Recently, in the local press and on Radio Cornwall, Cllr Alex Folkes, who is the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats on Cornwall Council, raised the issue that some senior offices in Cornwall Council had been supplied with some nice Audi cars as part of their job. Particularly he drew attention to the fact that two senior officers in the Fire Service had been bought an Audi A5 and A6 respectively. I thought this issue was worth a closer look.

Interestingly, accordingly to information provided to me, the policy of providing Audi cars was begun in 2008 when the Liberal Democrats were running Cornwall County Council. Of the two specific cars bought for the Fire Chiefs, the first one was purchased in May 2009, one month before the current Council was elected when, and you’ve guessed it, the Liberal Democrats were running the council.  The 2^nd was purchased in August 2009, just a few weeks after the current administration took over. I am sure at this point the order would have been in place for several weeks and I also would not have expected the priority for the new cabinet to have been checking what cars had been ordered for the Fire Officers.

So it would appear that Cllr Folkes is in fact criticising his own party’s policy and management of ‘company’ cars for the Fire Officers and blows a large hole in his assertion that somehow we, the Conservative led administration, have spent money on luxury cars for Fire Chefs whilst having to make savings in our budget. Any inference from him that we have wasted taxpayers money lies firmly at the feet the Liberal Democrat party – but then those of us trying to sort out the mess they left behind at County Hall will not be at all surprised.

Cornwall Council is not axing all Library Managers as claimed. 

On Saturday, Cllr Alex Folkes emailed me to ask about the proposed changes to the management structure of Cornwall’s Libraries. Yesterday, I was attending the funeral of a close family friend and so had not been able to reply to his email. I was then very surprised to find that yesterday morning he had sent out a press release without waiting for my response. However, here is my response to his statement.

Earlier this year the Council took the decision not to close any of its libraries, as other local authorities have had to do, but to maintain the current network acrossCornwall.  However, in order to achieve this and meet the current budget restraints, some tough decision have had to be made.

The budget set by the Council called for approximately £1m of savings to be made from within the Face to Face service, which includes Libraries. These savings were outlined in a report discussed by the Council’s Communities Overview and Scrutiny Committee last month.  Cllr Folkes is a member of this committee and, indeed, took part in this debate so I am not sure why he is suddenly raising this issue now.

The Council is bringing its face to face services together into one service.  A series of formal and informal consultations have been held with library and other face to face staff and the unions, as a result a new staffing structure has been developed. The key priority at this time is to maintain our current number of libraries and, where we can, to co-locate other council services into our local libraries. We are also committed to ensuring that we maintain the number of staff we have available to deal with the public day to day. It was clear from the consultation that the majority of staff felt it was crucial to have a supervisor in each library / one stop shop. The only way of achieving this within the current budget is to make savings within the management and back office staff – something the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government have continually encouraged local authorities to do.

The current proposals will ensure that an experienced member of staff is on site in every library, whilst providing a senior management structure to oversee the service to ensure quality and efficiency. There will also be a central specialist team of managers who will provide support in particular areas, such as youth or IT. This will help ensure consistency of service delivery across all areas.

I am confident that the current proposals are the best way of achieving the savings that need to be made whilst maintaining the best possible level of service within our libraries.

Far from wanting to ‘strip our libraries of our best staff’ as Cllr Folkes suggests, I am seeking to ensure that we get the best out of our staff and the greatest value for money for the Cornish tax payer. I believe that the vast majority of library users will not notice any decline in the service they receive. However, I will ensure that this is monitored and have asked for a review after these changes have been in place for 6 months.

A proposal was put to Cornwall Council’s Corporate Resources Committee today that the council should support a Public Holiday for Cornwall on St Pirans Day which is 5^th March.

This has come about because the Government is consulting on moving one of our May Public Holidays to another time of the year. One suggestion is for a Public Holiday on St George’s Day. There are some, however, who think that we should lobby the Government to make St Piran’s Day a holiday in Cornwall instead, while the rest of the country has a holiday on another day. The argument for this is that it will promote Cornwall and be a boost to tourism.

