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Category Archives: Accountability
What a fix!
The Tory Reform Group is holding a debate at the Tory Party Conference entitled:
“Fixing the Social Contract”
described as
”Conference panel exploring the changing nature of the social contract and how we can build an economy and society that ensures inter-generational equality.”
Owl has three comments:
1. Many think the social contract has already been “fixed” by Tories – and not in a good way!
2. If Tory party policies HAD been working for us all these last few years, the social contract wouldn’t need fixing at all!
3. Do you REALLY think this would be a topic if this wasn’t a minority government!
“Government of the many by the few” in action!
The scandal of “pseudo-public space” – coming soon to a development near you?
”City administrations in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow and seven others decline to outline the spread of privately owned public areas, or their secret prohibitions – which may include protesting or taking photos.
Many of Britain’s largest cities are refusing to reveal information regarding the private ownership of seemingly public spaces, the Guardian has discovered, fuelling concerns about a growing democratic deficit within local city government.
A Guardian Cities investigation earlier this summer revealed for the first time the spread of pseudo-public space in London – large squares, parks and thoroughfares that appear to be public but are actually owned and controlled by developers and their private backers – and an almost complete lack of transparency over secret restrictions imposed by corporations that limit the rights of citizens passing through their sites.
The Guardian has since requested data on pseudo-public spaces, which are sometimes known as privately owned public spaces (Pops), from the country’s biggest urban centres beyond the capital. …
… Following the Guardian’s initial investigation, national political leaders including Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, the Liberal Democrats’ Vince Cable and Caroline Lucas of the Green Party all spoke out on the subject.
Shortly thereafter, a motion was passed in the London Assembly urging Khan to take a firm stance on the issue.
“Being able to know what rules you are being governed by, and how to challenge them, is a fundamental part of democracy,” said Sian Berry, a London Assembly member for the Green Party who proposed the motion.
“Increasingly, London’s public space is in private hands and there is very little transparency around which individuals and groups can have access,” added Labour’s Nicky Gavron. “These are Londoners’ outdoor living rooms and it is appalling that access can be restricted.”
Several assembly members pointed out that City Hall itself is located on open but private land controlled by the sovereign wealth fund of Kuwait, which refuses to allow journalists to operate in the area without corporate permission.
The Mayor of London has vowed to establish new guidelines covering privately-owned “public” sites, designed to “maximise access and minimise restrictions, as well as enabling planners to establish potential restrictions at the application stage for new developments.” …
… Ultimately, some experts conclude, any widespread challenge to the spread of pseudo-public spaces may come from citizens themselves rather than top-down institutional leaders.
“The planning process is supposed to be democratic,” Adam Fineberg, an expert adviser on public services, observed. “The people responsible for drawing up planning policies and sitting on planning committees are elected representatives. So if citizens are concerned about this issue in their local areas, they can campaign and put pressure on representatives through the ballot box and try to ensure that future planning applications by developers are required to meet clear and strong conditions regarding public access and open governance. There’s nothing stopping planning authorities making approval dependent on those conditions being met. It’s a question of local democracy.” “
Bristol: all “non-essential” work stops due to austerity cuts
“Bristol City Council has placed a spending freeze on “non-essential spending” in order to account for the impact of Conservative cuts to local government services.
According to a release from the council, the freeze means:
All maintenance of buildings, roads and parks will stop unless there is a risk to people’s health or safety. The council will also stop recruiting any permanent or temporary roles unless they provide legally-required services, and will not agree any new or extended contracts for goods or services without approval from the Chief Executive and statutory financial and legal officers.
More may be added to the list in coming weeks.
Deficit
It was predicted earlier this year that Bristol City Council faces a budget deficit of £60m for the 2019/20 financial year. The council has been making several millions of pounds of savings throughout 2016.
The spending freeze is a final attempt to balance its annual budget. According to a report to be delivered to the council’s Cabinet on 6 December, its efforts have reduced the gap from £35.4m at the beginning of the financial year to £27.5m by the end of September. The newly announced spending freeze is predicted to reduce it further to £16m, if accepted. …”
The Red Tape Initiative – West Dorset MP and pal of Swire’s new, er, initiative
Does anyone else find this declaration of interest by Oliver Letwin, West Dorset MP, oldxEtonian pal of Swire and Cameron, champion of privatisation of anything and everything, but particularly the NHS, somewhat worrying?
