Category: notes from JK

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notes from JK

Audit Commission in limbo

Following Eric Pickles’ sudden and unexpected decision to shut down the Audit Commission there has been an eery silence.

It emerges that this has been because there was vehement disagreement between the Commission and Pickels’ department over who would be paying for the cost of shutting it all down. One idea that was floated involved passing the costs down to councils through the Commission’s audit fees for its final year. This would have gone down like a lead balloon, and would have unfairly penalised councils for a process they had no power over.

It emerged at this Tuesday’s Audit Committee that the Commission have now agreed with the Department for Communities & Local Government that any costs which aren’t covered by the Commission’s reserves will be borne by central government. There is still no agreement on how to handle the pension fund, but at least it’s confirmed councils won’t be picking up the tab.

In the mean time what happens to the people and the Commission? Well they don’t know! Government has yet to publish a bill which abolishes the Commission. Timing is critical because shutdown can’t happen in the middle of a financial year, any slippage will push things back at least a year.

The Commission are also exploring setting themselves up as a worker-owned mutual, or selling themselves off in some way to existing audit firms. But ministers have yet to say what they might consider approving, any terms or conditions they would seek to apply such transactions etc.

So the highly qualified and experienced staff at the Commission are left to either continue in a situation of serious uncertainty or look elsewhere for a more stable working environment. Pickles has made a complete mess of what was an unnecessary and ideological closure in the first place.

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notes from JK

Why I’m wearing a white poppy this November

This November I’m wearing a white poppy on my coat lapel. It’s from the Peace Pledge Union, a fascinating organisation which dates from 1934.

For me the white poppy acknowledges the loss and suffering of so many in conflicts from all sides: Soldiers, spies, resistance fighters, prisoners, wives, children. Yes, our armed forces have sacrificed enormously – but why should injured soldiers and widows depend on charity from the Royal British Legion for their care? Government sends them into danger, government should give them the care they deserve.

The white poppy is also pledging to find peaceful ways to resolve conflicts. Much more time and energy needs to go into developing non-violent ways of ending conflict. Too many people have died in conflict, yet nations seem content to pour billions into arms and scant pennies into the alternatives.

Read more and buy white poppies on the PPU site.

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notes from JK

How we treat children is a reflection of what we consider to be important

After the Tories had passed their guillotining motion to end last Thursday’s council meeting, all remaining business was put to the vote. I was delighted that the motion Cllr Rachel Fryer and I proposed was passed in that process. However, that we were not able to debate it was a source of regret to me.

Here’s what I would have said…

Full Council 21st October 2010

Speech seconding Notice of Motion on Cuts hitting Children & Young People

Mr Mayor I stand to second this motion as a father, as a son and as someone who believes that family is about community and not just blood ties.

Greens don’t believe there is an economic case for sudden, deep government cuts at this time. However if there must be cuts, they certainly should NOT hurt the most vulnerable and those least able to make the case for the services on which they depend.

It’s a truism to say that children and young people are our future. I believe that how we treat children – who are inherently innocent and trusting – is a reflection of ourselves and of what we believe to be important.

Good health, education and fulfilling work are important. Yet the cuts this motion notes say the opposite. The cuts say bank bailouts, subsidies for nuclear power and cold war era arms like Trident are more important. They are not.

– freezing child benefit for three years;

– cutting the Health in Pregnancy Grant;

– cutting the Sure Start Maternity Grant for all but the first child;

– cuts in Housing Benefit – which will affect families with children the most;

– a cut in Tax Credit entitlements for the poorest by withdrawing the Baby Element;

– the cut in the Child Trust Fund.

These and other cuts say children aren’t important. But that’s not what we believe – children are our future and our inspiration.

Let us show this city what we believe in. By supporting this motion you vote for hope in a better future for our children.

[ENDS]

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notes from JK

The Green view on the national debt

Further to my earlier post on this issue, an additional opportunity to set the national debt in context arose last week. The Conservative group of councillors submitted an extraordinary motion using the national debt to justify massive cuts whilst also reassuring residents that ‘Intelligent Commissioning’ and other actions left the council in a good position to handle the cuts.

Well this motion had to be amended, and so I submitted a detailed amendment, as you can see here.

Unfortunately the amendment fell, because Labour sat on their hands for the vote. Thankfully the motion as a whole also fell. Still Labour need to seriously reflect on what they stand for before coming to the next council meeting.

My speech to the amendment is copied below. I got no response to my final question as Conservative councillors ranted on about other things, if you can bear to watch on the webcast.

Speech proposing amendment to Conservative public debt NoM
21st October 2010

Mr Mayor

Yesterday George Osborne announced as part of the comprehensive spending review that not only would, according to the Local Government Association, local authority budgets be cut by 25.5% but that the cost of borrowing for councils would also be increased by 1%.

