 borrow money to improve their housing stock, and Colchester Borough Homes cannot, it surely makes sense to transfer CBC’s housing stock to one or more housing associations. That way the borough doesn’t lose money by selling off houses and it can access loans to improve their quality.
It doesn’t matter who owns the housing stock if tenants get the best deal. My dad, for example, lives in a former council owned house in Northamptonshure that is now managed by a housing association called Spire Homes. He says that these days repairs are made much quicker and residents are listened to much better. That sounds like a win / win situation to me.
Oh, and mix up where new houses get built. Put them across the borough rather than creating future ghettoes.
One resident complained to me about some overgrown and litter strewn hedges near her home. To get the problem solved, I had to first get the borough council to litter pick the hedges and then get the county council to cut them back. It was impossible to get one council to do both jobs, so solving the problem took needless extra time and money.
It’s a simple example of not using joined-up thinking to benefit residents, but it is one of many. Similarly, Colchester needs to look at where neighbouring councils have facilities, people and expertise that can help the borough (and vice versa).
Take wheelie bins as an example. As things currently stand, it looks like we’re going to get the damned things whether we like them or not. However, if it turns out that people in central Colchester don’t want them but people in the rural parts of the borough do, I doubt the council will want to upgrade its fleet of refuse vehicles to serve only one part of the borough. In this case, why not work with Braintree (which has wheelie bins and the right kit) so they service the rural wards? It would give residents more choice for less investment.
Similarly, are there areas where we can share people and expertise within planning, marketing, parks and other areas? It’s time to start talking to our neighbours and collaborating in the best interests of residents, even if the council feels it is not necessarily acting in its own interests.
The recent debacle over Tollgate Village and the Northern Gateway has destroyed residents’ faith in the planning system.
Whether or not the planning committee was rigged for the second Tollgate meeting, the fact is that people believe it was. That destroys the credibility of the decision it made.
As a first step, it should become policy that any decision that comes back to the committee because of the DROP procedure must be assessed by the same councillors who made the original decision. If councillors are unavailable the date of meeting should be changed to one when they are able to sit.
Mile End has been right royally screwed over by becoming the location of thousands of houses, yet has little or no access to the millions of pounds raised by the council from the New Homes Bonus. The same is happening in Stanway and other parts of the borough. So we don’t have the money we need for community facilities or better infrastructure. This money needs to be removed from the core budget and communities affected by development must be given a say in how it is spent. Wychavon District Council is the exemplar in this respect – we should follow its example.
When the council consulted on moving the market from Culver Street to the High Street, the company that conducted the consultation also specialised in managing markets. That just looks terrible. All consultations should be conducted by companies with no potential interest in what happens after the consultation has taken place.
When Jason Cobb submitted a Freedom of Information request to find out how much the Council had spent on hauling me in front of the Governance Committee, it claimed it didn’t know because it couldn’t quantify how much time had been spent on the matter by officers including the Monitoring Officer / Head of Legal Services. Yet at the same time it charges Leisure World a ‘Fixed fee based on time recording data’.
It’s patently clear the Council didn’t answer the request because it was embarrassed by the answer – not because it didn’t know the answer.
To help restore the Council’s reputation for transparency, I suggest that all unanswered Freedom of Information requests over the last three years are independently assessed and the requested information released where appropriate.
It’s crazy that the council (or our two councils to be more precise) made its plans for the Creative Business Centre without any meaningful input from, for example, the Creative Co-op – which is behind the massively successful Waiting Room and the original Queen Street space for creative people. It’s just one example where the Council ignores grassroots expertise that can help it deliver much better ideas, plans, projects and places. Get out there and talk to people who really know their stuff – and listen.
So many Council tenders go to businesses outside the borough, not because we don’t have the expertise on our doorstep, but because the tenders aren’t promoted widely enough locally. Try and make tenders ‘local by default’ – it helps local businesses and keeps the money in our economy.
When you become a councillor, you get paper copies of all agendas and documents put in your pigeon hole. If you don’t pick them up, the council sends out an officer to deliver them in a sealed bag to your home.
It’s an abysmal waste of time and money. Abolish hard copy council papers and get them to councillors electronically. If they contain confidential information, password protect the pdfs.
There’s a seriously strong culture of being risk averse within the council. Even the simplest decision seems to get pushed up a chain of command, then is often referred to councillors (who tend to block it if it happens to put an opponent in even a faintly positive light). Not taking risks means not reaping unexpected rewards. Officers should be encouraged to be more independent, and to take risks without fear of getting landed with the blame.
Anyway, I could go on and on and on (town centre, parking, senior officers controlling the council rather than councillors, shifting individual focus from picking up litter to changing the borough, not grandstanding in the chamber on national issues you can’t change and instead focusing on local ones you can, etc etc etc).
Never thought I’d hear so much sense spoken by a Tory! Will need to address my predadices. Shame the Bouorgh has lost you Ben.The US House of Representatives is likely to vote this week on what is being called "Plan B" on avoiding the "fiscal cliff".
The Republican-sponsored legislation aims to extend current low tax rates for most families. Without such action by Congress, across-the-board income tax rates will rise on January 1.
The combination of $US500 billion in tax hikes and $US100 billion in spending cuts, which are scheduled to start in the new year, could push the US economy into recession, according to experts.
House Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, and Democratic President Barack Obama have been trying for weeks to avoid the fiscal cliff with an alternative tax and spending-cut deal. Boehner says he is offering this very limited alternative in case negotiations with Obama fail.
Here are key elements of Boehner's Plan B:
* A House vote is expected on Thursday.
* Boehner expressed confidence on Wednesday that the measure would pass but some House Republican aides were not yet predicting that.
* The White House has said Obama would veto the Boehner Plan B in the unlikely event it made it to his desk.
* Democrats are viewing Plan B as nothing more than a diversion from attempts to reach a broad deficit-reduction deal to avoid the fiscal cliff. They see it as a way for Boehner to give his conservatives a vote on a measure that they can tout as a tax-cut bill for all but the wealthiest and inoculate them against Democratic accusations of obstruction.
* Republicans argue that they are acting responsibly by providing a backstop against massive tax increases in case the Obama-Boehner negotiations fail.
* Once Plan B is dealt with, all attention will shift to whether Obama and Boehner can work out a broad agreement by December 31 or whether the country will go off the cliff. If that happens, there is speculation that some sort of deal might be worked out in the early weeks of January to avoid the full brunt of the tax hikes and spending cuts.
* Under Boehner's Plan B, current low tax rates would be made permanent for families with net annual incomes of up to $US1 million. The measure would let tax rates rise on income above $US1 million. Without action by Congress, all income tax rates are set to rise on January 1 with the expiration of tax cuts enacted a decade ago by then-President George W. Bush.
* Plan B includes a grab bag of other expiring tax provisions. It would permanently fix the alternative minimum tax so that middle-class taxpayers do not creep into a tax bracket intended for the wealthiest. Annual AMT fixes have prevented tens of millions of households from paying a higher tax rate.
Also included are moves to maintain estate taxes at their current 35 per cent rate per individual after a $US5 million exemption. The White House backs reverting to the 2009 estate tax levels of 45 per cent tax after a $US3.5 million exemption per individual, though some moderate Democrats back keeping the current law.
Plan B legislation would raise dividend and capital gains tax rates for those earning $US1 million and over to 20 per cent, from its current 15 per cent for most who pay such taxes. Most Democrats back raising the current 15 per cent tax rate on investment income to 20 per