Remember Letwin has been the centre of several controversies and foot in mouth incidents as well as authoring, with John Redwood (1988) “Britain’s Biggest Enterprise – ideas for radical reform of the NHS”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Letwin#Controversies
He is now, as of April 2017, the founder and Chairman of the Red Tape Initiative, which he describes in his Parliamentary Declaration of interest:
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmregmem/170502/letwin_oliver.htm
as:
“From 19 April 2017, Chair (unpaid) of the Management Board of the Red Tape Initiative; a cross-party think tank established to identify regulatory changes that can be made by political consensus speedily after Brexit. (Registered 19 April 2017)”
https://redtapeinitiative.org.uk
which is made up of:
“Leading Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat politicians [who] have agreed to join the Advisory Board, alongside other distinguished people entirely independent from any political party.
The CBI, BCC, IOD and FSB are working with the RTI to construct groups of experts from a range of industries – as well as representatives of environmental and other NGOs – who can help us identify changes that could quickly be made in specific areas of EU regulation, with immediate benefits for jobs and businesses in the UK and with no adverse effects on our ecology or our society. We will be consulting relevant trade unions – via the TUC – on the proposals that emerge, in order to ensure that they are acceptable to employees as well as employers.”
Unfortunately, there is no list of the Management Board or of people, other than Letwin, who make up this group, other than someone called Nick Tyrone, whose blog can be found here:
who had had a couple of relatively short tenures as leader of think tanks Radix and CentreForum, and who seems to work from a Centre in Westminster Kingsway College according to the postcode on the RTI website, but we do know its first three priorities:
“The first three areas that the RTI will address are:
1) the construction of housing
2) the construction of infrastructure
3) training and apprenticeships”
Ah – developers and zero-hours employers? Oh, Owl is SO excited!
Pete’s pool in Exeter, Paul’s folly in Honiton?
Exeter City Council Leader Pete Edwards is known for having a dream of what has been dubbed “Pete’s Pool” on the site of the current Exeter Bus Station, despite warnings that Brexit could send it pear-shaped. And now, indeed, the pear has been shaped as both the Princesshay extension AND the pool plans have, at least for now, bitten the dust, with Brexit price rises cited as part of the problem.
Is there a lesson here for “Paul’s Folly” – the new EDDC HQ which could cost us anything from £3 million – £10 million (depending on whether EDDC can sell its current HQ to luxury-retirement home developer PegasusLife?
“Exeter’s hoped-for city centre development has been hit by a “double whammy” after a deal to build the new leisure centre and bus station collapsed, the city council leader has revealed.
It emerged on Monday morning that the Crown Estate had cancelled its plans to extend Princesshay shopping centre, citing “market conditions”.
This consigned to the rubbish bin an ambitious plan for a huge public space and amphitheatre across Paris Street into the old bus station and up to the back of Sidwell Street.
Following this, Exeter City Council revealed that a contract with the firm lined up to build the state-of-the-art swimming pool and bus station, believed to be Sir Robert McAlpine, had not been signed.
The authority has now walked away from the deal and plans to re-tender for both projects, adding a year to the completion date, now set at 2020.
Asked if the two were connected, council leader Pete Edwards said the building firm may have been banking on securing the contract to construct the Princesshay extension. …
… Economic uncertainty around Brexit has been blamed for rising prices and the falling value of the pound may have made the leisure centre even more expensive.
Cllr Edwards believes the exchange rate is making material from mainland Europe more expensive but has vowed to complete the project, dubbed by critics “Pete’s Pool”, “before he dies”.
“It is a double whammy and a disaster for the city,” he added. …”
http://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/exeters-double-whammy-leisure-centre-529532
“John McDonnell ‘would bring existing PFI contracts in-house’ “
Wouldn’t THAT put the public cat amongst the private (fat) pigeons!
Yep – fairer funding DOES mean cuts!
“Friend,
I’ve crunched the numbers on Justine Greening’s latest funding proposal – and it doesn’t look good. 17,385 schools still face real-terms cuts.
Find out how your school is affected now on schoolcuts.org.uk.
Education Secretary Justine Greening is responding to our campaign. In July she scraped together £1.3bn for schools from other parts of the education budget.
That’s because of every single person who made this campaign possible.
But we can’t rest yet. The money she moved around falls well short of reversing the cuts schools have been facing for years.
Find out how your school and community will be affected by cuts:
https://www.schoolcuts.org.https://www.schoolcuts.org.uk
Over the coming weeks we’ll be mobilising communities across the country to come together for our schools.
I hope you’ll join us.
