Categories
notes from JK technology

City Council pleads with staff to surrender their Blackberries

Belts are tightening as we get ever closer to the date when the 2011/12 budget has to be set for Brighton & Hove City Council. With £30 million of front-loaded Coalition government cuts to find, council officers are quite reasonably reviewing and challenging every expenditure.

A recent email sent around by the Council’s IT department asks staff to consider whether they really, really need their Blackberry. If not, could they give it up and perhaps live without a mobile phone at all? Perfectly sensible, there may be people who don’t really need their Blackberries but still have one in a drawer somewhere.

What’s interesting are the costs the Council apparently incurs per Blackberry: A device on a two year contract costs £432/year before call charges plus £105 in setup and licence charges. (The monthly breakdown is £19 for Vodafone tariff and £17 for Blackberry & ICT support charges)

So before a single call is made or text is sent, a Blackberry will cost tax payers £969 over its two year contract period. That much of this goes to Vodafone is particularly galling given their tax avoider status.

This is another symptom of the Council’s gold plated approach to ICT. No criticism of the current Head of ICT, this predates him by some time. The Blackberries came in under the Labour administration and carried on under the Tories. As did the huge all-encompassing Microsoft licensing deal. Rather than find good-enough solutions, the approach has been to dive for the big name brands as soon as they offer a hint of a discount from their pre-inflated prices. Then we’re locked in.

A small number of decent Linux servers and any smartphone would meet the messaging needs of the Council perfectly adequately at a fraction of the cost. Why are we paying license fees for Exchange servers and Blackberry servers?

Yes, let’s cut down on the unnecessary issuing of mobile devices and excessive use of costly services (they’re also cracking down on football scores and directory enquiries via mobiles). But let’s reconsider whether the whole architecture makes financial sense too. Almost a grand for mobile access to email just doesn’t seem reasonable to me.

[Note: Most councillors from most parties use Blackberries. As far as I’m aware this is the first time we’ve been made aware of the cost they incur. This is no criticism of councillors for whom Blackberries are a lifeline to keeping on top of Council work whilst juggling their other responsibilities. I personally don’t have a Council Blackberry because I just don’t really like them, having tried an iPhone I couldn’t face going back!]

Categories
notes from JK

Requesting council webcasting open up

I’m delighted that Cllr Brian Oxley, chair of the Governance committee, has agreed to take my letter (below) at the meeting on 1st February. I hope that we’ll be able to agree a path for opening up how tax-payer funded webcasts.

Cllr Brian Oxley

Chair, Governance Committee

Brighton & Hove City Council

Kings House, Grand Avenue

Hove BN3 2LS

17th January 2010

Dear Cllr Oxley

WEBCASTING PROTOCOL & ARRANGEMENTS

I am writing to ask that the committee review the protocol and arrangements associated with the council’s webcasting systems.

Specifically section 4.5 of the current webcasting protocol is excessively restrictive. As the findings of the First-Tier Tribunal (Local Government Standards in England) in my appeal of November 2010 state on para 71:

A finding of a breach on the facts of this case would have been disproportionate and would effectively lead to discrimination against elected members by imposing restrictions on their use of certain publicly available Council resources which the general public would be under no obligation to observe, but without any objective justification for the discrimination.

Since the date of the complaint from which this appeal arose, the webcasting protocol has been modified to create what the Tribunal judged to be unreasonable restrictions, namely that permission must be requested and certain uses forbidden, restricting Members’ freedom of political expression.

Given the growing support for openness and transparency in government, I believe the protocol should be reviewed. I ask that, as the Leader of the Council has indicated a willingness to use the Open Government Licence, such a licence is used for council webcasts.

I am also aware that the Council’s contract with webcast supplier Public-i restricts how the video captured may be used. Section 3.6 of Annex 7 from the contract renewal states in part:

You will not copy or reproduce the Content or the Webcast Data on to any other server or location for further reproduction without our prior consent, which will not be unreasonably withheld.

Such a requirement would clearly prevent a Member from placing a clip on YouTube without having first sought permission from the supplier, Public-i. Again this would be deemed unreasonable by the Tribunal.

