Introduction

This is a brief overview of my activities for the past year.  I will outline the main thrusts of County Council endeavours and those of Mid Suffolk District Council.  Clearly this covers a wide range of “business as usual” and new directions so could be a vast amount of boring detail.  I will concentrate on the significant bits.

County and District

As I am sure you will know the County’s main responsibilities are Schools, Child and Adult Care, Highways, Transport, Waste Disposal, Fire & Rescue, Trading Standards and Community Safety.  The District looks after Planning, Waste Collection, Housing and Housing Benefits, Environmental Protection and Community Safety.  Both of course have other minor activities but these produce the bulk of the spend: spot the duplication.

At the County I Chair the Public Protection Scrutiny Committee and at the District I am on the Executive.  I am Chair of Governors at Claydon Primary and a governor at Henley.  The work load is significant but I limit my commitments so that I can give each the attention it deserves.

County Council Budget

The County Council has set a council tax increase of 2.45% for 2009/2010 having received £8.8m extra grant from the Government this meant that the administration had to find to find a further £12.5m of savings.  The savings for this year have come from:

• Adult and Community Services £7.112m
• Children and Young Persons Services £2.570m
• Environment & Transport £1.5m
• Public Protection £0.28m
• Resource Management £0.94m

These savings are mainly through so called efficiency savings but in Adult and Community Services however for those using the Council care homes

Schools

The County is progressing with the School Organisation Review, the Primary Capital Programme and Building Schools for the Future.  The last two are government programmes intended to produce major improvements rebuilding or refurbishing most schools.  The Organisation Review, aimed at improving SATS results by around 5 % and GCSE results by a similar amount is proving very controversial as parents see successful schools reorganised to the detriment of their children.  The more dramatic improvements of up to 30% that intensive work with schools in deprived areas can produce gets little attention.  In addition the loss of focus on business as usual may be the cause of the across the board drop in performance of Suffolk schools compared to the national picture.

Older People

Care homes re-organisation is on hold “until times are more stable, to ensure we get only the very best providers coming forward.”  There will be no more closing of day care centres in council homes but charges have increased dramatically as £470,000 has been “saved” by removing the cap.

Children

A review of child care after the baby P incident has resulted in a substantial number of extra staff.

Roads

Expenditure on roads is very much managed to government targets via the Transport Asset Management Plan but some budget is assigned for use on minor works by locality groups.  However after putting aside £50k for a substantial project in Mid Suffolk, your local councillor gets £10k which won’t finance a zebra crossing let alone anything larger.  I am consulting the parish councils to determine the highest priority issue.

Waste

The incinerator project is proceeding and although we might expect that it would be difficult to obtain the PFI finance in the present economic climate the Government has made funds available to other authorities.  I continue to be concerned that the emissions from such a plant will do us no good, despite the much better filtration standards demanded by the European Commission.  I would prefer to see MBT separating the waste stream with smaller, easily financed plant that could be deployed rapidly using anaerobic digestion for kitchen waste.  Many councils, faced with strong opposition to incinerators appear to be going this way.

The site allocations document for waste treatment facilities covers locations for commercial plant dealing with industrial and commercial waste as the county plant.  It is suggesting two possible locations in Gt Blakenham with others at Sproughton, Stanton and Eye.  The latter were a bit of a shock for the councillors involved and protest groups have been formed.

The District Council’s waste recycling performance has gone from strength to strength and for dry recyclates is best in the country.  The contracts for recycling the sorted materials have proved robust and we are assured that nothing is being stored or quietly landfilled elsewhere.  Of course if the incinerator were in place it might be a different story.

Planning

Mid Suffolk planning service has improved but enforcement, although not as bad as in many areas is still lacking.  It has had a “Vanguard” style review to improve efficiency but we need more action.

Local Government Review

As you know the review is aimed at simplifying the local government structure in Suffolk moving to the unitary structure common to much of the country.  As well as making it clear who is accountable for services, the reorganisation aims to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

In Suffolk there are two proposals, a “One Suffolk” with economies of scale but a very large and remote bureaucracy and “Rural Suffolk”+ “North Haven” smaller and with management styles and dynamic leadership more closely matched to their areas.  The two-unitary option to an extent addresses the feelings of those of us outside Ipswich who don’t want to be ruled by an Ipswich centric administration and those in Ipswich who passionately believe that rural landowners do not provide the drive that the developing Haven area needs.

Housing Stock Option

If local government review is carried through it will be necessary to change the way the council housing stock is managed.  In particular, the residents have no wish to be combined with some other authorities in the area but would prefer the housing stock to be transfered to a stand alone organisation that would maintain the Mid Suffolk service that they find good.  The Council carried out this exercise at the tenants’ request and are now ahead of the game but LGR delay now gives time to reflect on the best decision.

My Contribution

At the County, I chair the Public Protection Scrutiny Committee and at the District I am on the Executive.  I am Chair of Governors at Claydon Primary and a governor at Henley.  The work load is significant but I limit my commitments so that I can give each the attention it deserves.

Public Protection

My scrutiny committee is involved with Fire and Rescue, Trading Standards, Community Safety, and the Wellbeing Agenda.  We look at performance and policies acting as a “critical friend” to the portfolio holder and senior managers. 

We have covered credit and debt, advocating increased support for the CAB and Credit Unions.  Our drugs and alcohol investigations revealed a failure to deploy the full budget.  Trading Standards gave evidence on consumer protection issues particularly alcohol sales to children, the use of their RIPA powers and action against loan sharks.  We looked at the Prostitution Strategy that followed the Ipswich murders largely to advocate continued financing of the very successful work and the report has been accepted by the County, Ipswich and the Police Authority.

Local Activities

My local activities are in conjunction with many people including the other district councillors so achievements are shared. 

Work with the County Early Years team led to the funding of the wonderful new Pre-School building in Bramford and look certain to bring a similar result in Claydon.  In Claydon I have helped the extended schools team that set up the CYCP holiday activities but work on other activities for young people has been frustrated by repeated changes in County focus.

Through my locality budget I have again helped the parishes enhance community facilities, foot-ways and play areas and organisations such as the Scouts and Henley Pre-School.

Roads are more difficult as anti social behaviour, although by perhaps 2% of drivers, appears commonplace.  Speeding and inconsiderate parking are the worst issues but are difficult to control.  I have recently managed to get a speed indicating sign erected experimentally in Gt Blakenham.  It had a remarkable effect on speed reminding drivers of their responsibility and showing pedestrians their true speed.  I will be pressing for wider application of this technology moving devices from location to location to get much more impact than SID at a much lower cost than 24 hour deployment of the police