Local Tories’ Report of Contradictions

The leader of the Conservative opposition here in Sutton, Paul Scully, has published a report on his blog presenting his analysis of the state of the council in Sutton and presenting the Tories’ proposals to fix the ills he has identified. I found it interesting reading and I offer up my initial observations on the report.

 Lacking specifics

Despite its great length the report doesn’t actually reveal anything. It uses an awful lot of words to say not very much at all.

 The majority of the report is taken up with explanations of what the various departments within the council do, echoing summaries in countless local authority documents for internal & external circulation. The perceived failings of the council are highlighted and Scully points out what he thinks needs to be done about them. What is missing are detailed plans of how these ‘improvements’ can be achieved. Sweeping statements are made about what the Tories would do differently (or in some cases not so much differently as ‘re-presented’) but there is no how; there are no costings to the proposals; no real evidence that they could make these changes work. Our local Conservative group echoes its wider Party policy: promising things will be better under the Tories but without giving specific examples.

 The basis of this analysis seems to have been Scully’s whistle-stop tour of council departments and our partner organisations as mentioned in one of his previous blog postings. Of course he will have been able to draw on the experience he has gained during his one term as a Sutton councillor, together with that of his colleagues, some more long standing than others.

 Working with the Voluntary Sector

There are a few points within the report that I particularly wanted to pick apart. The report states that more use should be made of voluntary sector organisations. I don’t disagree that we should maximise the expertise and opportunities that the voluntary sector can offer, and I have plenty of examples of ways in which this partnership with the ‘third sector’ has worked to the benefit of Sutton residents. However I don’t believe that the voluntary sector should just be treated as a cheap way of outsourcing services, and if we are to be properly accountable to our residents the council still needs to ensure that the service being provided by voluntary sector organisations is of good quality and sufficient to meet the needs of our residents. The voluntary sector needs to be nurtured and supported, and not seen as a way to offload our responsibilities at low cost.

 The difference between Conservative policy and practice

However, pertinent in a different way is the example used within the section on youth provision to illustrate how the council could be better at utilising the voluntary sector. Elevate, a Christian voluntary organisation that organises skate events for young people, is mentioned. Now the council and myself have already had dealings with this organisation through the Beddington & Wallington Local Committee, and I have mentioned this in a previous blog posting. During the course of determining whether there was demand for a skatepark on Roundshaw recreation ground the committee asked Elevate to undertake the consultation work, due to their extensive experience working with young people. However the Conservative councillor for the affected ward, Cllr. Marion Williams, publicly expressed her concerns about the nature of the organisation and whether they would have a vested interest in the consultation results. It was explained to the Committee that it was a Christian voluntary organisation and that whilst they held skate events, these could be held anywhere and they would not gain anything financially from the provision of a skatepark in the Roundshaw area. This still failed to satisfy Ms Williams and I had a number of emails from her questioning the use of this voluntary organisation. Interesting that the report cites this organisation as one which could be better utilised by the council when one of the Conservative members seemed determined to put obstacles in the way of such thinking.

 New proposals?

Another issue raised by Cllr. Scully in his report is the need to encourage residents to take up benefits they are entitled to. He states that the council is poor at doing this. Yet only recently I blogged about how successful three voluntary sector partners have been working together to increase the take up of benefits by carers. Two of these organisations are supported by council funding and so it is a good example of how the council is effectively using the voluntary sector, and how the practice of bringing organisations together through the Sutton Partnership facilities these type of arrangements. As well as this service for carers the council has actively been encouraging the take up of benefits and allowances in its recession survival plan.

 Under the section on crime the report discusses at length the principles behind the ‘broken window’ theory and designing out crime and concludes that this is the way forward for the council to reduce fear of crime as if this is a new innovation. Surely Cllr. Scully must be aware that this has been the backbone to the council’s environmental policy for many years now. The whole principle behind the regular street cleaning policy; the efficient collection of waste; the tree maintenance policy; the graffiti clean up drive; the weeding of pavements; the maintenance and cutting of grass verges and hedges; the maintenance of our parks and the prosecution of fly-tippers are all about keeping our streets looking cared-for and pleasant, preventing areas from becoming run down and prone to vandalism and attracting anti-social behaviour. It is not a policy that is inexpensive, but one that we understand our residents want and have now come to expect. I cannot believe that Cllr. Scully has failed to realise this, surely he does not think that readers of his report will not see this too? To give him the benefit of the doubt I will assume that this report indicates a commitment to continue with and support these policies.