Andrew
Andrew Baisley
School Cuts Campaigner
“’More transparency is needed about big decisions affecting our NHS’ “
“Eddie Duller OBE, a director at Healthwatch Oxfordshire, the county’s watchdog on health and social services matters, asks why the authorities are not more open about the big changes ahead
IT may sound bizarre but the Information Commissioner’s Office, which is the UK’s independent authority set up to promote openness by public bodies, appears to be saying it is alright to plan changes to health and social care in Oxfordshire and neighbouring counties in secret.
At least, that is my interpretation of a ruling as a result of Healthwatch Oxfordshire’s attempt to find out what was happening in the biggest health and social services shake-up for many years.
We raised the query in July last year under the Freedom of Information Act with the Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (OCCG), which has been tasked by the NHS to save money and change the way services are delivered.
The main reason for this was that a new authority was introduced by the NHS: the Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West (BOB) area, which was supposed to create savings by joining up services from several areas.
Secondly, our view was – and is – that the public should have been involved earlier in the detail of the plans.
However, our request was turned down by the OCCG on the grounds that ‘releasing the information into the public domain at this time would be likely to inhibit the ability of public authority staff and others involved to express themselves openly, honestly and completely…..’
But what really got me going was the fact that the OCCG claimed that the new BOB organisation was not a statutory organisation and therefore the Freedom of Information Act did not apply.
That means that BOB could – and still can – take decisions in secret. I still think that is wrong.
They appear to want their cake and eat it by claiming it is not a statutory authority but at the same time giving it enormous powers to change the health service over a large area of the country.
The final version of the plan was published and the first explanations were made available just before Christmas last year – six months after we asked for information.
The Information Commissioner’s Office backed up the OCCG just a few days ago, 14 months after we queried their secrecy.
In effect it rather belatedly backed up the OCCG by saying it was alright to consider matters in secret as long as the proposals were published at a later date.
So what was the problem in giving out the information earlier?
When it was finally published the BOB transformation plan, which includes Oxfordshire, promised that there would be “meaningful engagement and consultation activity on services, such as those at the Horton General Hospital in Banbury and community hospitals in Berkshire West to help inform commissioning of future services”.
So why did it take so long to get round to it? Why not involve the public earlier?
The outcome of some of the changes in services at the Horton is that the question over the downgrading of the maternity department has been referred to the Secretary of State for Health after pleas from thousands of people to keep it as a consultant led service were ignored, and there is still no detail about what is to happen to the rest of the hospital site.
In effect the resulting judicial review is holding up the whole of the other services referred to in the first phase of consultation, although some of them are not contentious.
I hope the OCCG will learn from this and tell the public what it is thinking about in relation to the rest of the county much sooner.
In fact, now would do.
They should, in my view, form advisory bodies in each market town and Oxford as they did when creating the new “health campus” in Henley so that local people can have a greater say in designing the services.
It is an opportunity to involve the public through voluntary organisations and GP practices participation groups among others.
The BOB plan talked about the risks involved in changing the services, among them public sensitivity and cynicism.
It says grandly that “people view the programme as a money saving exercise which has no positive effect on health services in their community. “
It adds: “Stakeholders need to be openly engaged and involved in the process so that they are able to develop a proper understanding and can become ambassadors for the programme.”
I think it follows that if they practised what they preached and told us what is going on at an earlier stage they would stand more chance of getting a reasoned reaction and discussion for a plan which may have some potential merits.”
EDDC lays foundations for new HQ in Honiton – but who is paying?
EDDC must be feeling VERY positive about the outcome of the PegasusLife Planning appeal as the sale of Knowle land, at around £7.1 million, is meant to contribute to the £10,361,000 cost (at last years costing – who knows what it is this year).
And does it include the £1m plus cost of Exmouth town hall?
Next year’s council tax deliberations will be interesting!
Q: who does Diviani represent on the NHS? A: Jeremy Hunt
How does Owl know?
Well, he DOESN’T represent East Devon District Council – they told him to vote to keep local community hospital beds and maternity services open. He went to a DCC scrutiny meeting and voted to close them.
He DOESN’T represent the eight district councils he is supposed to represent at DCC [as a co-optee NOT a full member of the committee – and he was only allowed to vote because the badly-worded DCC constitution does not make the voting power of a co-optee clear] because he admitted in public that he did not consult any of the other councils before voting.
He DOESN’T represent DCC because he has not stood for election to that council and been successful.
WHAT was his reason/excuse/pathetic flim flam for his vote then?
That other attempts to refer the closure to the Secretary of State had failed, so this one would also fail.
