Augusta Park News

Yesterday I and the rest of the Alamein Lib Dem team visited Augusta Park to speak to residents about the issues that matter in their area.

While the majority of residents were happy with the new estate several raised concerns about specific issues  with which I am or will be dealing.

Many shared my view that the proposal to divert Smannell Road through the new estate is illogical, unacceptable and just plain stupid. However the government inspector and the government have decreed it will happen.

A number of street lights are still not working a year after they were installed and many sections of road and footpath are also unfinished.  I have asked for an update on when these jobs will be finished.

Parking is in many places badly managed and I have referred this to the council’s planning and highways departments.

Urgently needed are dog waste bins for the open space between Hedgerow Walk and Smannell Road. I have formally requested these be discussed at the next Smannell parish council meeting. I want to see some installed as soon as possible.

Children’s centres threatened by county council cuts

“One of the few policies from the last Labour Government that received universal praise was the setting up and funding of Children’s Centres” says Romsey’s County Councillor, Mark Cooper. “Sure Start, provided mainly in the Children’s Centres, is designed to give all children, whatever their background or financial circumstances, an equal start in life”.
 
There are 81 Children’s Centres in Hampshire and they are funded in full through the ‘Sure Start Early Years Childcare Grant’ totalling £16.9 million in 2010/2011. The Coalition Government has retained the £16.9 million grant for the coming financial year.
 
“Unfortunately, the cash is not ring-fenced” says Cllr Cooper. “The County Council is proposing to divert some of the Sure Start grant away from the very young and sometimes vulnerable children who benefit from the work of Children’s Centres to other parts of the education budget. The County’s plan is to cut the number of centres from 81 down to 53, a 35% reduction, and stripping £6 million out of the Sure Start budget. The £6 million will then be used elsewhere in Hampshire’s education system”.
 
The consultation on these changes will run until 14th March. “I urge all of those who are concerned about the welfare of young children to look at the Consultation Document on Hampshire County Council’s website and to contact the Save Our Children’s Centres campaign on [email protected]“.
 
The Hampshire Cabinet  member who is solely responsible for taking the decision on the future of Hampshire’s Children’s Centres is Cllr Roy Perry.

Swallowfields News

Thank you to everyone who has returned my recent Swallowfields survey. I and your town councillors are currently working on the issues raised and will report back in due course.

Several of you mentioned the missing road sign at the junction of Swallowfields and Cricketers Way. This is the second time in two years that the sign has gone missing. I am pleased to report that a replacement sign has been ordered and will be installed in the next four weeks.

Council staff have also been out to clear rubbish dumped in the nearby stream.  We will continue to monitor the area to ensure this stream and other open spaces are kept clean.

I am currently discussing with Highways officers the options for improvements to traffic management and traffic calming in the area. This is on the agenda for the residents meeting in the church centre on Monday night. All local residents are welcome.

Roman Way Forum

The Roman Way Forums have become regular events over the past year and some of the main areas of debate have always been traffic and highway repairs. At the last meeting it was agreed to hold a special meeting just ot discuss these two items.

This meeting has now been agreed for Monday 21st February at 6:30pm. A representative of Test Valley Borough Council will be available to explain changes to local roads and traffic maangement in the light of the Augusta Park MDA. Also present will be a representative  of Hampshire Highways to answer questions on highway repairs and maintenance. Andover North county councillor Pam Mutton has also been invited to attend to answer questions.

Notes of  the previous meeting are attached here Minutes of Roman Way Forum 15th January 2011 together with the agenda for Mondays meeting Roman Way Forum Agenda 21st February

All residents are welcome – see you there

Letter to the Times

Yesterday I was more than willing to sign a letter submitted to the Times by Cllr Richard Kemp and many other Lib Dem council leaders and group leaders.  

I reproduce it in full below because unfortunately you need to subscribe to read it on the TImes website. You can also read it and comments about it on the following websites.