 Involving residents

Next we move on to engagement with residents. The report accepts that we aim to be a consultative council, but states that we are not very good at it, making the sweeping claim that the Tories could do it so much better. The budget consultation is repeatedly cited as an example of poor results. I do not disagree that the budget consultation regularly gets a low response rate, but frankly this is unsurprising. Not many residents are that keen to get into the nitty gritty of financial policy and resource allocation no matter how nicely presented in a council leaflet. It is hard to squeeze all the difficult plans and decisions into a few neat soundbites that residents can express their views on. And whilst residents have strong views about the level of service they expect from their local authority, most are too busy going about their everyday lives to pull out a pencil and start disseminating the council’s spending plans for the next year. As an inclusive administration we want to ensure that people have the opportunity to comment if they wish, and to be open and honest about what our spending plans are and how those decisions were reached, however it would be unrealistic to expect a large number of residents to give the consultation anything more than a quick look. If there is anything residents are unhappy about we are confident that they will let the council know about it whether through formal consultation or other means. Yes we might increase the response rate marginally if we approached residents directly, but there is a cost attached to this that may not result in increased value in the responses. We are not about to go down the route of requiring residents to complete consultation forms, instead we must trust in the capacity of our residents to make their own decision about responding to requests to supply their views. Of course if we reduced the budget consultation to a question of whether residents would like to see a reduction in their council tax then of course there might be a bigger response, and I can tell you the results of that survey without printing a single form: ‘Yes I would like to pay less tax and still maintain the same level of services I receive.’ Who doesn’t want to pay less tax? But I’m not sure we would learn anything useful from such an exercise.

 Policy into practice – who does it better?

However if we move away from the sole example of the budget consultation and look at involvement with residents on a more direct level we should use the example of the Local Committees. It was the idea of the sitting Liberal Democrat administration to try to move away from the formal Area Committees to a format that allowed more involvement & engagement with local residents. We wanted residents to be more closely involved in making decisions about their area. We also gave each new Local Committee a budget to give them the power to actually make a difference to their physical environment. The areas represented by a committee were broken down to be more representative of their area and this also meant that some of the local committees were able to be chaired by Conservative councillors. This is where the Tories’ claims that they could do it all better falls down. The evidence and informal feedback from these Local Committees is that those committees chaired by Conservative members remain formal and bureaucratic in tone, and have moved the least away from the original area committee format, whilst those chaired by Liberal Democrat members have grown, developed and experimented with different ways of engaging with residents and have been successful in encouraging more residents to get involved in making decisions about their area.

 The report also criticises the council for being bureaucratic, yet evidence from council meetings & committees shows that it is the Tories who have the lust for bureaucracy, and who regularly ask for more procedure, process and formality. I have highlighted a number of such instances in my previous blog postings.

 Honesty about the cuts?

There are two items in the Tory report which do cause me concern. In the section looking at delivery of social services it states that the Conservative want to reduce residents’ dependency on the state. This is in the context of personalisation of social care and could be referring to a change of attitude. If so it is an ideology I would agree with. The Liberal Democrats believe that people should be trusted to be responsible for their own wellbeing, but the state should be there to support those who are vulnerable and unable to support themselves through no fault of their own. It is the basis of promoting an equal society – everyone should have an equal opportunity to participate in society. The empowering side of this is that people need to take responsibility for their own actions and so the welfare system should not encourage dependency, whether through institutionalised social services provision or a system of taxation that takes away the financial incentive to be self supporting. Where I begin to wonder whether it is this ideology the Conservatives are considering is when I see under later sections of the report the Tories make a promise to freeze council tax. The report fails to set out how exactly this will be managed through manipulation of budgets. Yes the report talks in vague terms about outsourcing more and greater use of the voluntary sector, but if they plan to maintain or indeed improve public services these measures will nowhere near cover the gap in the council’s finances. Sure they might be able to dip into the council’s reserves, but this will only cover them for a year or two, and once they are gone how will they continue to finance that level of service? What if an unexpected event occurs and they need to turn to reserves to deal with it? Both the recession and the swine flu pandemic were unexpected occurrences.

The Conservative group believe that they can make great efficiency savings because this council is “wasteful”. It would be a great surprise if the Tories, during their years in opposition, have managed to find a bulging surplus of funds that the Liberal Democrat administration, council officers and the audit commissioners had failed to identify, especially in this time of recession and funding cuts where the drive to find efficiency savings has been relentless.

 And if they had discovered this ‘pot of gold’  surely it would be in the best interests of residents to know about it now, so that it can be used more effectively to their benefit, rather than hanging on to that knowledge like a raft until they get their opportunity to use it to finance their manifesto promises?