How did he know that? Does he have a direct line to Hunt’s office or what passes for Hunt’s brain? He must have one or the other because he KNEW in advance what would happen and chose to vote on what he says he KNEW.
But if he KNEW what would happen (and he says he did) then why not vote as EDDC told him to do? The letter would have failed and he could still say he had voted as instructed at EDDC (though not as other councils wanted as he had no idea about that.
BUT – as he again admitted – it would have slowed down the closure. It would have given councils, the staff and supporters of the hospitals, the patients and their carers, more time to put alternative plans into action. More home care staff, more suitable plans for hospital buildings, better care for patients at home.
He did none of these things. He and Sarah Randall-Johnson consigned community hospitals to the rubbish heap.
And all because, he says, he knew what Jeremy Hunt would do.
So, now we know, he has a direct line to Jeremy Hunt and does what Jeremy Hunt wants him to do.
But why? Owl can only guess that he wants a gong from this despicable government to add to his only other qualification – an innkeepers certificate.
And the only way to do that is do the bidding of those who hand them out.
And if that isn”t his rationale, Owl would welcome a comment from him which would be published on the blog in full.
And what of his “representation” of the other councils? Who voted for him to be their representative? Was there a vote at all?
Or conversations in dark corners of County Hall?
“Tories block recording concerns over biggest ever planned health service cuts in Devon”
Oh, how different it will be if (when) Tories lose control of DCC. We will then hear Twiss and his party colleagues saying EXACTLY what Claire Wright is saying!
Party politics sucks. More Independents needed – urgently.
From the blog of Claire Wright:
“.. And the County Solicitor will be called to address the committee to remind it of its responsibilities.
Devon County Council conservatives blocked my proposal yesterday to record significant concerns over the biggest cuts facing Devon’s health service in living memory.
Sonja Manton from NEW Devon Clinical Commissioning Group gave an update on the plans to slash around £500m by 2020, as part of Devon’s Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP).
The county’s STP is one of 44 across the country and is the government’s main programme of major cost cutting and centralisation in the NHS, to stem a £30bn shortfall by 2020.
I asked a number of questions mainly on staffing, budgets and buildings, along the following lines:
What are the vacancies and how do you plan to fill them and when do you plan to make redundancies (which has been previously hinted at)?
The answer was woolly (and no amount of pushing would encourage Dr Manton to reveal more). It contained no information on numbers, but she did mention that there is a 30 per cent turnover rate across Devon, in home care staff and that 75 per cent of the NHS budget is spent on staffing.
Next I asked whether pregnant women would still have a genuine choice where to give birth, as three community maternity units at Okehampton, Tiverton and Honiton were set to close (two have already closed temporarily due to staffing issues).
The answer was that the new service would meet national guidelines, so I pushed and asked whether pregnant women would be able to have a choice of a midwife led unit and how far they would have to travel. The answer was that there will be a new midwife led unit at the RD&E, adjacent to the consultant led unit.
So essentially women from all over Devon will soon have to either have a home birth, or travel to Exeter to give birth, whether that’s at a midwife led unit or a consultant led unit. There was a bit of a disagreement about me saying the current midwife led units were closed, despite the announcement having already been announced that this was the intention and two being temporarily closed due to staffing pressures.
Next I asked how many more beds were planned to be cut.
More prevarication.
I pushed. Was the figure of 600 bed cuts recognised, which was the broad figure in the first draft of the STP?
Yes this figure was recognised but it depended on a raft of issues.
Finally, I asked about the selling off of redundant estate. How many, where and when? Another non answer ensued. It was the next piece of work.
Entirely frustrated at the refusal to answer questions, not because I believe, the answers are not known but because there is a total refusal to get into any detail whatsoever, I expressed my complete frustration and disappointment at the answers. It made no difference.
Other councillors asked other questions.
At the end of the debate I proposed a resolution that the committee express significant concerns over the STP, its potential effect on patient care and the lack of transparency so far.
I called for urgent information on staffing, beds, buildings and budgets, in particular.
The proposal was seconded by Chair, Sara Randall Johnson, who added that a piece of work would be done on this.
Unfortunately, my wording appeared to upset the conservative group. Cllr Philip Sanders said he didn’t like that I had said the process appeared not to be transparent and wanted this word deleted. I replied that that it was entirely justified and refused to amend my proposal.
But fellow Conservative, Phil Twiss, wanted ANY mention of concerns deleted.
He said: “We don’t need the emotional language.”