Thus the protocol and contractual arrangements should be reviewed so that elected Members and members of the public are free to use the tax-payer funded webcasts. Any abuse to misrepresent would be covered by existing laws including libel and should not be cause for adding restrictions.

I look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely,

Cllr Jason Kitcat

Categories
notes from JK

Response from Sainsbury’s solicitor

So I have today received a reply to my letter querying Sainsbury’s licensing policy with regards to their ‘Local’ stores. It clears up the impression that there Sainsbury’s policies which differed to how their competitors in the ‘local’ supermarket arena promote alcohol. They all advertise it and place it prominently:

To: Jason Kitcat

RE: Query on Sainsbury’s licensing policy

14 January 2011 16:05:51 GMT

Dear Cllr Kitcat,

Many thanks for your email dated 10th January.

When I spoke at the hearing on 21st December I did say that Sainsbury’s Locals do not display alcohol in the shelving immediately by the entrance to the store and that they do not display posters on their exterior to promote alcohol-related deals. I was genuinely under the impression that this was the case.

I now accept that at some locations there will be alcohol displayed close to the store entrance and there may be external advertising of alcohol promotions. I will be writing to each of the Councillors who sat at the hearing to explain the position.

There was no intention to mislead the Committee or other parties to this matter and I apologise for any confusion.

Thanks

Robert

Robert Botkai

Partner

Categories
notes from JK

Letter querying Sainsbury’s licensing policy

I wrote today to Sainsbury’s solicitor who dealt with their applications in the city. Following Mr Botkai’s comments that Sainsbury’s had a very restrained approach to alcohol sales I wanted to understand why their ‘Local’ stores which I had passed did not meet the policy as it had been explained to me.

Robert Botkai

Partner – Property & Licensing,

Winckworth Sherwood LLP

Minerva House

5 Montague Close

London SE1 9BB

10th January 2011 (via email)

Dear Mr Botkai

When you presented the licence application for Sainsbury’s Local North Street, Brighton on 21st December 2010 you made a number of statements about company-wide policies. These were in relation to Sainsbury’s policies with regards to the sale of alcohol at the ‘local’ type stores.

Specifically you asserted that, as a matter of national policy:

1. Sainsbury’s Locals do not promote alcohol in the high profile doorway shelves.

2. Sainsbury’s Locals do not have posters on their exterior to promote alcohol-related deals.

I queried this as I had noted a wine promotion in the doorway shelving of Sainsbury’s Local on Western Road near Preston Street. The regional manager with you at the hearing stated this was an error by the store manager, as it was against your policies.

However a few days later (23rd December 2010) I still observed a wine promotion in the doorway of the Western Road (Brighton) store. At the Western Road (Hove) store I again noted an alcohol promotion by the doorway, plus a poster promoting a deal on beer. (Images of these are attached)

I recognise that other stores including Tesco and Somerfield have similar practices of promoting alcohol deals. However, you made specific play of Sainsbury’s responsible licensing policies in relation to placement and promotion at their ‘local’ stores.

Could you clarify for me the status and detail of these policies. Are Sainsbury’s Local stores in Brighton & Hove all in breach of the national policies, or are the policies not as prohibitive as suggested?

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Cllr Jason Kitcat

Encl. [See the images on Flickr]

Categories
notes from JK

McDonalds 24hr weekend licence refused

This morning I attended a licensing hearing as an objector to McDonald’s application to extend their hours. Their Western Road, Brighton branch wanted to open from 5am Friday morning until midnight Sunday non-stop. They also wanted to close an hour later the rest of the week at midnight. Currently they only operate until midnight on Friday and Saturday nights.

When I discussed this application with residents they were very concerned. They argued that there would be increased late night nuisance and disorder caused by the longer hours. It’s a sad reflection on the licensing system that they were unaware of the application until I let them know, and of the few that said they’d object only one was received by officers – but a few days past the deadline for receiving objections so it couldn’t even be considered. So it was just the Police and I as objectors — despite our knowing many residents felt strongly about it. The licensing regime has to be made more accessible for residents.

I won’t rehearse all the arguments made at the panel, as it went on for a good 3 hours at least!