 And so where will they find the additional funds to enable them to freeze council tax? This is where I turn back to Social services and the statement that they will reduce dependency on the state. What exactly do they mean by this? Could it mean raising the criteria for access to social services?

The Usual Suspects

I couldn’t wait to reach the end of the report (no really) as I wanted to see what solutions were being proposed to put right everything that it says is wrong with this council. Sadly it failed to deliver. The summary of the ills of the council came down to the usual refrain: Life Skills Centre bad; green garden waste scheme failure; poor response to budget consultation; tired leadership. I am surprised they didn’t throw in the bus shelter as well. One of the criticisms levelled at the Liberal Democrat leadership was that it was complacent, resting on the laurels of its four star rating. Well whilst I have heard gratitude expressed for the accolades, I have yet to hear a Lib Dem member declare themselves entirely satisfied with the workings of the council. Always there is the constant striving for improvements and efficiencies; new ways of looking at old problems. I have already mentioned the Local Committees as an example of implementing new ways of working. Also in this term the scrutiny committees were reviewed and reworked with the aim of making them more robust and useful. Policies are regularly reviewed and the Liberal Democrat group was well replenished at the last election with an influx of new members with fresh eyes and different experiences to bring to the table. I can’t see how the Liberal Democrats can possibly be described as tired, and nor do I see how the Tories can expect the public to trust them to do things better, with so little evidence or example to go on.

 Conservatism as Liberalism? The true contradiction

I will flatter Cllr. Scully a little now by describing him and his Conservative group in Sutton very much like a mini-me version of David Cameron and the National Tory party. Like Cameron, Scully knows that the public want to see a softer, more liberal Conservative party. Indeed Cameron himself said, in a magazine interview, that the country needs a liberal democracy, (not to mention Eric Pickles’ call for Lib Dems to “come home” to the Conservatives) and he has taken many of the traditional Liberal Democrat policies and adopted them as Conservative ideology: protecting the environment; localism; supporting the NHS; human rights. Yet both Cameron & Scully appear strangely disassociated from the rest of their party: a figurehead and mouthpiece but not representative of the Party collective. The public are still sceptical of the promises made and the turning over of new leaves. No one really believes that the grass root membership are fully behind their leaders, and worry that should they actually get into power either the mask will slip or the backbenchers will rise up to reaffirm the old order.

 Here in Sutton I have mentioned before that there are open climate change deniers amongst the Conservative members; as I have touched on above, claims of democratic principles and ripping through bureaucracy are a far cry from the reality of opposition members’ activities, so no matter what claims are made for a changed Conservative party in this published document, I see no substance in this report. This report may say many of the right things, but I am not sure that the local party representatives are fully committed to all of the pronouncements it makes, nor am I any the wiser as to how they will fund the changes they propose.

Liberal Democrat Leader’s Conference Speech

Back from the Liberal Democrat Conference. Apparently Nick Clegg’s big moment didn’t get much coverage on the national news as it clashed with an Obama moment! It was a bold speech and well worth a listen so here is a link to a video of the full speech.

Tuesday 8th September 10am

Woodcote Green Garden Centre & Nurseries Tour

One of the bonuses of being a councillor is that I get invited to interesting events like this tour of a local garden centre & nurseries to celebrate its 50^th anniversary.

I got to join my colleague Richard Bailey & his wife Susan along with the Mayor of Sutton, Margaret Court, and Sean Brennan, Leader of the Council for an informative tour ‘behind the scenes’ of the centre to see how the plants were propagated & nurtured to the point where they were ready for passing into the loving care of their customers.

I was fascinated by some of the machinery that was used to plant seeds singly and precisely and another to gently transfer seedlings into larger holders. We saw how the nurseries were experimenting with peat free soil and learnt about extending the growing season for plants to make them available out of their normal season.

 The centre has a very good employment policy which is backed up by the number of part time staff who become full time employees and stay on long term with this community based firm.

 The centre offered tours to the public throughout the rest of the week which proved to be very popular.

The manager of the nursery spoke to me about his ambition to have a recycling centre at the Garden Centre for use by local residents. I agreed to raise the matter at the Local Committee meeting being held that night where we would be discussing neighbourhood recycling centre.

