Daily Archives: 1 Aug 2018

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1 Aug 2018

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Accountability, Local Enterprise Partnership, Martin Shaw (Seaton), Post-Brexit Adjustments, Small and Medium businesses

Our LEP asked businesses about Brexit – probably not happy with answers

From the blog of East Devon Alliance DCC Councillor Martin Shaw (Seaton and Colyton):

“The Heart of the South West Local Economic Partnership (LEP) has belatedly published a report (dated May 2018) on local businesses’ views of Brexit.
This table shows answers to the question, ‘What is your overall assessment at this stage of the likely impact of Brexit on your business?’

POSITIVE (1)
NEGATIVE (9)
Neutral (7)
Mixed (6)
Don’t know (6)

The LEP summarises this table as ‘Businesses’ assessment of the overall impact of Brexit at this stage is quite varied.‘

VARIED? ONE BUSINESS OUT OF 29 THINKS ITS IMPACT WILL BE POSITIVE, COMPARED TO 9 WHO THINK NEGATIVE, AND THAT IS VARIED?

Other findings:

two-thirds of businesses have done no formal planning for Brexit

uncertainty is a big concern

the biggest specific concerns are about are changes to regulatory alignment [i.e. departure from the Single Market] and the speed of customs arrangements [i.e. departure from the Customs Union]

only 1 out of 29 expects it to be positive for their sector; 9 out of 29 expect it to be negative (the rest expect it to be ‘neutral’ or ‘mixed’, or don’t know)

This report (How firms across HotSW are preparing for Brexit, Report to HotSW LEP, Devon County Council and Partners) was prepared in March and April 2018, drawing on interviews conducted in February and March 2018, so it is already seriously out of date.

In the spring, businesses could reasonably have hoped for a deal:

What do businesses think now that May’s government has caved in to Rees-Mogg and ditched plans for a customs union with the EU?

What do they think of the ‘no deal’ scenario?

How are they going to cope if they still haven’t done the formal planning?
It isn’t difficult to guess. And why has this report been so delayed? Why wasn’t it reported earlier to DCC?”

Local Economic Partnership massages local businesses’ anxieties about Brexit: just 1 business out of 29 surveyed thought it would have a ‘positive’ impact, 9 said negative, many were worried – but that is just a ‘quite varied’ assessment according to the LEP!

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1 Aug 2018

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Accountability, Austerity cuts, Health and Social Care (local), Local Government Finance

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[Tory] “Northamptonshire forced to pay the price of a reckless half-decade”

“Northamptonshire county council’s catastrophic financial collapse, and the desperate measures it now proposes to balance the books, reflect management incompetence on a grand scale as well as the punishing effects of eight years of austerity cuts.

Less than six months after it was declared technically insolvent, the Tory-run council now faces a sobering reckoning for a reckless half-decade in which it refused to raise council tax to pay for the soaring costs of social care, preferring to patch up budget holes with accounting ruses and inappropriate use of financial reserves.

Over the next few weeks the council will map out where previously unheard-of levels of cuts will fall. There are no concrete details yet, other than a promise that its future “core offer” to residents will be a bare legal minimum of service, focused only on the most vulnerable residents.

No services will go unscathed, even in priority areas like child protection that have up to now been relatively insulated. There are no easy cuts left to make: the council says hard savings must be dug out of the most essential services. What will remain is what one observer wryly called “a people-not-dying level of service”. …

… Once a low-tax Tory flagship council, touting itself as the future of local government, Northamptonshire is now bust. Its core offer warns residents, with unwitting pathos, that the most they can expect in future is “a reasonable level of customer service, within our means.”

http://flip.it/wGO8K0

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1 Aug 2018

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Accountability, DCC, EDDC, Greater Exeter, Local Enterprise Partnership, Post-Brexit Adjustments

“Local council [and LEPs?] plans for Brexit disruption and unrest revealed”

Owl says Wonder what EDDC, DCC, Greater Exeter and our Local Enterprise Partnership have up their sleeves? Or do they have sleeves at all! Will they enlighten us?

