Category Archives: Local government

Jenny Dawe

Opinion: Delivering a bright new future for Edinburgh

By Jenny Dawe | Thu 14th October 2010 - 12:55 pm

“I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left”, wrote the outgoing Labour Chief Secretary to the Treasury in May this year.

Reel back three years to the May 2007 Scottish local elections.  The Liberal Democrats had become the largest party in the City of Edinburgh Council after 23 years of Labour control.  A new Lib Dem led coalition with the SNP was beginning to look eagerly at how to change the city. We didn’t get a note.  Instead, we got a stark warning from the Director of Finance that reserves were perilously low and the Council was heading for a …

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Mark Pack

When good intentions go bad: the Tower Hamlets Mayoral election

By Mark Pack | Tue 12th October 2010 - 11:55 am

There are good reasons for having laws that require local councils to be politically impartial in their publicity work. The Mayor election currently underway in Tower Hamlets has shown, once again, the big problem with the existing rules (for English and Welsh councils).

Tower Hamlets Council logoThe council wanted to include a 200 word statement from each nominated Mayor candidate in the latest council newspaper. With the option open to every nominated candidate, this would have been a fair and useful step. However, the restrictions …

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Mark Wright

Opinion: What’s a “fair” cut?

By Mark Wright | Fri 1st October 2010 - 12:25 pm

What difference does it make having Lib Dems in power? How are Lib Dems actually making cuts “fairer”? One example is what we have done in Bristol, when we reviewed redundancy terms. The statutory redundancy payout is a week’s salary – up to a cap of £380 per week – per year worked. Bristol Council had a much more generous scheme: twice the weekly salary, with no cap.

This sounds great until you look at the effects of this a bit more closely: at the bottom of the officer pay-scale the Bristol scheme was about twice as generous as the statutory …

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Mark Pack

Thinking of standing for election or re-election next year? The questions you should ask yourself

By Mark Pack | Fri 1st October 2010 - 10:20 am

Knowing what it takes to be a good candidate and then a good councillor is vital to winning elections – and to then making something out of the opportunity the voters have given you. So here are seven questions to ask yourself if you are thinking of standing in the local elections next May or in a council by-election.

What will you do different from a councillor of another party?
There are decent people who will be conscientious and work hard in (just about) every party. And even in the most rural of wards, there is more than one person who is local to the ward. So what …

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Caroline Pidgeon

Conservative walk-outs stop debate

By Caroline Pidgeon | Fri 10th September 2010 - 12:21 pm

Storming out of a town hall or Assembly chamber in protest is not something I would generally recommend – although in extreme cases there is a case for doing so as I found out earlier this year.

However walking out and knowing that you will stop all business is a very different matter, yet this is what is now taking place at City Hall on a very regular basis. In the last year there have been several occasions when the whole Conservative Group has just got up and left halfway through meetings of the London Assembly, when they don’t agree …

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Also posted in London | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

Jason Kitcat: update on the councillor facing censure for using YouTube

By Mark Pack | Thu 9th September 2010 - 9:00 pm

A quick update on my post about Brighton Green councillor Jason Kitcat, who is facing disciplinary action over putting footage of a council meeting up on YouTube. He’s posted the latest news over on his blog, and it is good to see that he is getting support from across the political spectrum:

ConservativeHome’s local government blog had yesterday posted a supportive piece which Local Government Minister Grant Shapps MP then tweeted a link to, adding his own view:

Surely no justification for reporting a Cllr who seeks to promote openness to the Standards Board

Indeed! The comments on the ConservativeHome piece are

…

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Mark Pack

Knowsley Council refuses to answer questions over its £250,000+ payments for Labour Conference

By Mark Pack | Mon 6th September 2010 - 12:24 pm

Knowsley Council has stonewalled questions as to why it is paying for an exhibition stall at this autumn’s Labour Party conference despite not appearing at any other party conferences. Knowsley Council leader Ron Round has even hinted that it may continue to pay for stalls at future Labour Party conferences.

This year’s autumn Labour conference will be the thirteenth at which Knowsley Council has paid to appear, taking the total amount it has paid to Labour for these appearances to over £250,000. The thirteenth is also the most controversial because the payments are taking place despite Labour no longer being …

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Mark Pack

Councillor faces standards censure for posting council meeting footage on YouTube

By Mark Pack | Fri 3rd September 2010 - 12:56 pm

Brighton & Hove City Council webcasts many of its meetings and makes the footage available for people to watch again afterwards. Cllr Jason Kitcat (Green) extracted from the footage examples of himself asking questions, put the footage on YouTube and blogged about the questions on his own site.