Three years ago, Cllr Twiss reported me and this blog to the police cyber crime unit. You can read about it here, if you like – http://www.claire-wright.org/index.php/post/eddc_tory_whip_reports_me_to_the_police_for_a_comment_on_this_blog
Cllr Twiss then proposed that ALL my words were deleted, simply retaining the section that relating to a task group being set up.
This was voted through by the vast majority of the Conservative group.
Letting down every single resident in Devon who relies on the NHS.
Yes, I think that’s everyone.
Ambulance Trust response targets are failing and RD&E unable to discharge its patients in good time
Later in the meeting we were examining the performance review.
The South West Ambulance Trust which used to meet the national target of eight minutes largely without a difficulty, are now significantly under target. Only 59 per cent of calls were answered within eight minutes, across Northern, Eastern and Western Devon, in July of this year. The target is 75 per cent.
Lives are surely being put at risk. Certainly news of the failures are hitting the local media.
The narrative attached to the graph claimed that the reason was the rural nature of the South West. Yet the South West has been rural for years and this wasn’t a problem previously. Of course there have been cuts to budgets, and reductions in the number of ambulances so that is more likely to be the cause of the failure.
Problem with delayed discharges at the RD&E
Similarly, the RD&E was shown to have a significant problem with delayed discharges.
In June this year a daily average of 66 beds were occupied by patients who were well enough to go home.
It was obvious from the graph that the problem was clearly way out of kilter with other local NHS trusts.
This was largely to do with major staffing problems in the care sector, an officer confirmed.
of course it is these staff among others that we will rely on, to look after people in their own homes following community hospital bed cuts.
I proposed a resolution that the committee record its concerns at the ambulance response rates and the high level of delayed discharges at the RD&E and invite both trusts to the next committee meeting.
I had to argue with the chair that the proposal should retain the bit about recording concerns, before it was seconded by Cllr Brian Greenslade.
One of the Labour councillors was unhappy with me mentioning the RD&E at all in my resolution because she was chairing a piece of work looking at delayed discharges. I tried to point out that the resolution supported her work but she was adamant …
Then Cllr Twiss started up again. He said he didn’t like my wording and that I was simply making a statement that “looks good in the press.”
I reminded Cllr Twiss that the committee is legally constituted to scrutinise health services on behalf of the people and our job is to hold the health service to account. In fact such words had been used recently in a standards committee hearing minutes.
Anyone who is familiar with the basic requirements of an audit trail will recognise the importance of the committee recording concerns about service failures in this way.
I told Cllr Twiss that I intended to ask in the work programme agenda item, that the county solicitor attends the next committee meeting and outlines our responsibilities.
The final amendment removed my words about concerns about the RD&E’s delayed discharges but retained the words about the ambulance trust target failure.
So Ambulance Trust representatives will be invited to the next meeting.
I have certainly heard anecdotally that things are very challenging indeed within the Trust, with too few ambulances and low staff morale.
I duly asked in the final agenda item for the County Solicitor to attend the next meeting to remind the committee of its remit.
Some councillors appear to be in sore need of training.
Playing political games with health scrutiny resolutions is a dirty and unacceptable game.
NHS Property Services and buildings
Cllr Martin Shaw spoke to a report he submitted to the committee on this. The upshot will be that a sub group will examine the future of community hospital buildings.
The speaker itemised webcast can be viewed here – https://devoncc.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/301904”
Reading BCouncil apologised for the error after objectors spotted a mistake on feedback form
“Reading Borough Council (RBC) invited residents to give feedback after the Education Funding Agency (EFA) offered to invest £1.36m in exchange for five per cent of some school land it owns.
One objector, John Heaps, accused the council of manipulating the outcome by removing the ‘strongly disagree’ option from the online survey to add weight to the EFA’s proposal.
He claimed: “I have attended all of the action group meetings and the wording on the feedback forms has changed since the original consultation started.
“Negative responses have been altered and the council have changed their stance midway through the process.
By making this change, it allows them to say all consultation respondents agreed that the granting of the lease to the EFA would enhance the amenity value of the ground.
“It is a very serious offence and it is evidence that a governing body is manipulating a legally required consultation process.”
Residents were asked if the EFA offer would enhance the amenity value and the latest form gives three options, including ‘very likely, more likely and less likely’.
Mr Heaps said there was no way for people to strongly reject the EFA bid due to the absence of the ‘not likely’ option and accused the council of distorting the outcome of the consultation.
RBC cited ‘human error’ and apologised, adding: “A human imputing error on the website means the ‘less likely’ and ‘not likely’ options were accidentally combined into one option for people responding to question 2 of the online survey.