This authority and its officers are going to be squeezed beyond all reason. Yet, as benefit cuts bite and the economy suffers from the ill-considered government slashing of public services, our residents will need us more than ever.

Our amendment makes abundantly clear that the current UK national deficit is by no means sufficiently alarming to justify these unprecedented cuts. The deficit is not particularly large by historical comparison, the interest charges are a reasonable proportion of our GDP and the repayments are owed over many years. We include a number of ways in which the deficit could be reduced through tax and benefit reforms, but not public service cuts.

To echo a certain high street store – These are not just cuts, these are coalition government cuts. With lashings of hypocrisy and soaked in misleading statements.

What we are witnessing are not just a few efficiency savings. We are seeing the utter abandonment of whole swathes of our society. At the slightest hint of stormy waters the coalition government are chucking people overboard shouting to them “if you can’t afford to survive then you’re on your own.”

Frankly Mr Mayor, the administration have some gall presenting this motion reassuring residents in the face of this economic and public sector catastrophe.

I urge members to support this amendment. And I finish with a question – did any of the members on that side of the chamber actually check the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s lurid claims about the scale of the deficit, or did they just swallow it – hook, line and sinker?

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notes from JK

October 2010 Full Council

Finally a full council meeting rolled around. There are so few in the year that inevitably the agenda was groaning under the weight of items included – and that was before reams of public questions, deputations and petitions were added.

Once again the need for more council meetings, which start earlier, came to mind – but the Tories will have none of it, and I seem to recall Labour too being opposed last time Greens raised it.

As usual I had a number of questions to councillors which, as usual, were not properly answered. In flagging up issues with the council website I was once again promised that a new site was on its way – a new site has been imminent for the entire 3+ years I’ve been a councillor!

I also continued my attempt to win a commitment to the council using an open licence for its publications, however every time my question is misunderstood or deliberately misconceived.

My final written question was again twisted by the respondent. At a previous debate on the long delayed IRP report we were told it was being delayed because a return to the committee system was imminent. This was a pretty transparent wheeze. To pretend now that the two were unrelated was taking the proverbial biscuit.

The one oral question I’m now permitted  to ask related to how local government cuts would have a massive impact on the local economy. The answers Cllr Mears gave were, at best, tangential to the question.

The meeting saw an excellent debate on the cuts being made to the Connexions as part of public questions, a deputation, a petition and a notice of motion. I think the procedure that results in a debate when a petition has more than 1,250 signatures worked very well – it’s a welcome addition to council meetings.

At long last the Independent Remuneration Panel’s report on councillor allowances was voted on. But as I have long predicted, Labour and Tories voted together to preserve their allowances – so that Brighton & Hove continues to exceed government guidance on the number of special allowances handed out. They also voted against group leaders’ allowances being proportional to the size of their group – which would be patently much fairer than the present system. Once again, it was the old guard defending their interests.

As usual the 4 hour guillotine was activated by the Mayor to end the meeting. However to my surprise the Tories didn’t vote for it. They later revealed that they wanted a chance to rip into my amendment to their motion before going home. Of course once that had been voted on they did propose a new guillotine motion which was passed despite a very mixed vote from Labour and Tories, only Greens consistently voting to carry on with the business before us.

I will cover the two main motions I dealt with in separate posts. I think it’s high time council meetings were re-organised to happen more often. This would allow public questions and petitions to be dealt with a in a more timely way. The meetings should start an hour earlier and we should stay until the work is done. And the Conservatives should be ashamed of their approach – they continue to guillotine meetings as soon as the bits they want are done with, thereby removing the space for debate.

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In a pickle? Not with Eric Pickles backing me!

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/video/parlvid.swf

Last Thursday, as I was preparing for the full council meeting that afternoon, a tweet suggested something extraordinary might be happening in Westminster. No, not a new rainbow coalition to stop the Tory cuts, but something still quite unexpected.

Local government minister Eric Pickles MP rose to answer a question about his planned abolition of the Standards Board, which runs the councillor code of conduct under which I am currently ‘guilty’ for my use of YouTube.

Rather than just provide the answer and sit back down again, Mr Pickles chose to cite my case as an example of why the Standards Board regime needed to go. Well, despite vehemently disagreeing with Mr Pickles on many things, I agree with him on this. The current regime for regulating councillors prevents them from doing what most would naturally assume is their democratic duty. The process is bureaucratic, needlessly involved and often abused for political point-scoring. Good riddance I say.

So Mr Pickles joins fellow minister Grant Shapps MP, John Hemming MP and a swathe of others in supporting my cause. I was invited to discuss Mr Pickle’s support on BBC Sussex Radio last Friday, with his colleague Bob Neill MP – you can listen again here. I’m told this was also covered on BBC South Today.