A few notes of interest though: As is often the case, the use of a barrister, can be counterproductive. Too often I’ve found that barristers use approaches which might work in a court-room but end up only turning licensing hearings against them. McDonald’s barrister did the same today — though I might add we had a very interesting discussion about councillor code of conduct tribunals as he had read of my experiences with them!

The owner-operator for Brighton McDonalds mentioned at the hearing that his night-time trade had grown 40% in the last 2 years. He also claimed that last year he served 540,000 people at his Western Road branch and 750,000 at his Marina branch. He made great play of the public sector shift workers such as police officers and nurses who use his Marina branch at all hours.

That may well be… but he failed to address the fact that, unlike the Marina, his Western Road branch is in the city’s cumulative impact area. It’s clear to me, as it was to the police, that people otherwise walking home after a long night would be likely to stop if was a McDonalds open there. We know that drunk people emerging from clubs are noisy and if they are queuing, eating or just hanging around with friends they are going to produce that noise in an area bounded by residential streets. We also know that queues for late night food are often a flashpoint for fights. Yet McDonalds had not even suggested having a single member of security staff to proactively manage any problems, just CCTV and a mobile support unit to call if trouble flared up – reactive, not preventative measures.

Thankfully the panel agreed with the Police and I, so the application was refused in its entirety. I think it’s highly likely McDonalds will appeal or submit a revised application.

Categories
notes from JK

Labour would have cut council budgets too

A letter submitted to The Argus on 22nd December:

Sir,

Before Labour’s Lord Bassam rushes to man the barricades against the cuts (Letters, 21st December 2010), he might wish to check what his party’s position on these cuts actually is.

In response to Conservative minister Eric Pickles’ announcement of the heavily reduced local government finance settlement on 13th December, what did Labour shadow Caroline Flint MP say? That Labour too would have cut local government funding – “This is not about whether or not local government funding should be reduced,” she said because she claimed whoever won the election would have made local government cuts.

These indiscriminate cuts are ideological – a free-market bankers above nurses ideology shared by Tories, LibDems and New Labour, which Ed Milliband is unwilling to refute as shown by his October speech to the CBI.

Greens believe there are some acceptable cuts: Cutting Trident, new aircraft carriers, hugely expensive nuclear power projects and clamping down on the £30-40 billion of tax evasion for starters. Whilst our MP advocates these in Parliament, Green councillors will work with all local parties willing to reduce the worst of these cuts imposed on our council.

Sincerely,

Cllr Jason Kitcat

Finance Spokesperson, Green Group of Councillors

Brighton & Hove City Council

Kings House, Grand Avenue, Hove BN3 2LS

Categories
notes from JK

Full Council December 2010 – the snow or no snow edition

Thursday night saw the last full council meeting of the year being held at Brighton Town Hall. It was the first without Cllr Smart who recently passed away very unexpectedly. So we heard a number of very heartfelt speeches marking the loss, particularly from Cllr Geoffrey Theobald.

On a more upbeat note the public took great interest in the meeting, the galleries were packed and we saw a huge number of public questions and petitions. Most focussed on the Bright Start nursery which the Tories have threatened with closure. The case for closure is not made, the nursery with a little management attention could easily be made viable. Rather than giving it a chance, or admitting that closing it in the middle of a school year makes no sense, they waffled. Then, with no forewarning, council leader Cllr Mears announced that a new consultation would be launched to see if parents and staff would take on the nursery themselves. I’m tired of hearing these ‘big society’ wheezes. The council is the way by which citizens are acting collectively to provide services. Why on earth should people – already with jobs and lives of their own – now run public services too when we have a council to do it?

Cllr Mears continued that evening to make numerous outbursts, often claiming them to be ‘points of order’ when in fact they were no such thing. Points of order are for highlighting breaches of council protocols and rules, not for debating matters or to get the last word as Cllr Mears was using them. Unfortunately this behaviour by his group leader put the Mayor Cllr Geoff Wells in a difficult position, and so he chose not to challenge Cllr Mears.

Anyway a Green motion on Bright Start and amendments to recommendations were both passed at the meeting, so I believe the closure plans will now have to be put on hold. Green Cllr Lizzie Deane delivered a superb speech, her maiden speech in fact, in support of the motion so victory was doubly well earned.