“To address this point, and any subsequent concerns raised, the Trustees will be asked to consider that all responses given to this question should be in the ‘not likely’ category.
“We apologise for the error and will of course advise Trustees of the error when reporting back the consultation results.”
EDDC Tory councillors voted against themselves to protect Leader
Sir
“A letter, copied below, from today’s Sidmouth Herald (22/09/17), explains:
The issue of no confidence in EDDC Leader Paul Diviani is nothing new, as the 4,000 people who took part in the SOS Mass March to Knowle, nearly 5 years ago, would agree. (Nov 3rd, 2012, photos archived on http://www.saveoursidmouth.com).
How is it, then, that the ‘Motion against East Devon District Council leader’ failed’ (Sidmouth Herald, 15/09/17)?
Paul Diviani had, according to a senior Conservative colleague, clearly broken trust with the District Council. At the County Health Scrutiny Committee, the EDDC Leader had failed to represent his own Council’s unanimous (i.e. cross-party) recommendation that hospital bedcuts should stop until an effective alternative had been shown to be in place. His contrary vote had influenced the outcome at the DCC, the only body capable of statutory action, thereby apparently betraying not just his own Council, but the people of East Devon that they represent. This left the Tory group of District Councillors “caught between a rock and a hard place”, as Cathy Gardner (EDDC Ward Member Sidmouth Town, East Devon Alliance) reminded them, at the Extra Ordinary Meeting at Knowle (13/09/17).
But all the Tory Councillors present (just one abstained), did an extraordinary thing. To the disbelief of the public crammed into the Council Chamber, they turned the debate away from their uncomfortable Leader’s conduct, and onto problems with the National Health Service. Then, in voting against the Motion of No Confidence in the Leader, they effectively blockvoted against their own unanimous recommendation regarding NHS problems and bedcuts, taken just a few weeks’ earlier. The sort of thing, and Leader, that brings a Council into disrepute?
Jacqueline Green
Sidmouth”
How ‘no confidence vote’ came to be rejected by Council let down by its Leader
“Ministry of Defence spent £64,000 on internet usage for ONE phone last year, new figures reveal”
Was that person even on earth?!!!
“The Ministry of Defence spent £64,000 on mobile internet use for a single phone last year, new figures have revealed.
The hefty bill was the most expensive in a list of staggering figures which the Government department paid out enable its staff to stay in touch while abroad.
The MoD forked out an eye-watering £324,407 to pay for the data roaming charges for the ten most expensive mobile phones bills alone. …
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4909440/MoD-spent-64-000-internet-usage-phone-year.html
Times and Tories work out that affordable housing means votes,
After YEARS of believing affordable and social homes are lived in only by Labour voters and therefore not worth building, the Conservatives suddenly seem to have woken up to the bigger issue that NO housing = NO votes for them either.
Duh. And, as the saying goes: wise words butter no parsnips – writing or making speeches is not doing.
“The covenant of British politics is broken. The European referendum of 2016 was the first clue and the strange general election a year later the second. As the political assemblies gather at their conferences to contemplate their own little world, the gap between the promise of politics and popular problems has perhaps never been greater. There will be urgently missable fringe meetings in Brighton and Manchester over the next fortnight which seek to draw lessons from Syriza’s Greece, Trump’s America or Macron’s France. The problem can be located much closer to home.
Housing minister was once a cabinet position and really must be again. For an issue which has so frequently paid a political dividend it has been remarkably relegated down the order of priorities. The domestic response to the two world wars was to rebuild the housing stock. David Lloyd George pledged homes fit for war heroes and the 1924 Labour government offered a housing act as its only substantive achievement. Aneurin Bevan spent more time on housing after 1945 than he did on the NHS and the number of houses built was one of the ways the Attlee government asked to be judged. The last time the Conservative Party really connected to the urban working class was when Margaret Thatcher arranged for 100,000 of them a year to buy the homes once owned and neglected by the council.
For the most part, though, the covenant on housing policy has operated silently. There has been an implicit bargain in postwar British politics that buying your own home is an index of progress and that, with hard work, it should be possible. After Bevan, housing policy has been directed towards the vision that Neville Chamberlain once described as “the property-owning democracy”.
There is a hint of the politics of housing in that phrase. Tories have assumed that owning property makes conservatives of people while Labour, the constant voice of municipal housing, has assumed the large estates create a client group of its own voters. Council house sales were first mooted by Joe Haines, who worked for Harold Wilson, but rejected by his party for privatising the nation’s assets. Throughout the twists and turns of policy, property rights have had a unique connotation in Britain, signalling the assumption that a home of one’s own is the prize for all citizens.
