Councillor Ian Carrington

Today was the Annual Council, the formal changing from one Civic Year to the next.

One of the things we do at the Annual Council (effectively the Annual General Meeting) is elect a new Chairman, who is usually the person who has spent the preceding year as Vice Chairman getting a close-up view of the job.

The Chairman’s role is partly what it says on the tin – he or she chairs full Council meetings. But the Chairman is also the ambassador for North Kesteven, representing the District at many civic functions.

And each year the Chairman selects two charities to support. Outgoing Chairman Ian Cartwright supported St Barnabas Hospice and ABF The Soldiers Charity, and through his tireless work during his civic year they benefited by several thousand pounds.

It’s a little known aspect of what councils and councillors do. The impression (not least given by goings on at Westminster) is one of trouble and strife, politics and more politics. In reality here in North Kesteven there is more consensus than discord. And a lot of unsung good works.

Our new Chairman is Ray Cucksey, whose ward in Branston neighbours my own. Listening to the proceedings I was trying to work out which charities I’d support if I was Chairman, and came down to the Air Ambulance and L.I.V.E.S, the medical first responder charity.

And lo and behold, when Ray announced his charities for the coming year what did he choose? The Air Ambulance and L.I.V.E.S!

It’s good to know great charity work continues however tough the times.

Two big events today.

The first was a meeting of the whole District Council sitting as the Planning Committee.

This only happens for the very biggest of big deals. In this case it was the fourth appearance of the Sleaford regeneration package. This consists of a new link road (today’s application), a new supermarket in the town centre and the regeneration of The Maltings, a jaw-droppingly huge group of Listed Buildings.

The total investment the package will bring in over £200 million pounds to a market town with only 16,000 residents. And this staggering investment comes without spending a penny of public money.

Despite this there is a vocal minority seeking to scupper the deal at every turn. Not just looking the gift horse in the mouth, but tearing its teeth out. I think they’re wrong, and unlike them I have faith in Sleaford business peoples’ talent to capitalise on this opportunity and thrive on the influx of new customers (and hundreds of new parking spaces) the plan will deliver.

I was proud to speak in favour of the development and to second it for approval. All our Lincolnshire market towns face incredible pressures these days. Too many of them are losing critical mass, with high streets of empty shops and shuttered windows. Dormitory towns without hearts.

This was a vote for a brighter future for one of them, not just for today’s Sleafordians but for their children and grandchildren.

The second big event was a retirement celebration for Sandra Rudolf the former Clerk to Canwick and Heighington parish councils. She has given 30 years of service to villagers, and has been the wisest of advisors to generations of councillors.

This is her cake!

Retirement Cake

Nice result in planning.

11/1481/FUL is the application number for a new off-street parking area in Back Lane, Heighington which has just been approved.

Mention parking problems and most people think of our towns and cities on a busy Saturday. But villages have parking issues too. Narrow lanes built to take horses and carts leave precious little room for parking, and 19^th Century cottages weren’t built with driveways.

This scheme is to provide much needed off-street spaces for local residents. I discussed it with officers before the application was made and was able to get some improvements incorporated into the scheme, including landscaping and making sure there was no negative impact on nearby old peoples’ bungalows.

I’m delighted the planning application has now been approved. This will make life a lot easier for some of my residents and I’m glad to have been able to play a part in getting the scheme through.

Scrutiny panel.

Sounds like a hatch for observing caged animals. Or perhaps one of those two-way mirrors the baddies never seem to suspect in the NCIS interview room.

Both of these definitions may be true – or at least they should be.

However in local government scrutiny panels monitor and inspect the various functions of the Council. Partly so that elected members can be satisfied that officers and the Executive are getting things right. Partly to see if a ‘critical friend’ can make helpful suggestions. But also simply to make sure members understand the often complex and difficult things today’s Councils have to do.

I’ve been asked to chair a group looking into the way the planning and planning enforcement functions are working together. These are both important and often emotive areas, and where they collide there’s usually both passion and money at stake.

Our meetings and our findings will be public, but of course it would be wrong to give any kind of running commentary about the process in this blog.

But I think it’s fair to say that both the thoroughness and the potential power are impressive – and a little scary. A bit like parliamentary committees, we can summon the council’s officers, inspect the records, examine cases.