There was also a good crop of questions from councillors. In them I have managed to winkle out a number of commitments. Firstly Cllr Mears has agreed to advocate use of the Open Government Licence by the council, this is effectively a Creative Commons by attribution licence, thus setting the scene for much more use and reuse of council-produced publications and data.

I also learnt that the pay multiple for Brighton & Hove City Council is 13.1, which means the highest paid officer earns 13.1 times more than the lowest paid officer. Not as high as the worst offenders in the corporate sector, but still plenty of room for improvement. Cllr Mears agreed with my request to publish this figure as a regular council performance indicator.

I also used questions to pressure the council about their use of tax-evaders Vodafone and the decline of recycling rates in the city centre.

In other business the new, very much improved, council statement of licensing policy was approved. Greens were the only political group to submit ideas to the consultation process for this revision, and I was the only councillor from any party to attend the Licensing Strategy Group meeting which debated the policy. We also managed to pass an amendment which will institute a further review to expand the cumulative impact area. This area helps to reverse some of the laxity of the original 2003 Licensing Act, by making it easier to refuse new and extended licences in areas already with a high density of venues.

A number of important scrutiny reports were presented, including on city-wide 20mph limits, which stimulated heated exchanges with Cllr Geoffrey Theobald who just doesn’t quite understand the idea of large areas all being at 20mph being preferable to a patchwork of different limits. Or he didn’t appear to anyway.

Around this time Cllr Mears, in another abuse of council procedures, announced that there was heavy snow and more to come. So when the now-usual closure motion was called by the Mayor after 4 hours of business had passed, votes split as people worried about getting home. Personally I think that there are so few council meetings, and they are so important to the city, that a little bit of a late night 6 or 7 times a year is my duty. So I voted against the closure motion.

Unfortunately it did pass, and we emerged to find hardly a snowflake to be found. With her group outnumbered and out-manoeuvred had Cllr Mears used the snow to end a tricky meeting? We shall never know.

The remaining business was voted on without debate, so I couldn’t speak to the two Labour motions nor the Green motion seeking to control private rents and bring some sanity to the private rented sector.

Exactly two years go Cllr Kevin Allen had burbled a furious speech against a motion I had presented which opposed NHS privatisation. Both Tories and Labour had voted it down as their policies support PFIs and NHS marketisation. Yet this Thursday Cllr Allen was presenting a motion raising concerns over… privatisation of the NHS. Could it be?!

I share those concerns. But I’m more worried that Labour think they’re going to pull a fast one. Yes Andrew Lansley’s health reforms are shocking and regressive, but he did trail them in his health manifesto. Labour can’t now jump into the fight privatisation when for 13 years they pushed more PFIs and cracked the NHS open to corporate providers. What on earth do Labour stand for? It seems to me they like to appeal to ‘progressives’ but their agenda continues to be neo-liberal. Their shadow local government minister admitted on Monday that Labour also would have cut council budgets and they’ve not explained how or when they would have stopped the NHS privatisation process they started. Saying whatever it takes to win is not honest politics – it’s part of the problem.

Similarly, Labour’s motion on Vodafone’s tax evasion was all well and good. But Vodafone (and others) didn’t start evading tax after this May’s election… it was happening under Labour’s watch too. Anyway both of Labour’s motions and the Green motion was passed – though notably the LibDems voted against the NHS privatisation motion.

All in all a rather anti-climactic council meeting. Once again debate was cut short just before the notice of motion could be addressed. But some good results and signs that the Tories are floundering.

Categories
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.

Categories
current affairs

Do the Wikileaks Cablegate leaks damage democracy?

Acres of words have been written on what Cablegate (the Wikileaks release of US embassy cables) means, changes and so on. I have tried to avoid any knee-jerk reactions on this blog, whilst watching the debates unfold.

A number of misconceptions are taking hold which are influencing discussions in unhelpful ways. Firstly, Wikileaks did not steal or take the Cablegate cables. Someone passed them to Wikileaks, that’s what a leak is! So whilst the leaker may have broken laws and their terms of employment, Wikileaks haven’t. Neither have the New York Times, The Guardian, El Pais and the other media organisations who also are publishing the cables.

