Week 24.09

Tendring Topics…..on Line

A 'Change of Horses'


'Never change horses in mid-stream', insists the proverb. But that is precisely what Tendring Council has done. Circumstances having little or nothing to do with democratic choice have resulted in a tiny majority in the Council Chamber of the 'Tendring First' Coalition (Labour, Lib.Dems and others) councillors being replaced by an equally tiny majority of Conservatives. The next 'general election' of Tendring District councillors will be early in May 2011, so we are almost exactly in mid-stream.

In the 'bad old days' when, at least in most provincial authorities, political party labels meant no more than an indication of councillors' general political philosophy, this would have made very little difference. The composition of the committees and their chairmen might have changed but there would have been a general continuity of Council policy. Members would have been horrified at the thought of being required to vote at all times in accordance with local party policy rather than as common sense and conscience dictated.

All that has, of course, changed with the introduction of parliamentary style party politics into the Council Chamber. Now we have a local 'government' and 'opposition'. There is a 'cabinet' consisting of members of the majority party. These are each given responsibility for various aspects of the Council' functions. ''Cabinet Ministers' would be just a little too pretentious a designation even for 2009 AD, so they are called 'Portfolio Holders'. Needless to say, 'the Opposition' then has to have 'Shadow Portfolio Holders'. What pretentious nonsense it all is!
It is in the meetings of this 'cabinet' (a small minority of the full council whom we vote into office) that real decisions are taken. Party members on the Council are expected to support them loyally. Those who fail to do so 'have the party whip withdrawn'. This has, in fact, happened to members of both main parties.

Authority is thus concentrated in the hands of a very small group. This makes for efficiency and speed in decision-making, which was presumably the purpose of the change. It doesn't make it any more likely that the right decisions will be made. It also means that a tiny change in the Council's composition can result in an immediate reversal of policy.

Tendring Council's new administration can hardly have anticipated and made plans for their future in power. For the first time ever, I feel quite relieved that since World War II successive governments have progressively limited the scope of local authorities' freedom of action!

The Best of Intentions

Our MP, Mr Douglas Carswell, once commented that the out-going Tendring District Administration, 'couldn't run a bath'. It was an effective and memorable sound-bite, but it came ill from a member of an organisation so badly run it that has proved to be incapable of preventing many of its members from feathering their own nests at our expense*.

Tendring Council did and does, in fact, run a number of public services extremely efficiently. Its once-weekly refuse and recyclables collection, for instance, sets an example for other authorities to follow. There have been a few very serious mistakes and misjudgements though.

There was a bad slip-up over the ill-fated water feature in the town square. I still haven't heard an explanation of how it is that our water feature is a danger to health, while those (apparently identical) in other towns are considered to be safe. There's no sign as yet of that protective fence that was supposed to be erected round it. Could that be an idea that has been dropped by the new administration?

I think though that the very worst decision that the 'Tendring First' Council made was in creating a separate, privately-run regeneration company InTend, financing it with thousands of pounds of our money, and eventually seconding to it the Council's own regeneration staff. A recent issue of the Daily Gazette succinctly defines what was considered to be InTend's purpose; It would access grants the council could not, would be far removed from the humdrum business of emptying bins and other menial matters, and would recruit specialised staff.

It is a definition that underlines InTend's pointlessness. Councils have always employed highly professional specialised staff. When I was employed by the Tendring Council there was a barrister, two solicitors, an engineer and surveyor, accountants, environmental health experts, planning experts and, of course, one journalist (myself!). How many of those were ever required to concern themselves with the humdrum business of emptying bins and other menial matters? As for accessing grants that are not available to local authorities, I don't believe that there are any such grants. We know that InTend has made a number of applications but we haven't yet heard of any being successful.

I think that in deciding to create InTend the Council had simply swallowed whole the idea, taken by some politicians to be a universally acknowledged fact, that anything a public body can do, a private firm can do better and more economically. This simply isn't true, as the expensive failure of many put-out-to-tender services has amply demonstrated.

InTend's 'specialist staff' may not have been very good at raising money…..but they have been very good at raising expectations. While some of them were seeking funding, so far in vain, others were busying themselves working on ways in which, once the money was available, it could be spent on bringing currently dormant parts of our district back to a new life, regenerated in fact. £7 million would be spent in Brightlingsea, giving the Cinque Port town a revamped western promenade, converting the open-air swimming pool into a 'children's water park', providing a new sea water pool near Bateman's Tower, building a town museum and so on! Harwich's master-plan included pedestrianising the quayside, redeveloping Navyyard Wharf to include flats, and bringing the town's railway station up to date.