He only used footage the council has already made available, he didn’t alter the footage and he had a good reason for using his own copy rather than the council’s original (because at the time the council’s way of presenting the footage made it hard for people to go direct to a specific …

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Mark Pack

Knowsley Council pays Labour over £250,000 for conference appearances

By Mark Pack | Tue 24th August 2010 - 10:24 am

Labour-run Knowsley Council is continuing to pump money in to the Labour Party’s coffers by exhibiting at the party’s conference. The council pays to appear only at the Labour Party’s conferences, ignoring other parties, and is continuing to do so even now that Labour is no longer in government.

Back in January 2007 Liberal Democrat Voice revealed Knowsley Council had spent £47,000 on exhibiting at the Labour conference over the previous four years. At the time the council said that, “Knowsley does not attend any other party political conference, it attends the Labour Party Annual Conference as the party in …

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Mark Pack

Council website spending put under scrutiny

By Mark Pack | Mon 16th August 2010 - 1:13 pm

Today’s Telegraph has a piece looking at the large sums being spent by many councils on new or revamped websites.

In itself, an expensive website is not necessarily a poor use of funds as good, popular sites often also save costs (e.g. by reducing the number of phonecalls the council has to handle). As a result, Medway Council – one of those picked out in the article – may have a good case for spending £250,000 in revamping its site given that the last major revamp was in 2003. In the last seven years the internet has changed significantly as have …

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Caroline Pidgeon

Peddling myths over London’s bike hire scheme

By Caroline Pidgeon | Sat 14th August 2010 - 11:50 am

In London one of the most exciting developments this year has been the long awaited launch of the bike hire scheme.

Despite its launch being associated with quite a number of problems – including a highly complex registration process, and a number of cyclists being overcharged – no one can deny that the scheme is proving incredibly popular.  And let’s be realistic, no major scheme ever starts without at least some minor teething problems. Of course I will be chasing hard until these glitches are resolved, and they certainly …

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Iain Roberts

Councils and communities must rise to the Coalition challenge

By Iain Roberts | Sun 20th June 2010 - 4:24 pm

People rather like to be able to blame someone else for the hard choices.  Speaking to that angry customer at work, isn’t it so much easier to blame management or “the rules” for not giving her a refund.  Isn’t it so much harder – and less pleasant – to explain to her that you’ve made the decision to deny her request and you could have decided otherwise, even though you’d rather like having that power.

Politicians are no different.  We want to have the power, but it doesn’t hurt if someone else can take the blame for those unpopular choices.

Labour are …

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Mark Pack

Freeing up local council finances: details published

By Mark Pack | Thu 10th June 2010 - 8:20 pm

The Government has today published details of its plans to reduce the ring-fencing restrictions around how local government can spend money. The timing is rather double-edged; giving more control over their own finances to local councils has long been a Liberal Democrat demand, but there’s no doubt that Eric Pickles will also have been attracted by the idea of making councils decide where to make future cuts. Even so, it’s a step in the right direction.

The overall effect is a:

Reduction in revenue and capital non-schools ring-fencing this year from 10.7 per cent (£4.5bn) to only 7.7 per cent (£3.2bn) as

…

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Iain Roberts

As you were…three new unitaries cancelled

By Iain Roberts | Wed 26th May 2010 - 10:15 pm

Labour’s plan to replace the existing councils in Exeter, Norwich and Suffolk with new unitary authorities has been cancelled by the coalition government.

Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles today announced that the existing local government structures would remain.

The argument for the decision seems to be that the move to unitaries didn’t have the support of the local populations, two didn’t have the support of the independent boundaries commission and they were going to cause a lot of hassle for very little savings.

