Frank Branston - Blogging for a Better Bedford

The good news is that tonight (Wednesday) the borough’s council tax increase was held to 2.7 per cent. That’s a very slight decrease on the 2.8 per cent heralded in this blog a few days ago.

The bad news is that the county council’s tax is going up by 4.36 per cent. County council leader Madeline Russell, says this is under the retail price index which has gone up by 4.4 per cent this year. Maybe, but it is still above the official rate of inflation.

And the borough’s tax increase is 1.7 per cent below the RPI and .3 per cent below official inflation.

The sad thing is that you probably won’t notice the difference. The county spends seven-and-a-half times as much as the borough. so its (the county’s) tax will increase by more than £40 on a Band D average home while the borough’s will be less than £4.

Still, every little helps, as somebody or other says.

ALMOST unbelievably, the county council wants to extinguish Britain’s second oldest borough.
Yes, Bedford, which got its first charter in 1166, exactly a century after the Norman Conquest, is set to be marginalised as a town council, with no more powers than a parish if the county’s bid for unitary status succeeds.

I have seen a map which draws a border round the town centre, and hives off what it calls its suburbs, as separate parishes.

According to county council leader Madeline Russell, that’s good enough for Bedford. She says Bedford’s population of 80,000 (not including Kempston) is too big so she wants it to have a population no bigger than 50,000, making it smaller than Dunstable. She says that’s enough for Bedford

By this means the county would divide and rule and emasculate the only authority capable of standing up to it.

Mayor of Bedford Frank Branston said: “It’s an incredible piece of municipal vandalism. It would mean that a borough which has been in existence for nearly a thousand years would be wiped out by a council that is a byword for incompetence. I cannot believe the Government would let this happen but to make sure, every single Bedfordian must fight it.”

I HAVE now heard two versions of how much the county council would tax us in a unitary authority in as many weeks. Both were official county estimates.

At a meeting in Flitwick earlier this month the figure was given as a 2.5 per cent increase in total council tax in Mid Bedfordshire and a one per cent cut in Bedford and Dunstable.

Evidently this was not thought to be sexy enough by Madeline Russell, the county council leader, because in a Chiltern Radio debate being broadcast today, she announced that Mid-Bedfordshire would remain the same and there would be a three-and-a-half per cent cut for Bedford. I’ve forgotten what she said about South Bedfordshire but it was probably about the same.”

Asked why the difference, she said it was because it was felt that there was something wrong with the figures so they reworked them.

For contrast, we in the borough have estimated a ten per cent cut in council tax across the county if Bedford becomes a unitary and Mid Bedfordshire and South Bedfordshire combine to become a unitary Central Bedfordshire.

And we have had our figures checked over and validated by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance Accountants (CIPFA). It believes the savings could be even greater but we are being conservative with a small ‘c’ in our calculations.

Thinking of council spending and council tax, the county has spent around £100,000 of your money on its unitary bid. It commissioned the ineffable Price Waterhouse Cooper - yes, the company that produced the invisible Nirah report - to do a financial analysis - and Bell Pottinger, the PR consultants associated with Margaret Thatcher, to lobby in the House of Commons. Bell Pottinger are charging a bare minimum of £30,000.

In contrast, Bedford Borough has spent just £6,000 - the cost of getting CIPFA to do a reality check on our figures. All the rest of our work was done in-house by our officers at no charge to the taxpayer.

We are so used to crime figures rising as inexorably as the cost of living - but usually faster - that a statement by the operation head of Bedfordshire Police in the Bedford area, Chief Superintendent Andy Frost, had me literally rubbing my eyes.

He told a meeting of Bedford businessmen that town centre crime had fallen by 65 per cent in two years, 40 per cent in one year then another 25 per cent the year after.

He was quite clear about why this had happened - the town centre squad of eight officers, plus the back up from police community support officers, plus the Business Improvement District (BID) Blue Caps who, while not having police powers, have been able to keep officers warned of potential trouble, plus retailer radio net, also financed and promoted by the BID, plus the Bed:Safe initiative to cut down trouble from the night-time economy, plus the ‘banned from one, banned from all’ initiative to keep troublemakers out of the pubs, plus the taxi-marshalling scheme to get people home late at night and avoid punch-ups between people fighting over taxis.