It now seems possible that the days of InTend, the author of these utopian visions, are numbered. Four of its nine directors have been removed from their posts by Tendring Council's new bosses, who have made it clear that they believe that InTend is a waste of tax-payers' money. If InTend is wound up what, ask the citizens of Harwich and Brightlingsea, is to come of those plans that offered their towns such a dazzling future?
The Daily Gazette thinks it has the answer. 'InTend may end, but work cannot', urges its headline. 'We don't care who regenerates the area. We just want someone to ensure urgent projects, such as the regeneration of Jaywick, Harwich and Brightlingsea, take place'. And so say all of us.

But the fulfilment of those more-than-ambitious regeneration plans depended upon InTend obtaining the grants that were claimed to be inaccessible to mere local authorities. So far there has been no sign of them, and I don't think that there ever will be. However, I could be wrong. I hope that before winding InTend down, the new Conservative administration will make absolutely sure that there isn't one or more unexpectedly in the pipeline.

Having done that, they will be in a position to assure the people of Brightlingsea, Harwich and elsewhere that their areas' regeneration plans are at least as likely to come to fruition as a result of direct action by the Council as they would have been by InTend………but that they will have to take their place in the queue of other council commitments funded by grants that are available to local authorities, by ever-more-meagre central government support, and by Council Tax.

'InTend', I have no doubt, was a clever play on words evoking both 'in Tendring' and firm 'Intention'. Perhaps its creators should have remembered that, 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions'.

*The Pot and the Kettles!

While Mr Douglas Carswell, our MP, has been loud in his denunciations of other Honourable Gentlemen (and Ladies) making hay, at our expense, while the sun shone, it seems that he himself isn't totally beyond question, though I am quite sure that he hasn't stepped a millimetre outside those remarkable rules that our legislators have made for themselves.

Some though may question why, for the performance of his parliamentary duties, he found it necessary to rent a second home in Thorpe-le-Soken at a cost (to us of course) of £1,250 a month. Possibly he needed a home base within his constituency and that was all that was available.

In that case he will have been delighted to read in the Daily Gazette that they have found a recently built vacant apartment that would be eminently suitable for his purpose. It is a two bedroom first-floor flat overlooking the sea in Southcliff Hall, Marine Parade East (definitely an up-market area of Clacton), with a lounge, kitchen, bathroom, gas central heating, double glazing and car parking. The rent is only £535 a month, less than half the rent for his Thorpe home. If he moved there now it would be a pity about the £32,000 that he has spent (and claimed back as expenses) on refurbishing the Thorpe-le-Soken house to make it suitable for him to live in. However he would presumably be able to take with him some of his purchases; the 'love seat' easy-chair (the imagination boggles!) for instance, together with bed, mattress and bedding, chairs, sofa, fridge freezer, washing machine, radio, tv, vacuum cleaner, electric iron and tv set.

Mr Carswell told The Gazette that he doesn't feel the need to pay back any of the money he has claimed. 'Every single time I have claimed for money I always think whether I can justify it to the editor and readers of the Gazette'. It is nice to know that we are in his thoughts on those occasions!

His Lordship is right!

It isn't very often that I find myself in total agreement with Lord Hanningfield, leader of Essex County Council, whose party has just been returned to power at Chelmsford with an increased majority. I do though share his views entirely on the subject of the BNP. The day after the election, the East Anglian Daily Times quoted him as saying, 'The most disturbing thing about this election has been the BNP getting a sizeable percentage of the result. It's very depressing just knowing people vote for them. People who vote for them are not in favour of the value of the individual. The expenses row is one thing, but the BNP is the least genuine of all the parties.

Many people did, in fact, vote for them…..not least within our own Tendring District. In the eight county council wards in our district a total of 3,974 electors put their cross against the names of BNP candidates, 1,883 (almost half) within Clacton's three wards.

I would perhaps be rather less concerned about this had I not just watched the two part drama documentary on tv Channel 4 'The Birth of Evil; Adolf Hitler'. This graphically demonstrated how in Germany in the late 1920s and early '30s, in economic turmoil and disillusion not unlike that which prevails in Britain today, the young Adolf Hitler (a brilliant orator 'with a vision'!) joined a struggling minority political party. In it he managed to supplant its leader, change its policies into something resembling those of the BNP today and eventually bring the whole of Germany under his fanatical rule.

At least the voters did keep the BNP out of the Council Chamber at Chelmsford and increased the number of representatives of the Lib.Dems. for whose party I had voted. They're still a small minority though.

The same cannot be said for the European elections. The BNP has secured representation there for the first time, and UKIP has increased its strength both in Europe and throughout the UK. Britain now has increased the number of its representatives in the European parliament who firmly believe that that parliament should be abolished and that we should leave the EU!

I shall probably return to this matter next week when I have had an opportunity to look at the election results more closely. In the meantime I derive just a little comfort from the fact that the total turn-out was very low and that UKIP achieved its result with only a tiny increase in its share of the national vote.