The real meat on this story looks to be down in note 4 to …

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Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: communities and local government

By Mark Pack | Tue 25th May 2010 - 10:20 am

Welcome to the third in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

Traditionally Liberal Democrats and Conservatives have far from seen eye to eye over local government with devolving liberals and centralising conservatives taking fundamentally different approaches. However, this policy area offers a classic example of Cameron’s move to take his party towards a liberal centre-ground creating some genuine overlap in outlook where very little existed before. Large parts of the Conservative Party’s general election manifesto on devolving power could have been taken from previous Liberal …

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Iain Roberts

Frugal times ahead for local authorities

By Iain Roberts | Mon 24th May 2010 - 5:53 pm

It hasn’t come as a surprise: local authorities up and down the land have been preparing for budget cuts for some time.  Worst case scenarios have been considered, proposals for cuts drawn up and heads scratched over how the numbers can all be made to add up.

We already knew that council tax would be frozen next year.  We now know that the money local authorities get from central government will fall too.

As the HM Treasury press release says

In addition, £1.165 bn of savings will be made in Local Government by reducing grants to Local Authorites to reflect their contribution to

…

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Caroline Pidgeon

Opinion: Countdown to 2012 has already started

By Caroline Pidgeon | Thu 20th May 2010 - 12:20 pm

Harold Wilson’s phrase that a week is a long time in politics was never more true than the dramatic developments that took place last week.

The creation of a new Government, with Liberal Democrats at the heart of it and with so many of our policies built into the coalition agreement, has quite rightly dominated the media. I am sure these events will not easily be forgotten by many Liberal Democrats.

Against such as background it is far from surprising that changes that have taken place in town halls across London and at City Hall have not received a huge amount of …

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Iain Roberts

Lib Dems and Conservatives enter joint administration in Oldham

By Iain Roberts | Tue 18th May 2010 - 1:13 pm

It seems coalitions are in the air.  The Lib Dem and Conservative groups on Oldham Council in Greater Manchester yesterday announced a framework agreement which will see current Lib Dem Council leader Howard Sykes retain the top job, the Conservatives support the Lib Dem budget for this coming year and a Conservative councillor coming onto the executive.

The local elections saw the Lib Dems lose overall control in Oldham, with the new numbers being  Labour 27, Liberal Democrat 27, Conservatives 5, Independent 1.

The Oldham Council press release reads:

The Liberal Democrat and Conservative groups on Oldham Council are pleased to announce

…

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Mark Pack

Thursday’s extra bonus: the local elections

By Mark Pack | Wed 5th May 2010 - 9:20 am

Put a backbench MP and a ruling group councillor together and they’ll often tease each other about who really has the more power – with the councillor often coming off the better. “I’ll see your ministerial questions and raise you a £500m budget” and so on.

So we certainly shouldn’t forget the other elections on Thursday:

  • All the seats in the 32 London boroughs
  • One third of the seats in the 36 Mets
  • One third of the seats in 20 unitary authorities
  • Half the seats in 7 district councils
  • One third of the seats in 70 district councils
  • Four Mayors

A happy side-effect of the strong general …

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Stephen Tall

Once is a misfortune, but twice …? The Tory councillor who’s a repeat offender

By Stephen Tall | Sun 11th April 2010 - 10:30 am

Six months ago Lib Dem Voice featured Mrs Christine Roberts, a Tory councillor in the Cotswolds who landed herself in hot water after publicly labelling her Lib Dem opponents “morons”, and then refusing to apologise. Well, it turns out this wasn’t the first time she’d made gratutiously insults – only on the other occasions it was her residents who complained of her behaviour.

The local paper reports:

FORMER Fairford mayor Chris Roberts has been found guilty of breaching the councillors code of conduct following her involvement in the Village Green saga. … Fairford Environmental Societ members Suzanne Jones and

…

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Mark Pack

Baby P whistleblower stands as councillor

By Mark Pack | Sun 28th March 2010 - 7:15 pm

From the Evening Standard:

The whistleblower who warned that Haringey social services were failing to protect children just six months before the death of Baby P is to stand for election there as a Liberal Democrat councillor.

Former social worker Nevres Kemal, above, who will contest the Noel Park ward, said she will try to rid the council of a culture of “lying, deception and cover-ups”.

Best of luck Nevres.

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Mark Pack

Hull City Council: most improved in the country

By Mark Pack | Thu 25th March 2010 - 7:50 pm

Many congratulations to Carl Minns and his team in Hull on this much deserved acolade:

Hull City Council has been crowned the most improved in England, six years after it came bottom in a survey of 150 local authorities.

