts interesting:

· Salary structure for Directors is set locally through the staff appointments committee and ranges from £98,393 to £126,733.
· Salary for Assistant Directors (higher) is £85,795 – £96,824
· Salary for Assistant Directors are £68,096 – £83,829
· Salary for senior manager is £55,287 – £64,399.
· Currently the Chief Executive of S.C.C. earns eight times more than the Councils median earner, and thirteen times more than the lowest paid.

Are these figures reasonable?

SnOasis

We are told that Godfrey Spanner is bankrupt but that SnOasis will still be built some day. That’s a bit difficult to believe and many local people will hope this is the end but it is a pity to lose economic development. I am afraid that my view has always been that the business case was based in hope rather than sound analysis of the facts so I am not surprised.

I believe that the funding for the station will not now be available so we won’t get the improved access to Ipswich and London but neither will local residents suffer the increased traffic they feared.

We now need to know if the district council is an unsecured creditor. I wonder just how difficult it will be to get a clear answer? I hope we will find that developers pay for planning activities up front.

Looking to the future we probably need an alternative for the site that will get local support. That must mean something that does not generate a lot of traffic, we have quite enough with the housing and incinerator. Perhaps a more natural area for recreation or just leave it as it is!

Suffolk Broadband Residents Survey

The campaign Better Broadband for Suffolk continues with the launch of a survey for residents, aiming to gather support, information about the current level of internet provision and the desired speed. If you wish to complete the survey, and you have access to the internet, head to http://www.suffolk.gov.uk/broadband. For those without internet access, surveys are being distributed to parishes and libraries. In addition to the residential survey, the business survey is still up and running at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SuffolkBusinessBroadbandSurveyI would encourage you to respond to the survey to ensure that areas that have poor broadband connections are identified and we can all benefit from faster internet speeds in the future.

Bad news about Bramford Recycling Centre

Reuben Bolton of Bolton Brothers Ltd who run the Recycling Centre in Bramford will close the site on 11 March 2012.

They are looking at expanding other operations they manage so that they can accept items from the public. This allows staff to cover all activities on the site and reduces costs. It has been successful in Beccles.

The site has been used a lot less after the county closed it for several weeks before the Boltons operation started. There have been fewer than 25 visitors a day for most of January when you might have noticed that it was snowy and freezing.

The income from charges and material sales has not been covering costs, over the months of the trial period. In December 2011 Boltons introduced a charge for green waste and wood waste in an attempt to eliminate the loss but without sucess.

The type of waste has also changed. There is less recyclable waste of value, such as metals, textiles and cardboard. This is again not helping.

Your local councillors will work together to try to find a solution but it will at best be very difficult

Bramford Household Waste Site Latest

The Bramford site has closed but three companies have approached the County Council with plans to re-open it. Two, Glazewing from Norfolk and Bloton Brothers from Gt Blakenham have extensive experience in the waste recycling business and the third is experienced in re-cycling of clothing and eager to get involved in the wider scene.

All gave presentations tonight to local parish, district and county councillors at a meeting hosted and led by John Hooker of Bramford Parish Council. The proposals differed in some respects and Bramford will chose next monday night which to pursue on behalf of the community that was served by the County’s HWRC.

A new service with free disposal of recyclable materials and green waste and disposal of non-recyclable materials for a pay as you throw charge of £5+vat per car appears a real possibility and could be in operation by mid September.

This will meet the needs of those who want to recycle things that can’t go in the green bin, those with garden waste who don’t want to pay for Mid Suffolk’s brown bin and those who are not prepared to sort their waste.

This looks like real progress!

Incinerator Granted Planning Permission

Yesterday Suffolk County Council Development Control Committee granted planning permission to SITA for an Incinerator (they call it an energy from waste plant). I still believe that there are better technologies such as Anaerobic Digestion for food waste that would yield better results, be less environmentally damaging and not require commitment to a 25 year PFI contract. However the conservative administration committed themselves to this technology in 2005 and no arguments have persuaded them to waver.

Unfortunately they would not even consider road improvements to the Lodge Lane/ Bramford Road junction to reduce traffic congestion. Neither would they consider payments to the local community via the parish councils to allow improvements to local facilities as a small benifit to offset the harm they will suffer.

My statement to the committee was Dev Control Proposed Energy from Waste plant at Gt Blakenham

At least we will have access to the SITA Trust who like BIFF Award and the Viridor Trust feed some landfill tax back to the community for local projects.

Latest Incinerator Visit

I Visited the Violia incinerator at Portsmouth on June 3rd with councillors from the county planning committee (Development Control), council officers and parish councillors from Bramford & Little Blakenham. It is a very large building some 40 metres high although smaller than the county plans for Gt Blakenham. Just what would it look like in the Gipping Valley? A house is 7 metres to the ridge, In Portsmouth the incinerator is in a large industrial area.

It was an operational plant built several years ago but modern, not a converted old incinerator like the one SITA took us to in Kirklees. The building was tidy and quite clean. There was no noise or smell outside the building and not a lot inside but they have had problems with some noisy equipment that were solved after commissioning. There was no sign of traffic problems and no queue to tip waste.

We did not get to the fan cooled condensers that could be a noise problem at Gt Blakenham or at the turbine so the county council’s noise expert could not take readings

One problem revealed was that on one occasion the plant suffered an inversion layer at low height that grounded the plume from the chimneys within 400 meters. In Gt Blakenham that would be on housing and the valley area is known for inversion layers. They were, we are told the issue that forced the high chimney on the cement works. Long term residents of the area have raised questions on this issue repeatedly and have been told that they should not be worried. What is the true position?

Pollution measurements were being taken continuously as regulations require and were well below regulatory limits. Unfortunately the critical pollutants like heavy metals dioxins and furenesare difficult to measure at low concentrations and are only measured every 3 months. Levels are considered to be OK as long as the combustion temperature is kept above 850 deg Celsius for a set time. That temperature is monitored continuously.

Overall this plant burnt 205 k tonnes of waste, produced 65 k tonnes of Co2, 44 k tonnes of bottom ash for road building, 5 k tonnes of hazardous pollution control residue (fly ash) and 2 k tonnes of recovered metals. The Co2 is less damaging to the environment than methane from landfill but anaerobic digestion would not emit either.

Overall nothing alarming, better than landfill but still not a good process.

Petitions

Three petitions that had met the 3500 signature threshold were presented to the County Council on Thursday. The petitioners made very cogent logical cases against closure of country parks,closure of household waste recycling centres and the stopping of the eXplore card for young people.

For six minutes on each petition Councillors made brief debating points ( I covered country parks as two picnic sites due to be divested are in my area) and then each portfolio holder responded saying essentially that ther will be no action in response to the petition.

This was not much of a reward for all the effort. Where was the commitment to localism? It appears that no further notice will be taken but input from so many people deserves at least a thorough review of. the subject by scrutiny. I will work on that.

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