“Councils around the UK have begun preparing for possible repercussions of various forms of Brexit, ranging from potential difficulties with farming and delivering services to concerns about civil unrest.

Planning documents gathered by Sky News via freedom of information requests show a number of councils are finding it difficult to plan because they are not clear about the path the government in pursuing.

The responses, from 30 councils around the UK, follow the publication of details of Kent council’s no-deal planning, which suggests thatparts of the M20 might have to be used as a lorry park to deal with port queues until at least 2023.

Bristol council’s documents flag up a potential “top-line threat” from “social unrest or disillusionment during/after negotiations as neither leave nor remain voters feel their concerns are being met”.

One of the fullest responses came from Pembrokeshire council, which released a Brexit risk register detailing 19 ways it believes leaving the EU could affect the area.

Eighteen are seen as negative, of which seven are deemed potentially high impact, including the “ready availability of vital supplies” such as food and medicines.

The one positive impact was that Brexit may drive people to move away from the UK, which could reduce demand on council services.

A number of councils, including East Sussex, are worried about the provision of social care after Brexit because of the potential fall in the number of EU nationals working in the sector.

According to Sky, East Sussex’s report says: “There has already been a fall in the number of EU nationals taking jobs in the care sector and the county council has great concerns that the end of freedom of movement will put further pressure on the sector that is already stretched and struggling to deliver the level of care required for our ageing elderly population.”

A number of councils have expressed concern about the disappearance of various EU funding streams and whether thethe Treasury would step in to replace them.

The local authority in the Shetlands released a document saying that tariffs on lamb exports under a no-deal Brexit would mean 86% of sheep farms could expect to make losses. The current figure is about 50%.

One common complaint, according to Sky, was frustration at the lack of central government information about which plan might be pursued. Wirral council said: “Given the lack of detail from government about any proposed deal or arrangements, it is difficult to carry out an assessment that is not purely speculative at this time.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/aug/01/local-council-plans-for-brexit-disruption-and-unrest-revealed

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1 Aug 2018

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Accountability, Austerity cuts, Local Government Finance

“Philip Hammond orders Whitehall to plan for more [local government] cuts”

Owl says: This way council tax go up to cover the shortfall and government can avoid the responsibility of raising general taxes even more than the are about to be raised. The end result is that we all pay more for less – unless you are super-rich, of course.

“Philip Hammond has told Whitehall to plan for another round of cuts before next year’s spending review, putting him on a collision course with some cabinet colleagues who want tax rises instead of austerity.

The chancellor wants ministries without protected budgets, including public health, further education, local government and transport, to work with the Treasury in the summer to identify potential areas for savings.

Some departments believe that these budgets could be cut by as much as 5 per cent. The letter calling for work to start on the savings, sent by Liz Truss, the chief secretary to the Treasury, last week, does not contain a specific target.

Spending totals have been set until the spring of 2020. Mr Hammond will allocate individual budgets, traditionally for the following four years, in a comprehensive review after next spring.

He must first fight a battle with colleagues over whether to raise taxes to cushion some or all of the cuts. Some senior cabinet ministers are understood to be squaring up for a fight. Last week’s public sector pay rises must be paid out of existing budgets.

One minister said: “Philip Hammond has got Theresa May to agree to no more borrowing [above the fiscal rules] so that means it looks like cuts to pay for the extra money for the NHS. But the answer is to raise taxes to protect spending.”

The chancellor has already made it plain that extra tax rises are likely to be necessary to pay for the £83 billion extra in coming years that was announced for the NHS in June.

The overall mix of spending cuts and tax rises could be announced in the autumn budget, inconveniently coinciding with the middle of the Brexit negotiations, or delayed until the comprehensive spending review itself. Mr Hammond has secured a commitment from Mrs May that she will keep to fiscal rules, which force the government to reduce the cyclically adjusted deficit to below 2 per cent of GDP by 2020-21 and having debt as a share of GDP falling in the same period. The chancellor has headroom of £15 billion against the 2021 deficit target, meaning that his scope for borrowing is minimal.