Saturday 8th August 10.30am

Meeting about Wallington Library Wall

Cllr. Bailey & I met with Steve Winsor the library manager and Iris Tomlin & Graham Fudge of the Friends of Wallington Library and Gardens to discuss the wall in front of the library entrance. Plants had previously adorned the top of this wall however the plants were regularly vandalised or pulled out, and the planting areas collected litter. As the cost of maintaining the plants was unsustainable for the library it had been decided not to replace the plants and instead board up the indents and cover with bark chippings as a temporary measure. Richard & I were disappointed that this measure was considered necessary and wanted to meet with Mr Winsor & the Friends to see if alternative solutions might be available. Cllr. Bailey suggested robust spiky or spiny plants which may deter vandalism and advised that there was a way of planting using a special fixed mesh which made it extremely difficult for plants to be uprooted. It was agreed that retaining some form of planting would be preferred and investigation into the cost of the mesh would be undertaken. However the necessity and cost of weeding the plants was raised by the Friends who advised that they were already stretched beyond capacity maintaining the library gardens and would find it difficult to find volunteers able to take on any additional responsibility. A compromise was therefore reached whereby only three of the twelve spaces in the wall would be planted.

It was then that I suggested we find something more attractive to do with the remaining spaces. I had the idea of putting in mosaics, perhaps depicting themes related to the library & gardens, and if possible using recycled materials. This idea was greeted enthusiastically and led to discussion about how it might be implemented. It was thought that perhaps local schools would like to take it on as a project, with submissions from each school around a book theme; or perhaps a single school take it on as a business project managing it from start to end. I agreed to look into this in more detail with the possibility of public realm funding being sought to cover the costs. Now I just need to find someone with knowledge of making and fitting mosaics to advise on the practicalities of the project. If anyone has such a contact do please get in touch with me directly.

Tuesday 4th August 6.30pm

Meeting with residents about flooding issues

Cllr. Hall & I met with a group of neighbours in Beddington Gardens to hear about the flooding problems they were experiencing more regularly. The man whose house we were in had previously come to surgery to tell us about the problem and had insisted that we visit and watch a video he had taken during the most recent flooding.

When I watched the video I understood why he had been so keen for us to see it. I had expected to see puddles of water in the house and flood damaged furniture, but what the video showed was a river of fast flowing water pouring down his street lifting cars onto the pavement and damaging garden walls, and the water reaching up to the windows of the houses of this resident and his neighbours. And this was the result of a twenty minute downpour! The neighbours explained that the street had always been prone to flooding and storm drains had been put in many years ago. However the drains had proved unable to cope with the flash floods which seem to be becoming more common in recent years. The downpour that was videoed had caused the street to fill with running water in just ten minutes, and when the rain stopped it had disappeared within ten minutes, but leaving devastation in its wake.

 Colin & I inspected the area whilst the residents explained how the water built up along the South of Woodcote Road, running down the hill and then followed the camber of the road to be channelled into Beddington Gardens. It was obvious that the problem was largely due to the pattern of the roads on the natural landscape and Colin explained that there were measures that could be looked into to try to mitigate the effects of this and he agreed to follow this up.

Planning Appeal Hearing Date 52-62a Beddington Gardens

The new date for the appeal hearing for the above application has been notified as 7^th October 2009 10am at The Trinity Centre, Maldon Road, Wallington. I will be there speaking on behalf of residents opposing the appeal. The hearing is open to members of the public and it would be a useful indication of opposition to the plans if there was a good turnout of residents.

Saturday 18th July noon

St Mary’s Field Picnic

Jane St John, who heads up the Friends of St Mary’s Field, invited me to a picnic celebrating the installation of the new play equipment and picnic tables at the park. The Friends were set up to campaign to reinstall the playground equipment which had been removed in previous years due to vandalism. Jane brought the request to the Beddington & Wallington Local Committee and got support for the project. The committee recommended that the Friends approached Viridor to fund the project as this organisation was looking for projects to invest in locally, and the committee agreed to match fund any offer they received. We also made a commitment to the Friends that if Viridor did not fund the playground then we would support it out of the committee’s public realm money.

 Viridor did indeed agree to fund the project; the committee provided its match funding and also some additional picnic tables & benches at the request of the Friends.

 The equipment has now all been installed and we had lovely weather for the picnic. A good crowd of local families turned up. There were drinks, balloons, facepainting and a very popular candy floss machine. I had taken my three boys along and they thought they were in heaven getting candy floss. Good use was made of the play equipment and picnic tables. Jane thanked everyone who helped with the campaign and I took lots of photos.

Thursday 16th July 8pm

Onslow Gardens Residents Association (OGRES) AGM

I had been invited as a local ward councillor to give a talk at the Onslow Garden Residents Association (fabulously known as OGRES) AGM. My briefing was simply to talk about Wallington. Not only is this my specialist subject but there are a number of exciting projects currently in progress so I had lots of information to impart. I managed to rabbit on for about half an hour and take some questions. When the formal AGM was over the wine and nibbles at the back of the hall were calling but I found myself beset with further questions and quite a bit of casework. Eventually one kind gentlemen took pity and brought the wine to me.