Now let me say that there are few people who are more proud to be Cornish than I am. I have a tattoo on my arm of the Cornish flag with the words ‘Cornish and Proud’ to demonstrate this. I am all for promoting our Cornish heritage, culture and the beautiful land we live in. I am also very happy to celebrate the Irish monk who travelled to these shores hundred of years ago and first brought the Christian faith to Cornwall (something many of those promoting St Piran’s Day seem to conveniently overlook).

However, I really am not sure this suggestion is a workable way of achieving this. Having a Public Holiday just for Cornwall sounds lovely, and it may score a few Brownie points, with some people, to be seen to be promoting this idea. But how would it really work in practice? Would national companies like banks be happy for their staff to take the day off in Cornwall and then be at work when the rest of the country is off? How could they operate when there is no one in the head office to process payments? What about businesses like mine who do a lot of work with businesses in the rest of the country? They will be trying to contact us to do some business when we are not there. Then when they have a Public Holiday, we are at work and want to do business with them, but they won’t be in. I wonder how much business Cornwall would miss out on?

I am also not sure the tourist argument stands up either. It may be a holiday here and we can put on lots of events to celebrate – but if the rest of the country is at work they won’t be able to come along and join us.  One person at the committee even argued that there are a lot Cornish people who live in Plymouth who would love to come on a day trip and celebrate St Piran’s Day – seemingly missing the point that if they live and work across the Tamar in Plymouth they won’t be getting the day off!

To me this is a lovely romantic idea that is simply impractical and far from boosting our local economy, is actually likely to be detrimental to local businesses.

The committee actually voted in favour of putting this proposal back to the Full Council (by the Chairman’s casting vote). When it comes to council I am sure there will be lots of posturing to show who is more truly Cornish than the others – maybe I should just suggest we all get our tattoos out!

Well the last few days have been ‘interesting’ – interesting enough even to bring me out of my blogging hibernation. 

The report in the Daily Telegraph regarding Cornwall Council’s spending on payment cards has certainly brought out the worst in both the press and media and sadly some of my fellow councillors. 

Now I don’t want to regurgitate all that has been said in the past week. But we now know the facts – Cornwall Council does not have any credit cards – the cards used are payment cards, similar to a debit card; No interest has been incurred as a result of using these cards; using these cards saves the council thousands of pounds a year in bank charges and processing costs; no evidence whatsoever has been found of the cards being used inappropriately or dishonestly. Every transaction that has been looked into has had a very reasonable and justifiable explanation. 

Yesterday there was a special meeting at County Hall to enable councillors to question senior officers about this matter. At this meeting I stated that for me the sadness thing about this whole episode has been the demonstration of the complete lack of trust some of my fellow councillors have shown in our council staff. There were far too many of them  jumping to conclusions last weekend, choosing to believe the very worse, that council staff had been abusing public money, without any evidence to support that judgement. 

I was saying for several days that we had to get more details before drawing any conclusions and that I was sure we would find that the vast majority of payments were completely in order. In fact I was wrong – so far every payment has been proved to be in order. 

One councillor went on BBC Radio Cornwall yesterday saying that this episode had damaged the Council’s reputation – when actually this was the councillor who had done as much as anyone to perpetuate the myth the council was misusing public funds and personally responsible for much of any damage caused. 

The usual leading Lib Dem councillors were all too happy to run to their blogs as well as the press and media to sling the mud. Surely they should get all the facts straight before using words such as ‘scandal’ and ‘astounding’. Even at yesterday’s meeting they were trying to find any way possible of getting some mud to stick. Cllr Folkes, the Lib Dem Deputy Leader, even suggested that the officers should now look into every payment made on the cards (all those under £500 as well as over) – I dread to think how much that would cost the Cornish Taxpayer in officer time. When it became clear that was not going to be supported he then aimed his attacks at the Communications Department.

There are a number of lessons that need to be learnt from this saga, especially in the way that Freedom of Information Requests are handled by the council and making sure the information provided is accurate. A review will now be carried out and as the Chairman of the Council’s Transparency and Communications Working Group I will be involved in that review and will ensure all the lessons that need to be learnt are. 