Our Letter to the Times | But what does Richard Kemp think?
Lib Dem council leaders attack Pickles over speed and scale of cuts
Ian Eiloart: That Lib Dem letter in full
I won’t add anything else I believe  Cllr Kemp’s letter sums it up.

 The letter:

Sir,

Local government is playing its part in tackling the country’s deficit and advancing the Coalition’s key aims of Localism and the Big Society. But local – and central – government are being badly let down by the Communities & Local Government Secretary of State who appears unwilling to lead the change that’s so desperately needed.

Local government has made efficiency savings of 3% each year for the past eight years – in stark contrast to the run-away spending of central government admittedly under the previous administration. We’ve also been planning for further saving – much further – since the true state of the economy became apparent six months ago.

What has been delivered is a difficult cuts package across all government departments but clearly the most severe is to local government. These cuts will have an undoubted impact on all frontline council services – including care services to the vulnerable.

Rather than assist the country’s recovery by making savings to the public sector in a way that can protect local economies and the frontline the cuts are structured in such a way that they will do the opposite. The local government settlement will take a major hit in this coming financial year and further – smaller – cuts in subsequent years. This front-loading means councils do not have the lead-in time necessary to re-engineer services on a lower cost base and ease staff cuts without forced, expensive redundancies. Inexplicably, local government is also being denied the opportunity to spread the cost of reorganisation and downsizing over several years – at no cost to central government – which just makes even bigger in-year cuts inevitable.

The Secretary of State’s role should have been to facilitate necessary savings while at the same time promoting the advance of Localism and the Big Society. Unfortunately since the general election Eric Pickles has felt it better to shake a stick at councillors than work with us. 

Local and central government should be united in a shared purpose. Instead of constantly chastising and denigrating local authorities through the media, the government should be deploying all its efforts and those of its officials to helping councils minimise the impact on vulnerable communities and frontline services. 

We would be delighted to discuss with the Secretary of State positive ways forward in which we could take on the difficult challenges shared by all levels of government and would prefer to do this than continue with the gunboat diplomacy which is the current order of the day.

Regards,

County budget cuts

The debate over cuts to the county council budget continue with the ruling Tory group saying these are the inevitable result of the “current” economic situation and various left wing groups arguing that the response must be strike action. The Tories have of course run the county council for years and knew full well the economic situation. No-one except possible the far left of the Labour party can deny cuts are necessary what is debatable is the depth and speed of the cuts which appear to be decided on ideological grounds rather than sound economic sense.

 Hampshire Liberal Democrats are in favour of fair and approriate cuts but not unecessary, ideologically driven, cuts to front line services. This week they issued the following statement –

“Hampshire Conservatives are imposing sweeping cuts across services used by the most vulnerable members of our community – older people, younger people, those with disabilities and those on lower incomes.  It’s not necessary.  The scale of the cuts is near double that needed to cope with the loss of income from government grant.  Hampshire’s Conservatives are driven by an ideology that fails to value people, services, or the needs of our county.”

“Taken together with cuts announced over the last two months, Hampshire will see more congestion on our roads, more vulnerable elderly priced out of care, more road accidents, more people with no access to buses, reduced access to the library service, more anti-social behaviour and fewer families getting support for young children.” 

“This is not a liberal vision of Hampshire.  The Liberal Democrat opposition will continue to support fair savings and efficiencies, but oppose cuts in frontline services deeper than needed to reduce overall funding.”

Smannell Road Closure goes ahead

The new route for Smannell Road traffic

After a long delay the decision of the Secretary of State and the government inspector on the future of Smannell Road has been announced. The existing road will be closed and all traffic to and from Smannell, including heavy agricultural vehicles, will be diverted through the new housing at Augusta Park.

The decision comes after a public enquiry last year when the developer’s, and borough council’s, proposals were opposed by Smannell Parish Council, St Mary Bourne Parish Council. I was pleased to join them at the enquiry and argue against this illogcal and unecessary plan imposed on the area by local Tory councillors.

I am disappointed by this decision which puts the needs of big business and bureaucracy above those of local residents. It also conflicts with the government’s localism agenda. The parish council had a very strong argument against the plan. Residents’ concerns were, and are, real. We must now work with the Highways department and developers to ensure the effect of this decision on the local community is minimised.