It was actually a very pleasant evening and I love it when local residents show how passionate they are about their own locality and are willing to get involved in looking after it.

Monday 13th July 11.30am

Carers Partnership Board

The main items on the agenda were an update on the benefits and advice service held at the Carers Centre; monitoring of spending on carers projects and a presentation from Fiona Harris, consultant in Public Health, on Data Information.

 Karen Page from the Sutton Carers Centre spoke about how the benefits and advice service operated through successful partnership working between the Carers Centre, the Citizen’s Advice bureaux and Nonsuch Rotary Club. A Citizens Advice Bureaux worker attended the Carers Centre once a week to review carers’ benefits and finances to ensure that they were claiming everything they were entitled to and provide relevant advice. The Nonsuch Rotary club have been providing a team of volunteers to the Carers Centre for the past nine years to help carers with form filling. This service complements the CAB service.

This partnership had proved to work very well and had resulted in a huge amount of additional benefits or concessions identified for those carers using the service, while the service itself was provided at a very small cost. On behalf of the board I thanked both the Citizens Advice Bureaux and especially the Nonsuch Rotary Club volunteers for the work they have done assisting carers in the borough.

 Information on the various projects for carers being funded by the council were presented to the meeting. Details of the number of carers benefiting from the projects and the cost of the service were included.  It was requested that some decisions be made around reallocation of funds and new funding requests, however it was felt that it was necessary to review all the projects in more depth before such decisions could be made. It was agreed that it would be difficult to do this in a formal meeting so a working group was organised consisting of myself, Ken Fish, Simon Latham, Lorraine Backshall and Jane Stark who would meet to review the spending in more detail and report back to the next board meeting with any recommendations.

 Fiona Harris gave a presentation on data collected to consider projected older people’s needs in Sutton. Discussion followed around the implications of the findings for carers and also what other data it might be useful to collect.

 Rachael MacLeod also advised of the stakeholder reference groups which were being held to discuss Transforming Social Care and carers were encouraged to attend and provide their views. The groups will take place on 9^th September 2009, 18^th November 2009 and 13^th January 2010. All meetings will be held at Civic Offices in meeting room 2 between 3 & 5pm. Carers could just turn up to any of the sessions they preferred and funding is available to cover care to enable carers’ engagement. Contact Rachael at the Carers Centre for more information.

Thursday 9th July 7.30pm

Health & Well Being Scrutiny Committee

The main items on this agenda were a presentation by Sutton LINK about the work this organisation does and how they work with the Health & Well Being Scrutiny Committee; scrutiny of particular mental health services; and scrutiny of the management of long term conditions.

 The Mental Health scrutiny item was a follow up on the issues around the closure of the s136 secure suite that had been raised by the police at the previous meeting. When the police detain a person suspected of having mental health issues they have an obligation to take them to a place of safety where they can be assessed. This detention can legally last 72 hours although a shorter period is recommended as good practice. With the closure of the s136 suite at Sutton Hospital Sutton Police were having to transport people detained under this section to Tadworth Hospital – a much longer journey for both the patient and meaning extended use of police time.

A report on the s136 procedures by the South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust had been circulated with the agenda. I asked a number of questions to establish whether the transportation time was included in the detention period and whether the tables provided included the transportation time. I also pointed out that the figures did not account for people detained by the police but not accepted by the Trust for lack of capacity. I suggested that efforts should be made to collect this information in future.

It was also suggested that the Mental Health Trust offer some training to police officers to help them better identify persons who may be suffering from mental health problems and how to best deal with them.

 The report prepared for the committee by the Sutton & Merton PCT regarding the management of long term conditions contained some great double-speak which I just had to highlight. It mentioned referring patients for self help bibliotherapy resources. It was clarified that this meant patients were advised to read a book. I found the rest of the report quite non-specific about the services it offered to patients with long-term conditions and it became clear that this is an area that would benefit from increased attention. It was worrying that a specialist nurse has been trying to set up a neurology clinic at a local hospital but barriers to that were being raised by the Hospital Trust. It was felt that a specialist nurse-led practice could offer support in the later stages of illness and be able to offer information at a more appropriate time. This was in contrast to doctors who tended to see a patient when the condition was first diagnosed but then contact often fell away quite sharply.

 There may well be further scrutiny of this topic.