Conservatives told to use secret clubs to mask donations

Today’s Sunday Telegraph reveals that Conservative MPs have been told to use private business clubs for donations so that they do not have to reveal the identity of the individual donors. They have received more than £1.7m by this route including £815,000 from the United and Cecil Club (which has in the past donated money to the East Devon Conservative Party). If you give more than £1,500 to a local party it has to reveal your name to the Electoral Commission but if it is given to a club this rises to £7,500 before an individual has to be named.

The guidance is said to have been drawn up by the Conservatives Compliance Unit and was handed out at last week’s Tory Party Conference. It also advises that funds for MPs should be channeled this was too rather than to the individual MP and then handed on to the MP by the local party.

The advice is also said to include advice against wording invitations [to donate] in such a say that it implies that businesses which make donations can lobby ministers and MPs, which can be illegal.

Revolt in the shires

Tomorrow the Western Morning News has a story on

“Westcountry councils face a growing rebellion from a grassroots movement weary at being ruled by an out-of-touch and “arrogant” leadership.

Campaigns have sprung up across the region in opposition to a perceived centralisation of power which has left many voters feeling removed from the democratic process.”

Watch this space – and get a copy of the newspaper for posterity!

Read more: http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Revolt-shires/story-23044181-detail/story.html

By far our most popular recent post

http://eastdevonalliance.org/?s=gizza

The more we read the job specification at our sister council in South Somerset the more it sounds utterly perfect for our departing Economic Development Manager and ex-Hon Sec of the East Devon Business Forum, Nigel Harrison.

But perhaps the large number of hits was other EDDC officers seeing an escape from the problems of our Local Plan? Oh no, that can’t be right: they haven’t got one either!

Oh, Tesco: please don’t go giving EDDC any ideas!

After all, should they move to Skypark, they will practically be on the runway of Exeter Airport so our Leader might think he needs one of these (going cheap, of course):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29488777

But beware (from the same article):

“There is a theory that when big companies splash out on new headquarters or other lavish items, their demise is waiting around the corner.

RBS moved into its huge new headquarters outside Edinburgh just before the financial crisis in 2007. Something similar happened to Lehman Bros, Anglo Irish Bank, Enron and Andersons.

Hubris at the top of an organisation can be fatal in business terms as it signals that the hunger that got that firm to the top is waning.

Tesco will hope that its move to swiftly sell all five of its private jets will ground the company and its ambitious executives in the reality of the task that faces them.

The days of unstoppable growth and profits are over thanks to Aldi and Lidl. The days of frugality, hard work and no private jets await.”

Time for change?

Many council(lors) operating under the Cabinet system (where a handful of councillors – 9 at EDDC – all appointed by the Leader) make all the decisions are now battling to change to the Committee system.

So strong is this movement – mostly started by councillors of sll parties, including the majority party tired of being simply “rubber stampers” of policies they have no involvement in – that the Local Government Association has produced a report on how to change things.

It is called “Rethinking Governance” and is introduced as follows:

The importance of good governance

The difficult funding situation for local government means that councils are increasingly having to make decisions that will have profound, far-reaching implications both for the way that they and their partners deliver services, and on the lives of local people. These changes will involve a permanent shift in people’s expectations of what local government does, and does not, do. They will also involve a shift in the way that councils work with others in their areas. Whether this is by an expansion in commissioning, pooling and aligning of budgets with partners, decommissioning of services, major transformation or all of these, local people need the confidence to know that decisions made in their name are high-quality, evidence based and considered openly and accountably.

This is why, now more than ever, good governance is vital. Councils have a responsibility to ensure that decision-making is as effective as it can be: decision making should critically benefit from the perspective of all councillors, but also be accountable, and involve the public.

Many councils are making informal changes to their governance arrangements including tightening up existing processes, making sure that avenues exist for all members to get involved in the policy development process (for example, through overview and scrutiny) and putting in place consultation arrangements for particularly contentious decisions. Some councils have decided to go a step further, and revisit their formal governance arrangements, looking at the different decision-making models available to them and taking steps to make a legal change to a different governance system.”