Residents condemn Highways department

Yesterday I chaired another meeting of the Roman Way Forum. As usualthere was a good turnout with a lively debate on a number of local issues and I am grateful to the local police and Testway Housing who sent representatives to answer residents questions. The main topic of debate was as on previous occasions the appaling state of local roads.

 Residents raised a number of recurring issues including

  • potholes (many of them dangerous) on Smannell Road, King Arthur’s Way and various parts of Roman Way
  • uneven paving stones and unsafe footpaths
  • overgrown trees
  • insufficient grit bins and inadequate snow and ice clearance in bad weather

Many of these issues have been raised a number of times over the past year and yet the Highways department appear unable to deal with them or even reply to residents who complain about them. Residents also complained that county councillors were indifferent to the problems. 

 Representatives of the Highways department and the local county councillor have been invited to these meetings but have not yet put in an appearance which adds to the feeling “they don’t live here and don’t care about us.” I will be passing all the comments I have received on and inviting those responsible for our local roads to come and explain what they can and can’t do at the next next meeting.

Half-truths and misrepresentations

I have been contacted by local residents querying stories in an Intouch  leaflet delivered by the local conservatives dated November 2010.

The banner headline proudly announces that “Test Valley will deliver a council tax freeze”. In the interests of accuracy I asked the Head of Finance at Test Valley Borough Council whether this was true. His response was as follows “Council Tax levels have to be set by Full Council, so no decision has been made yet.  The Council Tax Resolution for 2011/12 will be presented to all Members at the Council meeting on 25th February, 2011 when the decision will be made.”

While we all hope to keep council tax frozen irresponsible statements like this add nothing to reasoned debate on the subject.

The second story reports that local Tories are providing money for a new community noticeboard for Roman Way. Some funding has been provided by the local county councillor out of a devolved budget (i.e. your tax money) the rest is coming from contributions made by local residents, councillors, the community association and Testway Housing. To claim the conservatives are paying for it is a misrepresentation of a community led project. To do so without consulting any of the other stakeholders is political oppurtunism. It is also premature as the notice board has still to be delivered and cannot be erected until I have obtained planning permission.

In touch? I don’t think so!

Councillors payrise (again)

I see Cllr Phil North is still trying to justify, this time through the letter pages of the Andover Advertiser,  the decision to award Test Valley councillors a payrise. His most recent letter (3 December) has already prompted replies in the letter pages of the Advertiser. The headline given to his letter aptly sums up its content – petty party politicking. He takes offence to a story about councillors pay rises and seeks to score political points off of it rather than justify the decision. For those (like Cllr North) who were not at the council meeting where the matter was discussed let me summarise the main points. An independent panel recommended increases in pay for councillors with additional increases for the leader and some other councillors. I and others argued that these increase should be deferred. In a free vote Lib Dem councillors voted for deferral, some Tory councillors abstained, the remainder voted themselves a pay rise.

He claims to have previously supported a call for a pay rise to be referred back. He fails to mention the proposal was dismissed as ill-considered and stupid by councillors of all parties and supported by just one other councillor. At the same meeting he voted against proposals for a reasoned series of measures for a 15% cut in the cost of councillors by 2011. He next seeks to score points about petrol expenses. The council like any employee pays legitimate travel expenses. For the record in 2009/10 I claimed £363, less than the average and less than most other claims, several exceeded £1000. The expenses claimed of course represent the number of meetings attended. Perhaps Cllr North saves money by not attending meetings if so why does he expect a pay rise?
All councillors must declare personal interests such as who their employers are. This is to ensure they speak in the public interest rather than their own. Phil North is a full time employee of a Conservative MP. It’s time he decided who he represents – the people of Andover or his employers. At present he appears to see the two as interchangeable and incapable of speaking on local issues without pushing the party line.
I and my colleagues have, and will continue to, put the public interest before our own. Can Cllr North say the same?