The important thing is that the group members – drawn from across the political spectrum – have started out with the right intention.

To drill down into the workings of two Council operations that really impact on residents. And to do so for the benefit of those residents.

It’s going to be quite a learning curve. I’ll update on the experience as and when it’s proper to do so.

One of my councillor roles is Vice Chairman of one of the scrutiny panels.

Scrutiny can be a complicated process, but in plain English it simply means elected members keeping an eagle eye on all the varied operations of the council.

My panel (Development and Information) oversees planning, economic development and housing strategy, but also the different strands of culture and heritage.

This includes many of the facilities which are really important in residents’ lives – sports centres, swimming pools, theatres and museums.  

Our panel’s most recent meeting was held on-site at the NK Leisure Centre in North Hykeham. We had an in-depth briefing on the operation of the centre and reviewed a major capital project to renew the sports hall floor.

Going through the rest of NK’s leisure services reminded me just how much we try to provide. Sports centres in Sleaford and North Hykeham, swimming pools (with the Sleaford pool slated for a multi-million pound revamp), the Terry O’Tool Theatre and the Natural World Centre at Whisby to name just a few.

Not to mention the National Centre for Craft and Design, a superb national resource right here in our own back yard.

National Centre for Craft and Design, Sleaford

In tough times (see the budget article below) councils have to watch every single penny. But we’ve sought to protect these sports and arts facilities and the outreach community programmes which go with them.

The reason is simple. In the good times everyone needs to be able to exercise body and mind. In hard times that need doesn’t go away, in fact for many it becomes more important in their lives.

North Kesteven was recently voted one of the best places to live in the whole country. Providing excellent sports and arts facilities for our residents is part of the reason why.

I’ve been involved in a series of meetings to set Council Tax for the year starting on April 1st.

These culminated in two full Council meetings, and I’m very pleased that for the second year running North Kesteven Conservative councillors successfully led the fight to freeze the District Council Tax demand.

This maintains the NKDC charge for a band D property at £135.09 for the year, reduced to £90.06 and £105.07 for the smaller band A and B homes most people occupy.

Although the District Council collects all of the Council Tax, it keeps less than ten pence in every pound. 74 pence in every pound goes to to the County Council, 12 pence to the police authority and an average of 4.5 pence in every pound to parish councils.

The County also froze their tax demand, but I am very disappointed that Lincolnshire Police raised their demand by nearly 4% when police services are being cut. This seems a pretty cynical money grab, coming after they knew almost everyone else had agreed a freeze!

It hasn’t been easy for North Kesteven to keep its tax rate frozen. Over £2m savings have been made in the last 2 years. For big, inefficient councils there’s always fat to cut. But North Kesteven was already pretty lean and efficient, and that made finding savings all the harder.

The answer has been new ways of working. In particular doing things together with other councils so back-room costs can be reduced whilst minimising impacts on services to residents.

It hasn’t been easy, and hard choices have been made. But when residents continue to face hardship the Council has to support them by bearing down on costs.

North Kesteven continues to score very highly in customer satisfaction surveys, so it seems that so far we’re getting the balance right.

Wishing you a very happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year!

I’ve just ended a marathon Planning Committee meeting.

It was long, everyone seemed to want to speak and with more than a dozen members asking questions and putting their points an outsider might have found it confusing.

In most countries planning is handled by professional officers alone – our English system where elected members decide some cases is unusual.

You might think that as a qualified planning officer myself I’d rather go with the continental pattern and keep ‘amateurs’ out of things. But no.

I won’t deny that there are times when it’s tempting – usually when elected members at the Council where I work disagree with one of my recommendations. But if you dish it out (and wearing my Councillor hat I’ve been known to go against the planning officers’ recommendations) you have to be prepared to take it!

In fact I defend the democratic element in planning to the hilt. Long though tonight’s meeting was, what took the time was ward members speaking for their local communities. Asking questions on behalf of their communities. And providing the Committee with the kind of insight and detail you can only have if you actually live somewhere yourself.