The report is here:
http://www.local.gov.uk/documents/10180/5854661/Rethinking+governance+-+practical+steps+for+councils+considering+changes+to+their+governance+arrangements/6f1edbeb-dbc7-453f-b8d8-bd7a7cbf3bd3

There is absolutely no chance of change in the life of the current council as the Cabinet has a stranglehold on power, operating hand in glove with officers, and current majority party councillors seem to have lost all their fighting spirit, simply nodding through even the most controversial (and expensive) decisions. Even when they know it is against the wishes of those who voted for them.

But if, in May 2015, a raft of Independent and minority party councillors get elected, it could be another story.

Details of the new council transparency rules

Click to access Local_Government_Transparency_Code_2014.pdf

Here are a few things that MUST be declared. There is a handy chart at the end of the document of required and suggested disclosure.

15.The Government has not seen any evidence that publishing details about contracts entered into by local authorities would prejudice procurement exercises or the interests of commercial organisations, or breach commercial confidentiality unless specific confidentiality clauses are included in contracts. Local authorities should expect to publish details of contracts newly entered into – commercial confidentiality should not, in itself, be a reason for local authorities to not follow the provisions of this Code. Therefore, local authorities should consider inserting clauses in new contracts allowing for the disclosure of data in compliance with this Code.

17.Where information would otherwise fall within one of the exemptions from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the Environmental Information Regulations 2004, the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community Regulations 2009 or falls within Schedule 12A to the Local Government Act 1972 then it is at the discretion of the local authority whether or not to rely on that exemption or publish the data. Local authorities should start from the presumption of openness and disclosure of information, and not rely on exemptions to withhold information unless absolutely necessary.

30.Local authorities must publish details of all land and building assets including:

 all service and office properties occupied or controlled by user bodies, both freehold and leasehold

 any properties occupied or run under Private Finance Initiative contracts

 all other properties they own or use, for example, hostels, laboratories,

investment properties and depots

 garages unless rented as part of a housing tenancy agreement

 surplus, sublet or vacant properties

 undeveloped land

 serviced or temporary offices where contractual or actual occupation exceeds three months, and

 all future commitments, for example under an agreement for lease, from when the contractual commitment is made.

Parking account

36.Local authorities must publish on their website, or place a link on their website to this data if published elsewhere:

 a breakdown of income and expenditure on the authority’s parking account26, 27. The breakdown of income must include details of revenue collected from on- street parking, off-street parking and Penalty Charge Notices, and

 a breakdown of how the authority has spent a surplus on its parking account

Knowle relocation and the new transparency rules – trouble ahead?

According to the Department, the Code will require councils to publish udetails of contracts and all land and building assets “they are sitting on” as well as subsidies given to trade unions including so-called ‘facility time’.

Local Government Minister Kris Hopkins said: “Greater power for local government must go hand in hand with greater local transparency and local accountability. Therefore it is only right we give council tax payers the data they deserve to play a bigger role in local democracy.

“This new wave of town hall transparency will empower armchair auditors right across the land to expose municipal waste and ensure councils are making the sensible savings necessary to freeze council tax and protect frontline services.

“For instance, opening up parking profits to the eyes of local democracy will protect residents from the risk of being treated as cash cows by trigger-happy town hall traffic wardens and expose councils using parking policies in an unlawful way.”

In response Cllr Peter Fleming, Chair of the Local Government Association’s Improvement and Innovation Board, warned that bringing forward the deadline for publishing the required information would only add strain and burden to local authorities faced with major cuts to their funding.

“Councils now need a firm commitment that they will receive adequate funding to cover these new expectations,” he demanded.

Cllr Fleming insisted that the sector was already the most open and transparent part of the public sector.

Councils already published information on budgets and revenues, performance, salaries, assets and annual parking reports, he pointed out. “This allows residents to democratically hold them to account and helps drive innovation and efficiencies.”