Until the localism bill is passed, the standards regime remains and I am still subject to it – so I continue to prepare for my appeal tribunal on 3rd November. It will be held from 9.30am at the Brighton Hilton Metropole — all welcome!

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Not worth the panic: This deficit is manageable

To my great frustration, almost every coalition government policy announcement has been prefaced with something along the lines of ‘we must take this action due to the enormous national deficit we have been left to deal with…’

Thusfar this premise has gone woefully unchallenged. Rather than comparing the deficit to something arbitary (like our education or health budgets as I’ve seen Tories doing) let’s compare the current deficit with our national deficits in the past.

The best way to compare deficits past and present is to use a relative measure – deficit as a percentage of GDP. Currently the UK national debt is 71% of GDP. Yet we’ve been well over that in the past century. In 1923 it was 181%, 110% in 1940 and 238% in 1947. We’re fighting an economic battle to recover from the credit crunch, running up a little deficit is to be expected.

The key issue with debt is the interest you need to repay. On that front the current deficit is also not as alarming as the government would have us believe. UK national debt interest repayments peaked at around 7% of GDP in the 1920s. We’ve never been near that level since, and currently interest payments are between 3 and 4% of GDP. Economists feel interest repayments are not a risk until they hit something around 12% of GDP.

The other risk with debt is how quickly you have to pay it off. Thankfully the Treasury have been, dare I say it, ‘prudent’ in how they have raised debt. The average UK debt maturity is 17 years. In other words the average of the repayment terms on our debt means we have 17 years to pay it back. Spain are currently struggling to push their average debt maturity up to just 6.7 years. Spain, Italy and Greece have all been facing huge immediate repayments on short term debt they’ve been using. The UK in the meantime has time to manage the deficit as economic circumstances allow.

So the government’s attempts to protray the national financial position as a househould who have splurged on the credit cards is woefully inaccurate. We don’t have only 30 days to pay it back, the interest isn’t spiralling out of control and we’re not in the worst position ever.

While there’s no doubt that ideally any government should work towards lower deficits, timing is also important. Essentially the cuts we’re going to see imposed on us tomorrow are like starving your family in the hope of paying your mortgage off more quickly.

It doesn’t make sense. Mortgages are stable long-term debts at reasonably stable rates of interest. Starving the family just when they are facing the challenge of a recession is, to put it mildly, foolhardy.

Even running up a little more long term debt to look after our society — with benefits and quality public services — makes moral and economic sense. We would be caring for those most in need, and keeping people in jobs. Which is exactly what our economy needs.

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notes from JK

Letter on licensing in Brighton & Hove

Last week I submitted the following letter to The Argus after having read this article about Cllr Mary Mears’ views on licensing in the city.

Sir,


As a councillor representing Brighton & Hove’s Regency Ward, where the bulk of licensed premises operate, I welcome Cllr Mary Mears’ support for rebalancing the licensing act to be more supportive of residents’ concerns (“Council concern over law” Wednesday October 13th).


However in addition to lobbying Theresa May, Cllr Mears should also speak to her colleagues on the Council’s own licensing committee who repeatedly are observed to be on panels which approve new and extended licenses in the cumulative impact area, in the face of strong objections from residents, councillors and the Police.


Indeed it was the Conservative chair of licensing who led the panel which approved extended hours for ‘Jam’ in Middle Street. This resulted in Sussex Police, for the first time ever, lodging an appeal in court against the council. I’m relieved that the ‘Jam’ case has now been resolved by the hard work of the Police licensing team who have negotiated a new, more restrictive, license.


Those of us working to address the impacts of the licensed trade in the city, including responsible venue managers, would appreciate Cllr Mears spreading the message not just to national government, but to local Tory councillors too.


Sincerely,

Cllr Jason Kitcat

Green Councillor for Regency Ward, Brighton & Hove City Council

Kings House, Grand Avenue, Hove BN3 2LS

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notes from JK

The case against elected police commissioners

First posted on Jim Jepp’s Daily Maybe.

Greens in Brighton & Hove are opposing the introduction of a directly elected police commissioner for Sussex Police. Why? Surely we support democracy and public accountability… don’t we?

Indeed we do, but there are many ways to deliver a public service whilst holding it accountable to the people it serves. I think an unfortunate aspect of the debate is that too many people are unfamiliar with how police forces are currently run. I must admit that I too was blissfully unaware until I was elected a councillor.

But without that knowledge of what we have now, comparisons are difficult. When contrasted with what many assume to be a faceless bureaucracy, of course an elected commissioner sounds positive. Yet police forces are already accountable to independent police authorities. In the case of Sussex Police it answers to Sussex Police Authority. This body is made of elected councillors and independently appointed members including local magistrates. The councillor membership of the authority follows proportionality rules so, as best as is possible, the seats must be divvied up to match the political representation on the local authorities in Sussex.