But I suggest the most important lesson that needs to be learnt is by certain councillors. They need to learn to get the facts before jumping to conclusions. They were all too quick to say that the council’s finances were out of control and that money was being spent inappropriately – both of which have been shown to be completely unfounded and untrue. I understand the urge they feel to jump to criticise the administration at every possible opportunity. But the way that our council staff have been treated over this issue is totally unacceptable and I feel some of them are now due an apology. I’m not holding my breathe!

Yesterday I attended the Planning Policy Advisory Panel. I do not usually attend this meeting but wanted to do so on this occasion. This was because they were to debate a vital piece of work that will be very significant to the St Austell area.

The policy was entitled -

Eco Communities Vision Statement/ St Austell, China Clay and St Blazey Regeneration Action Plan.

I won’t bore you with all the details now, if you want to know more you can view it here http://democracy.cornwall.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=663&MId=2769&Ver=4

The key element for me was to establish a policy for St Austell and the surrounding area that means that any applications for development that come forward will have to meet certain criteria. These are:

To deliver the Community Strategy’s vision for Cornwall in the St Austell, China Clay and St Blazey Regeneration Action area development must demonstrate it;

• Is transformational regeneration of the area:
• of a large enough scale to bring about significant change.
• achieving the highest environmental standards and quality of design.
• raising communities’ aspirations and behaviour change.
• maximising the number of trips by non-car means.
• Delivers new jobs and economic growth at a minimum of 1 job per house;
• Delivers infrastructure that meets the needs of existing and proposed communities, including affordable housing;
• Delivers development that is environmentally, socially and economically sustainable;
• Productively reuses previously developed or despoiled land;
• Safeguards critical minerals reserve;
• Maximise the opportunities to connect communities to the coast.

Basically this means that if this policy is adopted, any planning applications in the future will have to meet these standards before they will be considered.

Throughout all of my lifetime St Austell has suffered from development that has almost exclusively been about housing and little else. As a result the East part of the town is one of the most densely populated parts of Cornwall, yet we do not have the roads, jobs or community facilities to cope. Developers have been able to get away for too long with just building more and more houses without investing for the benefit of the people who will live there.

I was allowed to speak on behalf of St Austell and urged the panel to support this policy, however, I was quite disappointed that some local councilors where less than enthusiastic about this policy and at one point seemed to be arguing against it. But I am very happy to say that in the end the panel voted to recommend the policy to the Cabinet for adoption. This will now hopefully happen in January.

Clearly the background to this policy is the Eco-Town. But it does not mean the Eco-Town developments will automatically happen as each application for the numerous sites will have to be determined on their own merits. But what it does mean is that once in place we can put an end the endless building of houses without the investment in jobs, infrastructure improvements and facilities that we so desperately need. And that has to be good news!

I have been listening with great interest to the response from the people of Cornwall to the proposed emergency budget cuts the Council are currently considering. There have been a lot of views expressed from all sorts of perspectives.

There is one topic that seems to keep coming up that I wanted to comment on – the suggestion that in order to save money the number of councillor should be cut from its current level of 123. Graham Smith from BBC Cornwall particularly has raised this subject on his blog (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/grahamsmith/2010/10/how_would_you_spend_73983240.html) and discussed at length on Radio Cornwall yesterday.

I think there is a great deal of misunderstanding and assumptions being applied to this argument.  As a new councillor last year (this was the first time I had stood for election for anything) I would like to make a few comments from my perspective.

Most councillors are dedicated and hard working – as in any group of people you will find some who are not, but that does not make everyone else lazy. Even if we reduce the number as is being suggested, there is no guarantee that we would only end up with the hard working ones.

I do not think anyone is just in it for the money – for most of us there are much easier ways to earn £12000 pa.