Cllr Fleming added that the LGA had recently launched its LG Inform online public tool, which is designed to make it easier for councils to generate and publish reports about how their services are performing.

Source: http://localgovernmentlawyer.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=20234:revised-transparency-code-for-local-government-in-england-in-force-next-month&catid=59&Itemid=27

Government announces new rules on council transparency

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-dawn-for-town-hall-transparency-ensures-taxpayers-get-the-data-they-deserve

But, as usual, it doesn’t announce sanctions for councils such as ours that ignore them.

But it should make it easier for the people facing increases of 330% on their residents parking to scrutinise the numbers.

More on those IT partnerships

After news that EDDC is spearheading an IT parthership with Exeter and Teignbridge,we reported on the fiasco in Somerset when an IT partnership went spectacularly wrong here:

http://eastdevonalliance.org/2014/10/01/what-happens-when-shared-and-partnership-it-services-go-wrong/

Following on from this is this critique which could equally be applied to the Skypark vanity project:

Mutual incentives?

The Somerset report says each side in an outsourcing relationship needs to be motivated by similar incentives. But can that ever happen? Councils exist to provide good public services as cheaply as possible. Suppliers exist to make as much money as possible.  There can only be similar incentives if a council is so inefficient that there’s enough spare cash to cover council savings and the supplier’s profits.  If there isn’t the spare cash, the council, in its enthusiasm to do something different by outsourcing, can simply fictionalise the figures for benefits and potential savings.

This creative (and legal) exercise is perfectly possible given the depth of the conjecture needed to project costs and savings over 6 years or more.  Part-time councillors who are considering a big outsourcing contract have the time only to glance at summary documents or the preferred supplier’s Powerpoint slides. They are unlikely to spot the assumptions that pervade the formalised legal language.

During such a pre-contract exercise, the most sceptical councillors are often excluded from internal scrutiny, and the disinterested ones who are admitted into the inner chamber can find their heads swimming in a supplier-inspired language that either swathes uncertainty in the business jargon of near certainty or obscures reality in opaque legalese.

How are these lay councillors to get at the truth? Do they have the time?

Big outsourcing deals between councils and suppliers are inherently flawed, as this Somerset report indicates. Too many such deals have ended badly for council taxpayers as Dexter Whitfield’s investigations have shown.

But still some councils sign huge outsourcing deals. Their leading officials and councillors say they took lessons from failed contracts around the country into account. But what does that mean? If a deal is inherently flawed, perhaps because of diverging incentives, it is inherently flawed.

The disaster that is Southwest One could be a priceless jewel in the public sector’s display case if it serves to deter councillors and officials signing further large-scale council outsourcing deals.

http://ukcampaign4change.com/

When you click on the link to Dexter Whitfield’s investigations, you get this interesting comment:

The number of PPP strategic partnerships has increased 35% in just two years with 18 additional contracts valued at £8bn. 60 contracts are currently operating, four were terminated and one completed the contract term, but was not renewed. A further two are being terminated in 2014. Strategic partnerships originated in ICT and corporate services, but have extended into planning, education, police, fire and rescue and property services. The failure rate is very high – nearly 1 in 4 contracts are either terminated, reduce scope as services are brought back in-house, and/or suffer major financial and operational problems. Savings, new business and new jobs targets continue to be illusive.


Audit Commission invites councils to help “armchair auditors” to interpret their accounts

Fat chance!

http://www.audit-commission.gov.uk/2014/09/audit-commission-invites-local-government-to-help-armchair-auditors-interpret-the-accounts/

Transparency of council information

The government has announced grants to various councils to enable them to encourage the wider use of their data in the public realm, in an effort to ensure that councils are more transparent.

Amongst the grants is one for Derby City Council for the “Provision of comprehensive, high quality, up-to-date information on local authority owned land and property assets

A grant for Hampshire County Council for the “Development of a schema and open source tool to enable collating and publishing of linkable planning data”

Needless to say, East Devon District Council doesn’t appear in the list!

http://www.local.gov.uk/local-transparency/-/journal_content/56/10180/3926733/ARTICLE

Now we know how it feels to be an EDDC Cabinet member!

