Olympic flame not coming to St Neots!

Oh well! The Olympic Flame is not coming to St Neots and Huntingdon and St Ives are hosting events. Our Town Councillors have faux outrage at this "snub" to St Neots. Here something from the usual rent-a-quote:


Bob Farrer told The Hunts Post: “I am disgusted. We are supposed to be the biggest town after Peterborough and Cambridge. You would think we’d have been included.”


But this "snub" may not have happened. Ignored as usual at the 2009 and 2010 Annual Town Meetings I asked what St Neots Town Council was going to do for the Olympics in 2012 and what financial provision was going to be made. The answer was nothing. Not a jot for the Olympics.

That was the Liberal Democrats with Gordon Thorpe answering for the Town Council. The Conservatives, in opposition, were there.

I am not surprised that St Neots had been "snubbed". If the Town Council wanted the flame to come through St Neots it needed to do events celebrating the Olympics and inform the organising committee. Simples!

It is not as though the Olympics are being held in secret or 2012 is a surprise. Instead of all the faux outrage the Town Council should plan ahead. 

Jubilee Hall going bust?

The 2010/11 accounts make grim reading for Jubilee Hall. With flooding closing the hall for sometime, the parlous state of its finances means it will have to either rely on a Town Council subsidy to continue or go bust.

The Hall made a surplus of £2,426 for the year. Of which £3,197 came from the Grants made by the Town Council. Without those grants the Hall would be close to bust.

The rent has risen from £1,197 to £6,500 for this current year, which according to the accounts they are not paying as their reserves are close to exhaustion. Even if the Town Council supports Jubilee Hall by doing a museum whereby the rent is charged and a grant is made for the same amount this doesn't undo the fundamentals that the Hall is nearly bust.

So what of the future. In 2009/10 the Hall made a loss of £4,876. Though £1,196 was for rent owed to the Town Council and another £1,196 for previous year. The fundamentals of this loss haven't changed. Unless the Town Council actually starts supporting this Hall financially there would be no alternative for the Town Council to take over this Hall.

But this isn't necessarily good as the money to run this Hall will therefore be charged to the Town Council.

This is not a good place to be in. Either option will cost the Town Council (and therefore the Council Taxpayer) money. If the Town Council does takeover this Hall it will have to pay out. If the Town Council
doesn't pay up then it will have to be ready to take this hall over.

The fate of this Hall is in the Town Councils hands. The Hall isn't paying the new rent and the Town Council hasn't decided on whether to pay the hall the equivalent of the rent.

Not an easy decision to take and my instincts are to take this building into the Town Council and run it with a Management Committee, instead of a charity, managing the bookings and day to day operations with the Town Council taking responsibility for the building, decoration, heating equipment and electricals. Or the Town Council could manage the Hall itself.

Town Council Grant to Magpas

The Conservative run Town Council made a Grant to MAGPAS for £2000. Nothing wrong in that I would have thought.

The Grant Aid policy states:


GRANT AID TO LOCAL ORGANISATIONS
St Neots Town Council grants are made for the benefit of people and projects local to St Neots. Application will be considered for financial assistance towards a specific project or activity from community associations, cultural, educational, sporting and charitable organisations, which are non-commercial and whose membership and field of activity is centred in the area covered by St Neots Town Council. The Council is prevented by statute from giving financial assistance to individuals. Funds are allocated annually to provide grants to cultural, sporting and community groups serving St Neots (including Eaton Ford, Eaton Socon and Eynesbury).

It can be argued that MAGPAS is of "benefit of people local to St Neots", but I cannot argue the membership and field of activity us centred in the area covered by St Neots Town Council.

But there you go. This grant has been paid out to a worthy organisation which roughly meets the Town Council criteria.

What am I having a go at then?

MAGPAS didn't filed its accounts for 2010 on time. MAGPAS had 10 months to get its accounts in and has failed to meet this deadline. When it did it showed a massive loss of £313,589' I know the Town Council has a history of not getting its charity accounts in on time and the Conservatives put in the Town Councils accounts late. MAGPAS gets much publicity for its activities and fundraising efforts. It also runs a lottery and had a £250,000 donation campaign. MAGPAS has a duty to get its accounts in on time. The reason it didn't is because it is nearly bust.