We have already reduced the number of councillors in Cornwall. Before Unitary there were well over 300 County and District Councillors and the 123 of us now share all the responsibilities that the previous councils had. In fact to personalise it, there used to be 3 councillors for my ward (St Austell Poltair); one County Councillor and two Restormel Councillors – so I am now doing the work that used to be done by three people. Those three councillors used to cost the tax payer around £18000 a year. So there is already a saving of roughly 30% being made.

Most councillors I know are already working well over the 25 hours a week it is suggested the role should take. If you reduce the number then it will mean fewer councillors to cover all the committees and therefore more meetings for each to attend. Also bigger electoral divisions would mean more casework and more local issues to deal with – which would also mean more time. So it would not take much for the role to become a full time job (many councillors already feel it is). If this was to be the case then  people would not be able to have other part time work and we would end up with only the retired (or semi) and people with independent income being able to stand. The alternative would be that the council would have to pay a substantially bigger allowance to enable people be able to afford to do the role. Therefore it is doubtful that Graham Smith’s suggestion would actually save any money.

Comparisons seem to be being made between Cornwall Council and the devolved governments of Wales and Scotland. However, this is like comparing a rugby team with a netball team – they are completely different bodies that have different roles. Although these devolved governments carry some of the responsibilities of the unitary council, they do still have district and city councils ‘beneath’ them who carry out a great deal of the roles Cornwall Council does. I know there are some of us who would like a devolved government for Cornwall, but we are not there yet and Cornwall Council cannot be compared in that way.

I really enjoy being a councillor and I fully accept that when you put yourself up for election you are fair game for people to have a pop at. However, I do feel it is very easy for people who have never served as a councillor to criticise those that do without really seeking to understand the role and the time involved – in fact 2 years ago I was just like that. This council has already voted to decline increasing our allowances by around £2500 pa (and rightly so) that we would have been perfectly entitled to claim. Maybe some of those who are currently calling for us to be cut down in number and accusing us of protecting ourselves (which just is not true) should put themselves up for election next time around and experience what it is really like.

Personally I feel the current number of 123 councillors is about right when taking everything into account. But I accept there are a small number who do need to up their game and demonstrate that we all provide value for money for the people of Cornwall.

On Tuesday this week I had the privilege to be at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham and attended the session on Public Services. I say privilege not because of some blind party loyalty, but because during that session, those of us present, were introduced to Katharine Birbalsingh, a deputy head teacher from London. Her speech, which only last around 10 minutes was one of the most inspiring things I have ever heard on education. You can watch it here -  www.livestream.com/conservatives/video?clipId=flv_3e5b6ef6-9f1e-4a83-8677-a5f16c55e6fb. Katherine’s part starts at approx 1hour 5 minutes in.

As someone who has been a school governor for almost 15 years, I have experienced many of the issues she has touched on. Maybe not in the extremes that she describes, as we are blessed with some very good schools here in Cornwall and don’t have to deal with some of the major issues that inner city schools do. But I have seen the seeds of much of what she describes in the system and the policies of the Labour Government. A lack of competition, expectation, responsibility and discipline have hampered both our teachers and the children they serve, and I believe these things are actually a contributing factor in many of the social problems we see today.

Katherine is clearly someone who cares passionately about children and education and I imagine it took a great deal of courage to speak out in the way she did. So I was amazed to read in the papers that she has now been ‘sent home’ as a result of her appearance at the party conference for, it is reported, bringing the school she teaches at into disrepute. (I am tempted to say at this point that if a pupil was treated in this way there would be outrage!)

Now, we do not know all of the details behind this action by the school and there may be other factors at play. But, taking things at face value, this does look an over reaction. All Katherine did was told the conference of her experience as a teacher and what she felt the key issues were that needed to change. She did not criticise her fellow professionals or any school – what she did was challenge the system that I know many teachers feel bound up in.

Now I am well aware that not all teachers will agree with all that Katherine said to the conference. But much of what she said made perfect sense, to me anyway, and I suspect that many people would simply view her comments as common sense.

This action by her school does seem to simply confirm many of the things that Katherine presented as being wrong with our education system. If her school don’t want her then Michael Gove could do a lot worse than giving her a job in the Education Department – just the person we need to bring about the change required!