So, if you deplore the breach of confidence by the leaker, that’s fine — but don’t blame Wikileaks and other media organisations for it, the press can’t help but publish good stories that are in the public interest.

Again, if you deplore the leaks, then consider the poor security which enabled over 2 million US personnel access to these cables in such a way that they could be downloaded and leaked so readily. This further highlights the risks of centralised databases with wide-scale networked access. The system wasn’t cracked, a technical flaw wasn’t exploited, someone authorised to use the system just downloaded everything there.

Persecuting Wikileaks only serves to make them more of a rallying point giving them stratospheric profile, and makes them an even more obvious recipient for future leaked materials. So, in their doomed attempts to close them down, the US have succeeded in making the Wikileaks brand stronger than ever.

As for the leaks themselves, are they so bad that democracy and diplomacy are damaged? No. Of course everyone needs some confidentiality to think and debate their work before it is public. Apple wouldn’t want us to see each of their failed prototype gadgets, politicians want to be able to explore all options (even the unthinkable) and diplomats need to have conversations with all sorts of people, not just official points of contact.

However the cables show that confidentiality has been exploited, national security has been abused to cover up information which should be public. Every nation involved in Afghanistan needs to know why the US military are taking a 15% cut off financial support directed there. Dutch voters need to know about nuclear weapons on their soil. British voters need to be aware of the true story behind the release of the Lockerbie bomber. And so on.

To my mind issues of that nature should never have been withheld from the public in the first place. They are clearly of great public interest. That such significant issues have been withheld shows an astonishing disregard by governments for the public and disdain for accountability.

This attitude is worryingly widespread, governments across the world are implicated by these cables in hiding vital issues from their public. This indicates that it’s not a system or cultural failure in one specific democracy. It is human nature to protect one’s own, and also to use restricted access to information as a source of power. So the question for me isn’t about Wikileaks or diplomacy, both of which will surely carry on more or less as before, but about constructing accountability. How, given the massive imbalance in power and information, can citizens effectively hold governments to account when they can use ‘official secrets’ to protect themselves?

Categories
current affairs

What are council reserves?

Yesterday, amid all the snow-related stories, Eric Pickles the Tory local government minister issued an extraordinary statement about council reserves:

“…building up reserves isn’t simply about turning town hall vaults into Fort Knox. These untapped funds exist to ensure councils can respond to unexpected situations like the pressing need to tackle the nation’s unprecedented level of debt.”

Naturally this got widely reported, along with figures on local authority reserve levels e.g. The Argus writing “Sussex councils holding on to more than £387 million between them”

The problem with all this is that most council reserves are not there for emergencies. Of the £65.8m reported as being in Brighton & Hove City Council’s reserves, the vast majority is allocated. About £9m is the general reserve which is for use in case of unexpected issues like severe weather, swine flu, terrorism or a major financial hiccup. Certainly some of that could be used to bridge a gap in the council’s budget whilst trying to meet the coalition government’s cuts.

The rest of the ‘reserves’ are more like separate savings accounts for specific purposes. For example one is used to tuck away money for big IT spends — we don’t have enough spare cash in one year to buy these big ticket items so we save up for them — just like people do. We also put away money for things like the cost of major, long-term contracts such as the waste Private Finance Initiative deal with Veolia. Capital costs, for building and refurbishing, are also set aside in ‘reserves’ while the projects are tendered for and delivered. It’s money we have to spend, not spare cash.

If Eric Pickles was just an uninformed commentator this wouldn’t be worth my noting. But Pickles is a former leader of Bradford Council, an MP and the minister responsible for Local Government. He knows full well that most council reserves are not available for general spending. The cynicism of his intervention, just before the details of local government cuts are published, is quite breath taking. He has managed to put a story out there which implies councils are sitting on piles of unused cash whilst heartlessly cutting services.

Pickles knows no shame and is an ideological cuts man through and through, as he was on Bradford Council. The reasons Councils are going through contortions to save money and cut services is because that is what the ConDem government and Eric Pickles want. Labour planned cuts too, and stick by that message post-election. Only Greens proposed finding new sources of revenue by reducing tax evasion and increased top-rate taxes. We will keep putting the alternative out there and working constructively to prevent the worst cuts.