It is therefore a political fact of the first order that home ownership has fallen to 63.5 per cent, its lowest level since 1987. Household growth has been strong as the population has increased and as more people live alone but the supply of houses is stagnant. With the value of land increasing, house builders are better described as landlords. Building is at its lowest level since 1923 and last year Britain built 100,000 homes fewer than the 250,000 per annum that are needed just to meet existing demand.
The facts gathered by the Resolution Foundation in its report Home Affront: housing across the generations continue the work that David Willetts, now the think tank’s executive chairman, began in his fine book The Pinch. They describe a life for the youngest generation of adults that may differ fundamentally, financially, from that of their grandparents and may be, for the first time, worse. Housing costs for the average family have tripled since 1961, from 6 per cent of income to 18 per cent. The typical age for buying property is moving from the 30s to the 40s. The generation of people below the age of 30 spend almost a quarter of their income on housing, which is three times as much as their grandparents spent at the same age. They are also having to make do with smaller places to live, further from work. It is both more expensive and considerably worse and there is never a political dividend in that combination.
Home ownership has been falling across all regions and income groups since 2003 but the youngest cohort will be hit the hardest. The option of social housing is now a rarity so a whole generation has started to rent privately. Half a century ago one in ten 30-year-olds rented a home. Now it is four in ten. A family headed by a 30-year-old today is half as likely to be a homeowner as their parents were at the age of 30.
There are manifold reasons for the decline in home ownership. People are spending longer in education, marrying and having children later, immigration has increased, the divorce rate has required more houses for the same population and people are living longer and are understandably reluctant to vacate the homes they call their own. In the wake of the crash of 2008 wages have been stagnant and access to mortgage finance has been curtailed. The low supply of new homes has produced the obvious effect of higher prices. A generation ago it took the average family 3 years to save enough for a deposit on a house. Now it would take almost 20 years.
It means that a different life beckons from the implied bargain of British politics. Coming to home ownership later, if at all, means that people will carry mortgages later in life, perhaps even beyond working age. That, in turn, will affect the capacity of that generation to save for retirement. The whole journey of life shifts back and that is for those who manage to embark at all. There is a set of people who are seriously thinking they might be stuck renting indefinitely. There are now 11 million people in rented accommodation in the private market.
The minister in charge, Sajid Javid, has an opportunity if he is bold enough to seize it. In a speech on Tuesday he made some encouraging noises about a review of social housing policy after the disaster of Grenfell Tower. He really needs, though, to do something about the quantity of social housing too. The proportion of families in this sector has halved, under government neglect, since 1981 and there is no quick solution which does not involve the government doing some building. The problems here are fundamental. Low and stagnant wages, money flowing into British property from offshore, restrictive planning and no infrastructure guidance from the centre.
“Unless we deal with the housing deficit, we will see house prices keep on rising. The divide between those who inherit wealth and those who don’t will become more pronounced. And more and more of the country’s money will go into expensive housing instead of more productive investments that generate more economic growth”. Wise words. Theresa May’s words, at the launch of her campaign to succeed David Cameron. She needs to say them again in the knowledge that, if her party retains its fabled survival instinct, it will grant her enough authority to act.”
Source: The Times, pay wall
“STPs ‘need more funding and to be better implemented’ “
“Sustainability and transformation partnerships need more funding and to be better implemented, the Healthcare Financial Management Association/CIPFA health and social care conference heard today.
The partnerships are the best hope for health and social care integration, Richard Humphries, a senior policy fellow from the think-tank the King’s Fund, told delegates at the conference in London.
“The ambitions of the plans are good but the delivery and implementation is fraught with problems in the current financial climate,” he said.
“I think everybody agrees that we do need to transform social care but history tells us that the only way you do that is to have transformational funding for the double running costs of building up services in the community so you can then reduce hospital activity.”
He added: “The existing system is fragmented, based on commissioners and providers. Nobody wants another top-down reorganisation to reverse those [current] reforms.
“So [greater integration] is being done through the backdoor, essentially, through these STPs.”
Humphries believed STPs were the “right direction of travel” but noted that there were issues.
He outlined the following problems:
The STPs are being driven by NHS financial control, which he said was “unrealistic”
There are “heroic assumptions” being made about how much care you can shift out of hospitals
The plans are not engaging local government and social care enough.