Every since the decision was made to close Carclaze Infant School in St Austell and amalgamate with the Junior School into a new building, I have been campaigning to retain at least part of the old infant school for community use.

The school building is well over 100 years old and is part of our local history. It was originally built by the local community of Tregonnisey and Carclaze, and I believe it was important that the community was able to have a say in its future.

Clearly, we are all aware of the financial pressures on Cornwall Council and the potential capital receipt from the sale of the property would have been very attractive. Aware of this I came forward with a proposal to the Cabinet of Cornwall Council. With the support of other local Councillors and the Town Council, I proposed that part of the property (the Skol Kensa annex) be retained and if desired the main part of the school cold be put up for sale.

I was aware that Stepping Stones Pre-School had made a request for the annex to be made available to them. They are currently operating from the hall at Carclaze Chapel which is less than ideal. The pre-school provide a very important service for local families and it would be good to see them be able to expand and have more suitable facilities. The Skol Kensa annex would be ideal for them.

In the light of the current financial pressures I must admit that I was unsure how successful we would be with this bid. However, I am very pleased to be able to report that I have received confirmation that a decision has been made to retain the Skol Kensa annex and make it available to Stepping Stones. The details of this arrangement need to be confirmed so there is still some work to be done. However, the decision has been made in principle and I am delighted.

What happens to the main building remains to be seen, however, I am pleased that we have managed to retain part of this building for the community. The Cabinet of Cornwall Council often come in for a great deal of flak. But it is good to be able to give them credit, that in this case, they have listened to the desire of the local community and made, in my opinion, the right decision.

At yesterdays Full Council meeting at Cornwall Council we debated a recommendation from the Council’s Webcasting Working Group – of which I am a member. I know others have already commented on their blogs about this, however, I had to rush to further meetings for the rest of the day yesterday so this is the first opportunity I have had to comment. Although others have already said most of what there is to say, I wanted to add my views to clearly demonstrate that this is a cross party issue.

In March this year the Council passed a motion to run a 6 month trial of live webcasting of Full Council meetings and also to provide a recording on the meetings online for people to watch. As the 6 months are up the working group presented a report to the Council with a recommendation that the trial be extended until April 2011, and also that the main committee room be kitted out so that Cabinet Meetings and other Committee Meetings could also be webcast and recorded.

There is no doubt that the trial has been a success with over 17000 views. However, this is not the real issue for me. The point is not primarily how many people watch. It is the fact that as a Council we are making ourselves open, transparent and accessible. I am sure among those who have watched online will be many people who have never attended a council meeting and have had the opportunity to observe first hand how we conduct our business.

We live in a day when the public are becoming more and more used to government and politicians at all levels being accessible. Gone are the days when we all had to rely on the newspaper journalists to filter what we are told – we all expect to be able to see first hand for ourselves.

This is why I believe it is essential the council continue to webcast their meetings and in fact extend this to include and Cabinet meeting where many of the key decisions are made, as well as other meeting such as plannign in the future.

Therefore, although I was pleased that the councillors gave their overwhelming support to continue the webcasting, I was very disappointed, and in fact slightly confused at the attitude of some councillors. I am not going to name names here, but if you watch back the recording of the meeting I am sure you can see for yourself who I am referring to (the archive will be available very soon at www.cornwall.gov.uk ). Some councillors (sadly mainly from my own party) seem to think this is some sort of self-indulgent trip we are on, rather than seeing it as an important step to engage more effectively and widely with the people who elected us.

In the end the fudge that was created by and amendment that was voted through means that although we can now webcast Cabinet Meetings, we did not pass the recommendation that allowed us to equip the committee room in order to do so. However, I suspect that as the authority has been given to webcast Cabinet Meetings, the money for the equipment for us to do so does not actually need to the passed through Full Council and so my hope is that a way can be found to do this.

I am sure we will continue to face resistance as we  try to drag the ways of the council into the 21 century. However, I believe that we have now set a course that it will be very difficult to pull back from, and although things may take a little longer than some of us would like, we will get there in the end.