Hull beat four other councils to win the ‘Most Improved Title’ at the Local Government Chronicle awards…

Leader of Hull City Council, Carl Minns said: “The most important factor is to ensure that residents get excellent quality services but it is always good to have external recognition of the improvements to services.” (BBC)

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Duncan Macdonald

Barnet’s DIY war memorials

By Duncan Macdonald | Thu 4th March 2010 - 11:50 am

Tory-run Barnet Council is the home of ‘easy council’, the idea that council tax payers pay extra to get the standard of service they should already be getting by default, and has come up with a new money saving idea!

In a report published last month Barnet Council has decided that it will not be responsible for the update of the borough’s war memorials to include the names of service men and women who gave their lives since the memorial was built. Any proposed additions must be paid for by those who want the names added and there must be no additional maintenance costs.

It doesn’t stop there. Barnet Council …

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Chris White

Opinion: Tory school plans will give parents nightmares

By Chris White | Tue 2nd March 2010 - 2:37 pm

Monday’s Today Programme on Radio 4 majored on local government.

It was the usual shambles. We were told that local authorities were expecting to make cuts in services – hardly news. One reporter told us that libraries were not used by many people – in fact had she spent ten minutes on research she would have discovered that libraries are visited by half the adult population each year. This makes libraries far more popular than any if not all of the sporting events on which the BBC lavishes time and our money each year.

Another reporter told us that local authorities …

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Chris White

Opinion: Kill puffins and paint horizontally to save millions

By Chris White | Thu 25th February 2010 - 11:24 am

Local newspapers in western Hertfordshire exploded on Friday evening with news that the county council had lost a court case. It was chasing an invoice for £335 in a dispute with a water company over a broken manhole cover. The county council had had to put up a couple of cones to warn passing motorists and apparently cones are expensive things to handle.

The water company felt that this was excessive and the council and the utility had seen each other in court. The costs of the case were awarded largely against the council and were reportedly £110,000.

Debate has raged. The …

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Mark Pack

Peter Chegwyn wins High Court appeal against Standards Board

By Mark Pack | Fri 19th February 2010 - 10:56 pm

Last summer we reported that Peter Chegwyn, Lib Dem leader on Gosport Council, had been banned from being a councillor on both Gosport Council and Hampshire County Council for two years in a dispute over a local music festival.

However, Peter Chegwyn has taken that Standards Board ruling to the Hight Court and this week won a significant set of victories. The two-year disqualification from Hampshire County Council was quashed completely. The two-year disqualification from Gosport Borough Council was quashed and replaced by a two-month suspension, and the Judge ordered the Standards Board for England to pay Peter Chegwyn’s full costs.

The Judge …

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Chris White

Opinion: My first lap dance hate mail

By Chris White | Thu 18th February 2010 - 9:20 am

I got my first lap-dancing related hate mail the other day. The writer (who was not anonymous) suggested that I had nothing better to do with my time and argued that I belonged in the Stasi.

One of the hazards of politics is that you occasionally take a clear public view and someone doesn’t like it. My crime was to have issued a statement in support of the new rules on sexual encounter establishments.

Since the 2003 Licensing Act, lap-dancing clubs had been subject to the same licensing regime as pubs and restaurants – in particular, there was a presumption in …

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Mark Pack

The other elections coming up in the spring

By Mark Pack | Wed 17th February 2010 - 10:20 am

With so much political attention on the next general election, it’s easy to forget that there are a large number of council seats up for election on the first Thursday in May. Many of those wielding power after the local votes are counted will have far more power than MPs or even junior ministers.

What’s up for election?

It’s a big round of local elections:

  • All the seats in the 32 London boroughs
  • One third of the seats in the 36 Mets
  • One third of the seats in 19 20 unitary authorities
  • Half the seats in 7 district councils
  • One third of the seats in

…

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5 Comments
Iain Roberts

Salford Council bans tweeting – is it right?

By Iain Roberts | Wed 17th February 2010 - 9:31 am

As the Manchester Evening News reports:

Councillors in Salford will be banned from using Twitter in meetings.

Gatherings of the full council at Salford’s town hall have been covered live by councillors via their micro-blogging profiles.

The debates have attracted hundreds of followers, but town hall bosses have now banned members from using the site during meetings.

I have to admit to being rather confused by this opposition to Twitter that’s creeping across a few Town Halls.

The argument is that councillors who are twittering can’t be paying attention, but how can you report on a meeting if you’re not paying attention to it?

At …

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