With the "racist play group" incident the Conservatives, in opposition, set the bar higher. The Conservatives came up with the ruse that the Liberal Democrats should have known the Playgroup was racist before it gave it funds. Therefore should the Conservatives have known MAGPAS was going to put its accounts in late? The simple answer is YES!


The Conservatives set the bar higher in they expect the Town Council to foresee what might happen and act accordingly.

As I said during the "racist playgroup incident":


"Now I'm not having a go at the Town Council for making the grant. The Town Council has to trust that people will spend the money wisely and for why it was granted. Otherwise it is a new set of red tape which will cost the Council Taxpayer yet more."

It is easy to take pot shots at those in power. The Conservatives were very opportunistic with the "Racist Play Group" incident. By doing so they set the bar higher for themselves in that anyone in receipt of a grant who doesn't comply with the law will reflect badly on the Town Council. MAGPAS hasn't complied with the law.

Today is the day I would have to resign....

....if I was elected at the local elections as a Councillor to the District and/or the Town Council. Why? Because having been elected I wouldn't have turned up to any meetings. Therefore I would have to resign or forfeit my seat(s). Why won't I turn up to meetings? Because there are other things I want to do and the money for being a Councillor is pretty abysmal.

The public wants our Councillors to take informed decisions but without much remuneration. I could understand these low rates of pay if people were falling over themselves to stand for election. They are not.

At the last elections many Parish Councils failed to have an election because many didn't even have enough candidates. This also goes on at District. There maybe 3 candidates on the ballot paper but probably only one wants to stand and maybe even win.

This is the problem. The lack of candidates means many people how stand don't want to win. These are known as "paper candidates". This means there is an illusion of how many people actually are standing to win with many just standing for their party.

The local political system is slowly failing. This isn't something new and has been happening for decades. The electorate want our local politicians not to be paid, but are on the most part unwilling to do the job themselves. It is not as though the number of candidates for each seat is massive. Whilst the public want their local representatives to be paid nil they show no inclination to do the jobs themselves.

The problem is compounded with the political parties putting people up who don't want to win or if they do win they want to take a back seat and turn up every so often. These paper candidates do little for the political process and stop those who are willing to work for their community for nil or little payment from gaining a seat.

The only solution I see to this problem is to reform local politics. Do we need 21 Town Councillors? I don't think so. 7 or 9 are the right number. Do we need 52 District Councillors? Probably not. Cut the number by half. Do we need 69 County Councillors. We I say no. We need about 35.

Any pay them for doing this job. I feel being a Town Council should attract £20,000 a year but be paid pro-rata for a 4 hours a week would bring in £2,000. The same for District Councillors who should get roughly 2 days a week or £8,000. County Councillors should be paid £30,000 a year and be paid pro-rata at 2.5 days a week or £15,000. And I would dump the "Public Service discount" from their pay.

Special responsibility allowances should be scrapped. There is nothing special about being on say the Planning Committee. Nor is there anything special about chairing a committee. Leaders and Cabinet members should be paid more for doing what is really an extra job on top of being a Councillor.

For this money local Councillors should be accountable. Not turning up to meetings should mean a pay deduction and their attendance records should be public. Also they should only serve on one Council at a time. Gone should be the days of a Councillor being on 2 or 3 different Councils.

I still believe where the Council finances are out of balance the local politicians should take a pay cut. Though how this is determined might not be a simple as it seems.

The Councillors can be their own worst enemies by not standing up for more pay and wanting the "Public Service" discount to continue. The political parties continue to put up candidates who have no intention of winning.

And I can understand why those who seek election are put off. It sounds easy to stand but then you have to go round and campaign for a few months of the year to try to get elected. Much time and effort for little payback.

Instead of hanging onto the old public service discount Councillors must be elected to do a job and must be paid for doing so. Either we end up with properly paid local politicians or local democracy will continue to fail.

I do feel our local politicians must be paid and paid correctly. If it was as such an easy job people would be applying by their hundreds. They aren't. The political parties have problems in recruiting people to stand. Time to change and make being a local politician a job worth doing in terms of pay.

An answer as to why HDC accounts are late

I asked why HDC's annual accounts hadn't been approved by the deadline of 30th September 2011. Below is the response:

Thank you for your enquiry and I hope that the following information will provide an adequate explanation.

The reasons for the delay in publishing the Council’s final accounts for 2010/11 were reported to the Corporate Governance Panel at their September meeting and they were told that it was hoped that they could be completed in time for a meeting on the 2 November.