“The feeling of power has been found to have a similar effect on the brain to cocaine. It increases the levels of testosterone and its by-product 3-androstanediol in both men and women. This in turn leads to raised levels of dopamine, the brain’s reward system called the nucleus accumbens, which can be very addictive.

Like cocaine, scientists now believe power can lead to too much dopamine causing more negative effects such as arrogance and impatience.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2778336/Power-REALLY-does-head-Giving-people-taste-authority-corrupt-honest-members-group.html

Today Manchester, tomorrow “Greater Exeter” or “Devon wide”? Maybe Councillor Potter is right and there will be no district councils soon

The Greater Manchester Combined Authority – made up of a consortium of 10 local authorities is going back to the drawing board and attempting to draw up a Regional Spatial Strategy – i.e. a Mega-Local-Plan. Those long in the tooth (i.e. who remember local government more than 4 years ago) will recall that this used to be the way things were done for infrastructure and investment wit the (not-much-missed-because-it-wasn’t-very-good) South West Regional Development Agency SWRDA with their Spatial Strategy for the whole of Devon. They were replaced by Local Enterprise Partnership – but they, too, seem to be fading away gradually as we hear less of them and their funding.

http://www.agma.gov.uk/what_we_do/manchester-family-centre-of-excellence/index.html

(what an odd URL!)

So, maybe this is the way things are going – fewer and fewer small authorities and more and more amalgamation as Councillor Potter predicted at Newton Poppleford earlier this week.

But where does that leave EDDC? They fought Devon-wide unitisation so, so hard a few years ago – spending at least a quarter of a million pounds of our council tax on persuading us not to go down that route and saying how bad it was for us. Then, as soon as the new government came in, they cancelled unitisation saying it was not a good idea. Now amalgamation seems to be the new theory and it’s all ok now.

There must be some really hard head-scratching going on at present at EDDC as they see the possibiity of losing control! Though there are many who think they lost control some time ago ….

… and wouldn’t the Skypark HQ make a lovely Devon HQ so that Exeter and DCC could sell off their current offices for housing ….. unless it goes to Plymouth, of course! Why not: it’s on the far edge of the area and only as far (relatively speaking) from Exeter in Devon-wide terms as Axminster is from Skypark in EDDC terms!

Exmouth seafront traders: EDDC still will not tell them whether they have a future

http://www.exeterexpressandecho.co.uk/Traders-8216-dark-8217-Exmouth-seafront-revamp/story-23026054-detail/story.html

Ring any bells?

What happens when shared and “partnership” IT services go wrong

Recall EDDC, Exeter and Teignbridge are about to share IT services. Although they currently do not have a public/private partnership in mind it could happen but the pitfalls ennumerated here could happen to any joint arrangement where “transparency” becomes an issue:

Click to access 2014%20Sept%2025%20-%20Item%207%20Lessons%20Learnt%20report.pdf

Feniton: another test of EDDC enforcement

http://www.exeterexpressandecho.co.uk/Feniton-faces-8220-real-threat-8221-flooding/story-23025763-detail/story.html

Wain Homes appears not to care.

MPs want secret probes of iffy expenses to “protect their reputations”

Where majority party MPs lead, EDDC’s majority party usually follows:

‘To introduce measures which undermine transparency is foolish and perverse at a time when we are looking for increased transparency,’ he added.
‘This means that MPs will be able to string out the thing for as long as they like rather than everyone knowing there is an issue to be investigated.
‘This is a retrograde step when you consider that it was a lack of transparency which led to the expenses scandal in the first place.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2773899/Parliamentary-probes-MPs-suspected-fiddling-expenses-held-SECRET-controversial-new-plans.html

Oh, wait: the MPs are following EDDC on this one – EDDZc got in first with Browngate and the East Devon Business Forum where deathly silence prevails.

It will be interesting to see what they do with Browngate 2 – where the disgraced ex-councillor will make much more money than it costs for a duckhouse if things go his way – again!