It’s not perfect, but the authority’s makeup does ensure a semblance of diverse representation for the communities Sussex Police seek to represent. Just as a local council does, the authority has committees and budget votes. These are open to the public and are webcast.

With a single directly elected commissioner many of the arguments Greens have used against directly elected local authority mayors hold true: Decision making will be less open, less accountable and there will be far fewer opportunities for a plurality of opinions to be heard.

Cllr Ben Duncan is the only Green on Sussex Police Authority, but his distinctive perspective has undoubtedly had a positive impact in winning commitments for more neighbourhood policing, more sustainable ways of working, for a different approach to policing hunts and much more.

The idea of directly elected police commissioners is one both Labour and Conservatives have borrowed from the American political system. There are many things to admire in the US constitution, but the results for everyday quality of life have been, at best, mixed. Indeed one could argue there has been too much of a good thing. Voters are asked to elect school commissioners, police chiefs, judges, municipal councillors, senators, congressmen, state governors, state secretaries of state and so on. Turnout levels in the US are incredibly low. I have often heard it said that in the US there are probably too many elections and too many things to vote on. Whether or not that is true, there’s no evidence to show that simply having a directly elected head of the police makes any positive impact.

Some argue that we should oppose commissioners because ‘undesirables’ (I assume the BNP and such like) might win some elections for police commissioners. I don’t believe that’s a fair argument against commissioners, though the detail of the electoral system proposed is something I have yet to see mentioned. Ultimately I believe that Greens should oppose directly elected police commissioners because they are contrary to green values: They centralise power, reduce the diversity of views, make decision-making less accountable and are needlessly expensive.

What could be done to improve police accountability? We could consider returning control directly to local councils, which would offer a more direct connection with communities and their elected councillors. In the meantime I believe police authorities are a reasonable compromise position, but the authorities must continue to work hard to engage with the areas they represent.

Particularly in these times of austerity, when Sussex Police’s Chief Constable estimates elections for a new police commissioner would cost upwards of £1 million, the case has not been made for this change.

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Planning updates: Mitre House + the old Royal Alex

For those Brighton residents interested in the redevelopment plans for Mitre House and the old Royal Alexandrea hospital sites, read on…

Mitre House

An application (ref BH2010/01966) to convert part of the building from (disused) offices into a budget hotel was pulled from a planning committee agenda at the last minute. Officers had recommended refusal due to the lack of any transport plans in the proposal. However at the eleventh hour some transport studies appeared from the applicant. Officers are now studying these in details – to my untrained eye the applicant is claiming that the change from office to hotel will result in a significant reduction in journeys to the area, which I find very hard to believe. Transport isn’t the only issue with this application so I hope these late reports won’t distract from the wider impacts a hotel could have on this community. We’ll probably see a revised officer report come to committee in November. Until then officers are still receiving objections, if residents wish to submit them.

Meanwhile a new application (ref BH2010/03122) has just been lodged by the owners. This is to extend the southern block of Mitre House by at least a storey to create more flats. This will probably cause more shading for some households. I’ve not yet viewed the detailed plans as they’ve only just been lodged.

Planning application online lookup.
(I cannot link directly to applications online due to an irritating legal disclaimer you need to agree on the planning register. It is a goal of mine to get this pointless click licence removed!)

The old Royal Alexandra Hospital

Applications to demolish all the buildings on this site, including the landmark main Lainson building, have been refused several times by the planning committee – and upheld by the planning inspector. Taylor Wimpey, who own the site, are now trying again.

Strangely they are planning to double their costs by lodging two applications. One is another completely new build proposal slightly tweaked from the previous ones that have been refused. It meets the 40% affordable housing requirement in council policy, has a doctors surgery and so on. However none of the old buildings remain, despite residents, councillors and officers all clearly stating a preference for at least some buildings being retained.

The second application retains the main Lainson building and replaces all the others with new build blocks virtually identical to those in the demolition proposal. There is no doctors surgery in this and initially no affordable housing was mentioned. However after some strong words about this approach, including this letter from Sven and I, Taylor Wimpey are now floating figures of 12-13% affordable housing being possible in this scheme. This is an improvement, but still a very long way from the 40-50% we need to see in developments for this city.

With both applications there remain issues with the quality of the design for the new build plus shading and overlooking for existing residents on all sides of the site.

I don’t think the all new (demolition) proposals have any chance of being approved. Taylor Wimpey should focus on improving the conversion application. They’re never going to please everyone, but there’s much more latitude for meeting the majority of the community’s needs with a good conversion scheme than anything else.

I’m told we’re weeks away from Taylor Wimpey formally submitting something, so let’s see how they play it.