Michael Gove, the environment secretary, has suggested to cabinet ministers that more needs to be done to improve growth. Gavin Williamson, the defence secretary, has proposed boosting it with a tax giveaway such as that brought in by President Trump. The debate about spending and taxation has already begun on the Tory back benches. Bim Afolami, MP for Hitchin & Harpenden, said he understood that the Treasury had a hard job but added: “We urgently need to shift the debate away from management of tough budgetary rules towards growth, moving from austerity to prosperity for a majority of people in this country.

“We need to move away from a necessary but ultimately negative message of managing tough budgetary moves, towards a forward-thinking vision for post-Brexit prosperity sooner rather than later. In general terms every single department should be looking for savings, just like every business does.”

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1 Aug 2018

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Asset sweating, Coastal communities, Economy, Rural communities

“Death knell sounds for High St bank: Britons left in lurch as bank closures hit 80 a month”

Meanwhile, word reaches Owl of a near-riot in Sidmouth, where recently the beleaguered Post Office had a queue outside into the street and only two counters open while one customers wanted foreign currency and the other counter had a business customer with several items to deal with.

“Nearly 3,000 branches have shut their doors since 2015, or will do so by the end of this year, depriving communities of essential services.

Added to that is the steep decline in ATMs, which has a devastating impact on the 2.7 million adults who rely almost entirely on cash for their day-to-day lives.

The closures come as the Big Four – Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland – are expected to unveil a combined £13.6billion profit for the first half of 2018.

A study by consumer campaign group Which? showed 2,868 high street branches have closed in the past three years at a rate of almost 80 a month.”

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/997113/bank-closures-atm-customers-misery-barclays-hsbc-lloyds-rbs

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1 Aug 2018

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Cranbrook, DCC, Stuart Hughes, Transport (local)

“Speeding in Cranbrook compounded by town’s unadopted roads”

Owl says: a headache for Sidmouth’s DCC Councillor Stuart Hughes – the transport supremo.

“Town councillors in Cranbrook have voiced their concerns over motorists travelling at speed on the town’s roads.

At a meeting last week, Councillor Matt Osborn said he saw vehicles using Court Royal – which runs from Cranberry Farm pub to Tillhouse Road – as a ‘drag strip’.

The problem of high speeds in Cranbrook has been further compounded by the fact police can only legally enforce a speed limit on an ‘adopted’ road.

No roads in Cranbrook have been adopted yet, meaning any police prosecutions for speeding offences would fail.

At a town council meeting last week, Cllr Ray Bloxham said: “The Road Traffic Act covers un-adopted roads, but the police do not see it that way.

“We have a dilemma and it has cropped up many times.

“Devon County Council (DCC) has set up a forum to tackle issues with speed because we are unhappy with the way speed is monitored.”

But chief inspector Adrian Leisk, head of roads policing, told the Herald that it was untrue that police were not enforcing the law in relation to the speed limit in Cranbrook – although it was a question of whether the law permitted them to do so.

He added: “To legally enforce a speed limit on a road, a valid and legal Traffic Regulation Order (TRO) needs to be produced and published.

“This will be done by the highway authority, which in this case will be Devon County Council, after the roads are formally handed over, or adopted.

“Any prosecutions for speeding offences will fail if the TRO is not valid or present. This will obviously be applicable after the road is adopted by the highway authority.”

Mr Leisk said the process of adoption ensured that the road was compliant with regulations, and all of the necessary design and technical specifications are met.

He added: “Prior to formal adoption, the responsibility for site safety rests with the developer, who still own the roads and are responsible for their upkeep.

“This should be risk assessed and addressed as all other safety considerations on a building site.

“This can include temporary measures to reduce residual speed on the site.

“Essentially, this road is not currently ‘in the hands of the police.’”

http://www.midweekherald.co.uk/news/speeding-in-cranbrook-compounded-by-town-s-unadopted-roads-1-5631114