It may not always look slick to an outside observer, and it can certainly be time consuming. But the crucial thing is that the community gets to have its say directly to the Committee, and a Committee of elected members means that planning decisions are taken by people with a real stake in the places they’re making decisions about.

And in case you think it’s too amateur night, Councillors are guided by some very professional (and very patient) senior officers.

Lord alone knows what the Brussels bureaucrats would make of it. Probably not a lot. But strange though it may look to outsiders, the democratic element is one of the key things that ensure planning is seen to be fair, transparent and above all not run by unaccountable civil servants answerable to no one. Like some Continental institutions I could mention.

Planning of the people, by the people, for the people.

There’s a slogan in there somewhere…

We’ve got some great businesses here in Lincolnshire. But to grow and  to create jobs they need finance, and we all know that’s not easy to get right now. I’ve heard the same problem from medium sized companies to one person start-ups: the banks won’t release the capital they need to invest.

So the bit in the Chancellor’s autumn statement I liked the most wasn’t about freezing fuel duty. It was the promise to underwrite borrowing by small and medium enterprises to fund investment in growth and jobs.

The Guardian is a Labour paper and no friend of Conservative Chancellors of the Exchequer. But even they described Gordon Brown’s financial legacy to George Osborne as ‘toxic’ – the biggest peace-time debt ever. As the outgoing Labour No. 2 at the Treasury said in a note for his successor, ‘there’s no money left’’, and he wasn’t kidding.

Since then the Euro implosion has made the Government’s job infinitely harder. But to his credit George Osborne isn’t panicking. He’s putting in some measures – like guaranteeing firms’ credit for investment and growth – which can only help get business back on its feet.

I’d like to see more. In particular I hope the Government will cut payroll taxes, at least for young employees, to make it less expensive to hire people.

But they have made a start. It’s going to be a long road to economic recovery, but the skills, enterprise and drive of Lincolnshire firms will get some real help to get them on their way.

Question: what connects The Kaiser, unemployed teenagers and solving the economic crisis?

Answer: work!

I’ll explain.

Back in the 1870s when the Kaiser’s Germany started challenging Victorian Britain for industrial supremacy, there was a great debate about education.

In Germany apprenticeships were linked to the education system, and education stressed vocational subjects like engineering and science. Although Victorian Britain still had plenty of apprenticeships they weren’t linked to schooling, and higher education stressed the Classics for Imperial administrators rather than engineering for entrepreneurs.

Kaiser Wilhelm II

Fast forward to 2011 and although the costumes have changed the same movie seems to be playing.

Apprenticeships are pitifully few in Britain, and still stand apart from schooling. And where the education system once put Classics on a pedestal and looked down on engineering, now it bigs up media studies and sociology and still looks down on engineering. Meanwhile Germany continues with excellent vocational education in school, college and university. And lots of apprenticeships.

Accepted wisdom among the UK educational establishment has it that every youngster must go to university. Yet there is no more logic to thinking a legion of media studies graduates will be any more useful to the economy or to themselves than an army of Cicero experts was to the industrial revolution.

I’m all for education, and for learning for its own sake. But shoe-horning everyone into a university system they may not be suited to does harm on two levels.

First, it betrays the young people it claims to serve, and that’s unforgivable. Youngsters need opportunities tuned to them, not to the ideals of the 1960s Left. Not everyone needs a degree in sociology. Everyone does need a job, and the chance of a decent start in life.

Secondly it betrays the very society which pays for it. Education and training should build and reinforce the economy for the benefit of all. It should be an investment, not a waste.

Nationally there are more than a million young people not in work, education or training (NEETS). Here in North Kesteven we have the lowest level of NEETS in Lincolnshire (3%*) but it’s still too many. In Germany the national total is a fraction of ours.

I applaud the Government’s new initiative to boost apprenticeships and work training. But much, much more needs to be done. Our county and our district have fantastic bedrock of skills and enterprise, and both as a councillor and a planner I work very hard to support local firms. We have to help them to help youngsters, making apprenticeships and training more and more widespread, and retuning the education system to give our kids a better chance of success and fulfilment in the real world.

It won’t be easy. But it’s been a long time since Kaiser Bill, and we’ve a lot of ground to make up.

* Source: Lincolnshire Research Observatory Q4 2011