Humphries said: “Although it is a laudable motive, the current structures that we’ve got in both commissioning and providers, separation, funding, payment mechanisms was designed from an entirely different purpose when it was based on the idea of competition and choice being much more important than collaboration.”
The conference also heard the findings from a survey conducted by CIPFA and iMPOWER. It showed 55 of 56 respondents said they did not believe joint working will be achieved between local government and the NHS in the next five years.
Rob Whiteman, CIPFA’s chief executive, commenting on the survey of 25 local authorities and 31 NHS bodies, said: “While it is now clear what the overall ambitions are for STPs, the survey released today highlights there may be major barriers to achieving these.
“The survey shows that there are some significant concerns with regard to joint working, which is vital to the success of STPs. Therefore, serious care and attention must now be paid to building relationships and trust between partners.”
Whiteman also echoed the sentiment of Humphries when he said suitable levels of funding were needed, or the ambitious targets set by the STPs would turn out to be “financially unachievable”. “
http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2017/09/stps-need-more-funding-and-be-implemented-better-0
EDDC has other ways of raising cash … but not votes
Owl says: shame they couldn’t put the same amount of effort into getting voters to register. CEO Williams said it was much too dangerous to go around the dark, rural roads in East Devon seeking them out.
Owl hopes the officers tasked with weeding out these miscreants have had good martial arts training for dealing with those elderly widows, widowers and single mums!
And just as well officer time is never costec when accounting for how such an exercise!
“Council Tax paying resis who wrongly claim they live alone and get a council tax discount are being targeted in East Devon. Checks are beginning this month to ensure that the 21,000 East Devon householders who currently claim a 25% discount for living alone are still entitled to it.
Councillor Ian Thomas, portfolio holder for finance, said “anyone genuinely claiming a reduction should not be concerned. However, if you are found to be deliberately misleading the council, you could face a penalty of £70, as well as having to repay the discount,” he added.”
[Source: BBC Devon]
EDDC seems to prefer income loss to seafront attractions
Owl has spotted a disclosure by EDDC in relation to a FOI on the loss of income and business rates on closed Exmouth seafront businesses:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/lost_council_income_from_queens#comment-80255
EDDC effectively admit that council rental income from those properties on Queens Drive, which they closed a while back, mean a loss at a rate of over £18,300 pa. On top of the rent, they will have lost an as yet unspecified amount of council business rates and beach hut hire income. Oh, and the area now looks derelict.
Though there were claims that the Fun Park site was needed in connection with works on phases 1 and 2, there are plans in existence (see on Save Exmouth Seafront Facebook page) which show no such need for access as yet to the Fun Park.
It seems clear that EDDC have done little or nothing about arrangements for ‘temporary attractions’ on the Fun park site next year – at least as far as the public can determine.
So, we know that already part of the seafront is looking run down and desolate, and is losing money into the bargain. Further, the case for getting rid of the Fun Park seems much more to do with EDDC taking offence at a long established family business having the sheer gall to take EDDC on in pursuit of that families legitimate rights, than allowing them to continue to provide a much-loved service to the community – including thousands of tourists.
No, rather EDDC take a chance that something “might” come up by way of temporary attractions if only it hopes hard enough.
And surely EDDC is breaking its own (well-honed) rules on confidentiality when it voluntarily gives information that one owner allegedly had an outstanding unpaid bill – again.
“Local councils blame Tory cuts for dramatic surge in homelessness”
“Government benefit cuts are to blame for soaring levels of homelessness, local councils and housing providers have said.
The number of people being declared homeless has increased by more than a third since 2010, while the number of people sleeping rough on the streets has surged by even more: up 134 per cent since the Conservatives came to power.
A string of Government welfare changes – including cuts to housing benefit and the introduction of the benefit cap – have led to the dramatic increase, according to the organisations charged with tackling the crisis. …
… According to the survey, 61 per cent of local councils and 49 per cent of housing associations also said the fact a prospective tenant is unlikely to receive enough in welfare payments to cover their rent is now the most common reason for someone being turned away for home.
It comes just days after a damning report by the National Audit Office accused government ministers of a “light-touch approach” to tackling homelessness, and concluded that benefit cuts were “likely to have contributed” to the rise in homelessness. Tackling the problem is costing the state £1bn a year, the report said.
In an attempt to get a grip on spiralling homelessness, Government ministers have placed a legal obligation on local councils to help people find homes.
Typically, this would involve helping someone into a property managed by a housing association – but cuts to benefits mean associations are increasingly having to turn tenants away. …”
East Devon Watch 