Members of the Panel were informed on 24 October that this would no longer be possible and the current intention is to submit them to the next programmed meeting of the Panel on the 7 December.

Three events led to this delay:

1) This is the first year of a new set of rules (International Financial Reporting Standards, IFRS) for the treatment of a range of items in the final accounts. These mainly relate to capital accounting including leasing and accounting for investment properties and are very much more complex than the previous regulations. They also require us to undertake some complex calculations to identify the appropriate treatment for each lease and retrospectively restate the Balance Sheets for March 2009 and March 2010 as well as providing the new figures for March 2011. It was appreciated that this would be more difficult but unfortunately we underestimated exactly how much more complex and time consuming it would be.


2) The Audit Commission decided that we must have new auditors this year. With hindsight, irrespective of any other problems, it was not a sound idea to change anyone’s auditor in this first IFRS year. It is only 5 years since we had our last change (Grant Thornton) and a very good knowledge of the authority and sound working relationships had been built up with them. We knew that we would have to explain our systems from scratch to the new auditors, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, but we did not anticipate the level of challenge on the treatment of various items that had been accepted by previous auditors. This should not be regarded as a criticism of the auditor’s work or approach but simply a reflection of the degree of thoroughness that can follow a change of auditors.


3) The Council needs to find financial savings and it was agreed that our capital accountant could take voluntary redundancy as long as he did not leave until mid-September, once the accounts should have been completed. Unfortunately, due to ill-health, he was not available during important stages of the final accounts preparation and audit before he left.

Whilst each event in isolation could probably have been coped with, the three, in combination, were too much for us. The rest of the accountancy team have worked very hard to try and overcome the problems but, without the detailed knowledge and experience of capital accounting, delay became unavoidable.

The expected changes affect the way that capital items are classified in the Balance Sheet but should not affect the Council’s revenue position and reserves. Whilst the audit is not yet complete the audit team has completed its work in many areas and expect this to be the case, though, until all the work is completed, they cannot formally confirm this.  There is therefore reasonable confidence that  the base revenue position that we are using for this year’s financial planning will prove to be robust.

It is clearly an important element of stewardship and good governance for the accounts to be completed to the official timescale and this will be referred to in the Auditor’s report to the Panel. It will also identify any problems they have identified and we will inform the Panel of the action that we will take to avoid a recurrence next year. This should not be too difficult because, once this first year on the IFRS basis is completed, the ongoing process becomes much more straightforward.

Each year there are a few Councils that run into difficulties with the time limits and it is expected that there will be more this year due to IFRS but it is important to stress that there is no evidence of any failures in the basic financial systems, simply the ability to overcome the various difficulties referred to in order to present the results in a timely fashion on the new basis.

Steve Couper

Head of Financial Services

Liberal Democrats campaign for free parking?

I saw on the Huntingdonshire Liberal Democrat website that has come to life the following:

Lib Dems call for free parking for Christmas

October 31, 2011 10:16 AM

Huntingdon Liberal Democrats are launching their THREE 4 FREE Campaign today. 

"We are calling on Huntingdon District Council to help local businesses and residents this Christmas by providing FREE PARKING at all District Council Car Parks for the three weekends leading up to the festive season," comments Cllr. Mike Shellens, "We want to give local people every chance to support local shops and local jobs." 

Lib Dem Parliamentary Spokes, Martin Land, adds "By providing free parking on the 3rd and 4th, 10th and 11th and 17th and 18th December, HDC could show their support for our market towns of St Ives, Huntingdon and St Neots in these difficult economic times. This move could encourage residents to shop locally and not on-line or in Bedford, Cambridge or Peterborough." 

Except parking is already free on Sundays except at Hinchingbrooke Country Park. Saturdays sounds good. With HDC finances in such a state then how much will be lost by this initiative? What will have to be cut in its place? Car Parks are revenue for HDC. The Liberal Democrats have not fleshed the costs out.

Maybe the reason why Martin Land feels having Sunday free is such a good idea when it is already free is that Martin doesn't drive!

If the danger is people will drive to Bedford, Peterborough and Cambridge they will do so anyway. The higher parking costs and the fuel costs associated going to these towns will mean people will go there for better shops and are willing to pay to go and park there. Cutting 50 pence off the cost for parking for an hour will make no difference.