Tomorrow will see the 2^nd reading in the House of Commons of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill 2010. This is the bill that will introduce two significant bits of legislation. The first is to hold a referendum next May to offer the country the chance to change the voting system to the Alternative Vote system. The 2^nd is to change the basis on which constituency boundaries are decided to equalize the size of all Parliamentary constituencies.

The second part of this bill has attracted a great deal of comment in Cornwall as it opens up the possibility of having a cross boundary constituency with Devon. Whilst I understand and generally support the principle of this, I think all of us in Cornwall would much prefer to see Cornwall retain its own constituencies. Clearly there should be something within the bill that recognizes cultural and social boundaries and that they should be given more weight than the need for boundaries to be the same size where appropriate. I’m not going to say much more on this as I don’t have much to add to what has already been said. I know that several of the Cornish MPS will be trying to get the bill amended to protect our Cornish constituencies.

However, amidst all the debate about boundary changes, little attention has been given to the other part of the bill. If it is passed we will then be having a referendum to change our voting system next year and then be subjected to a prolonged period of campaigning between now and next May.

I have to say that for the life of me I cannot see why on earth we are having this piece of legislation at this point in time. I completely understand that this was one of the ‘prices’ David Cameron had to pay in order to get Nick Clegg’s support for the coalition Government. But what is the rush?

It is reported that this referendum and the resulting ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ campaigns, which will be funded by public (that is taxpayers’ – which is you and me) money is going to cost up to £80million. This at a time when we are all facing huge cuts in public spending. Surely there are more important things we could spend that money on at this time.

Some of the Lib Dems have been quick to criticize the Conservative led Government for some of the cuts that have had to be made. Yet none of them seem to be offering to delay this referendum in order to use the money for something far more worth while. For instance the £80million could be used to build at least 10 of the new schools that recently had to be cancelled, or could be used to fund some of the new cancer drugs that we keep hearing the NHS cannot afford.

I think it shows that despite all their talk of fairness and putting the public services first, their desire to change the voting system for one that they think is more likely to favour their party if actually the thing they are most interested in achieving now that they actually have some influence in Government.

I wouldn’t mind so much but the system being offered is really a fudge. Nick Clegg himself last year called it a ‘miserable compromise’.

Some of the arguments put forward in support of AV say that it is a fairer system. But how can it be fair that some voters 6^th choice vote end up having the same voting power as someone else’s first choice. And the result could be that the candidate people dislike the least gets in rather than a positive choice. Doesn’t seem very fair to me.

Another argument put forward is that it will bring an end to the dominance of the two main parties (of course the Lib Dems would like to see that happen) and stop ‘safe’ seats where very little changes from one election to the next. But the results from the recent Australian election which was conducted under AV do not support these arguments.

There the minor parties still did not get anywhere enough seats in relation to their share of the vote – the Green party polled just under12% of the votes but still only won one seat. And there are seats that have been safe for one of the two main parties for two generations and AV has done nothing to change it.

The fact is we all know the Holy Grail for the Lib Dems if full Proportional Representation. That is what they really want and they see AV as a small step towards it. But all that means is the likelihood that should they ever be in a position of influence again in the future (God help us!) that they will push for full PR and we will be subjected to the whole debate, Yes and No campaigns and further waste of money all over again.

I am all for the country being able to have a say on whether or not they want to change the voting system. But I would much rather we just waited a while until the country was in a position to justify spending vast sums of money on this type of electoral change and did it properly, offering the country a full range of options – retain the current system, AV or full PR, or any other option for that matter, and get it all over and done with once and for all.

What we are about to be subjected to is a complete waste of money at this time and I doubt will actually achieve anything worthwhile.

My feeling is that despite being incredibly unpopular will most of the MPs I have heard from this bill will just get through Parliament, but that in the end the country will reject a change to AV in a referendum.

Then the real fun will begin as we see how the Lib Dem back benchers react as their main aim for supporting the coalition is taken away from them.