Good idea. Badly thought out. In the end just a gimmick.


If the Liberal Democrats and HDC want to attract more shoppers to St Neots then they need to change the shopping experience with larger retail units. Cutting the marginal cost of parking just means the Council taxpayer picks up the bill for this elsewhere.

2 years on....

.... and what has changed?

Djanogly was re-elected. Despite living in London and prominent in the MP's expenses scandal, the voters of the Huntingdon constituency re-elected Djanogly therefore forgiving him for his part in this scandal. Djanogly went onto become an Under secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice. This is a third rung on the Ministerial ladder with Minister of State above him and Secretary of State at the top. Djanogly became a bit of a lightning rod scandal. There was his spying on local Conservative members and his relationship with his brother-in-law. The spying was internal. The brother-in-law was really a non-story.

Useless Town Council Planning Committee. This has carried on being useless and a sheer waste of money. The new Conservative administration on the Town Council has carried with this sheer waste of money. The only real reason for this is the Town Councillors want to pontificate on the merits of planning applications without any real training or idea of what they are doing.

Cllr Ablewhite is new District Council Leader. Despite being party to costing the District Council £5,000 over a planning decision in St Ives, the District Council Conservatives deemed Cllr Ablewhite worthy of their leadership. Cllr Ian Bates stood down at from the leadership after the abortive merger talks with East Cambridgeshire and Fenland District Councils fell down.

Cinema progresses. The idea to squeeze the cinema into a totally inappropriate site continues. Turnstone Estates were given preferred status and went ahead and ripped the Development Brief to shreds. As the land owners HDC and SNTC must have been privy to these changes yet didn't say a thing. So much for transparency.

Rough waters for the Outdoor Swimming Pool. Having done a deal with McCarthy and Stone, rumour has it the SNTC/SNSPT has reneged on this deal. Whilst selling the land and using the proceeds to build a new swimming pool on other land made sense, unless SNTC/SNSPT have found a source of money it will make no sense to rebuild the swimming pool on the old site.

HCCA. The slow downfall of this once proud Conservative Association continues with HCCA running out of money.

Council Tax. HDC has, for many years, used reserves to keep Council Tax down. Combined with the previous Labour Government who used the threat of capping to keep the District Council tax rises down. Capping is due to end with a new referendum rules to ensure any excessive Council Tax rises are voted on by the electorate beforehand.

New Homes Bonus nicked. This becomes a large amount of money for HDC. According to the Coalition Government this money is for the communities which are accepting new housing developments. HDC is supposed to consult the locals over the use of this money. Think about £8000 a property and 5000 properties. £40 million would make a difference to St Neots.

Riverside Car Park. This was a joint approach that ended up as a pantomime. As the basic decision was correct as either the user pays or the Council Tax payer (and I prefer the user pays) this now looks to be revisited. The Liberal Democrats made hay over this. The St Neots Conservatives are against but voted for the budget. This issue went back and forth until it was decided by Cabinet and then Council make this a pay car park.

Councillors. Over the two years I've looked at Councillor attendances. Some are good. Some were bad. On Town Councillor did good by resigning. Mandy Thomas just didn't turn up or only to one minor meeting in 6 months. The dearth of candidates to be Councillors was also highlighted before the last elections. On one good note, Carl Jones stood as an Independent and won the Town Council East seat.

CPALC. It looks as though CPALC gave the Town Council Quality Status to SNTC with too much trouble. Though how they passed many of the tests didn't stand up to scrutiny. Anyway SNTC paid their sub and CPALC seems happy the Quality Town Status means absolutely nothing.

The Liberal Democrats. These have been a big disappointment. With Martin Land as both Agent and Parliamentary Candidate this was going to go wrong. The Conservatives are "closet racists and homophobes" quote did damage. Also if that is how Martin thinks the Liberal Democrats are destined to lose and lose again.

Gordon Thorpe. It is a pity that Gordon has gone. Although he called me the "Most Hated Man in St Neots" I hold no grudges against him. I did warn him at the time that Harrsion and Jennings were fighting hard for Eaton Socon and Gordon needed to get out and campaign. Gordon didn't take my advice and, I was informed, turned up about a week before the campaign finished to campaign. Miles too late.

Have I given up on the blog? Well no. But there will be fewer blog entries as time goes on. Of course if SNTC decides to alter the Priory Centre.......