According to Bedford Police, this Christmas was the quietest on record in respect of crime and disorder.

It is the people on the ground who have done most to produce this remarkable turnaround but I would also like to point out the work of one or two other people, especially Gillian Anderson of Bed:Safe who has shown grit and determination to make Bedford a safer place for young people out for a good time.

The community safety portfolio holder in my cabinet, Margaret Davey, called for a town centre squad and asked for funds for PCSOs and the Business Improvement District funds the Blue Caps and radio network.

But so many people have played a part in this result that I can’t thank them individually. It has truly been a team effort.

Most important, it shows what high visibility policing can do and confirms the view of many of us that you can’t beat the bobby on the beat when it comes to crime prevention.

YES, this is the time when I feel least popular. On the one hand, everybody wants their tax kept down (so do I, believe me); on the other, everybody wants the services they use most kept going and improved where possible.

At least I can tell you that the borough’s share of your council tax will increase by 2.8 per cent, which is less than the rate of inflation.

Most people don’t realise that while the borough collects all the council tax, it only gets to spend ten per cent. Of the rest, 75 per cent goes to the county council, and the last 15 per cent to police, emergency services and parish or town councils.

When we become a unitary authority (fingers crossed) 85 per cent will be spent by the borough and we are confident that we will see council tax fall.

We have managed to keep the tax low this year for a number of reasons. One is the rate of return on our investments has been beyond our expectations. Another is that we have managed to negotiate a good deal with Stagecoach on concessionary fares. I know there is a lot in the papers about reduced bus services, but that is to do with the county council, not us (this is why we need a unitary authority, to avoid this confusion).

There are plenty of other reasons, but the most important is that Bedford is a frugal borough and we keep a close eye on the pennies.

A 2.8 per cent increase is about £4 a year on an average Band D household, or just less than 8p a week. We have completed an opinion survey which shows that a large majority of respondents were happy with that increase, a minority wanted no increase or a cut, and a few wanted more money spent on services.

We can’t please everybody, but I think this year we will have left most people content.

MUCH heat and very little light can be guaranteed to be expended over the mayoral salary at next week’s council meeting.

This is because an independent panel has proposed a 19% increase for the post. I emphasise the word ‘post’ because it is the job that is being remunerated. It is for the electorate to decide whether the occupant is worth the money.

The last time the issue came up - about 18 months ago - I announced that, although I considered the job underpaid at about £46,000 - I was not asking for an increase and would not accept one if offered. You may recall that Lib-Dem mayoral candidate Christine McHugh appeared not to have heard me and accused me of seeking an outrageous increase.

I am making the same pledge again - my salary will remain the same until the end of my term of office. At the election on May 3, it will be for the voters to decide who is most worth the salary.

Bedford pays the lowest mayoral salary in the country, although it is one of the largest directly-elected mayor authorities. The Lib-Dem mayor of Watford, a ‘weak’ authority with an 80,000 population, gets within a whisker of the £57,000 proposed by the independent remuneration panel for the mayor Bedford.

Many will consider £46,000 a year a jolly good salary, forgetting that a mayor’s job is at risk every four years and if he loses he is kicked out with no severance pay and no pension rights. The post pays substantially less than half the chief executive’s salary, and well below that of other senior officers, yet is supposed to be the leader of the council.

A middle manager with a famly would be a fool to leave a good job and risk penury, which means that the job is likely to attract low paid, or the wealthy or pensioners.

I am fortunate enough to be a well-off pensioner so I can afford to ignore the financial aspects and even not to take expenses but I think it is wrong to under pay for the job.

Every year the council baulks at paying a proper salary, the percentage increase required to bring it to a proper level will get higher.

None of this will stop politicians from grandstanding, and I am not asking for sympathy, but that doesn’t make it right.

IF I have been less loquacious than you might have expected about the perceived threat to Bedford General Hospital it is because I have never believed that it would be likely to close. If Hinchingbrook Hospital closes, as may well happen, the Government is hardly like to close another 25 miles away in a Labour marginal.

But you can’t stop politicians jumping on to any passing bandwagon, especially just before an important election so Cllrs Nicky Attenborough, Tory mayoral candidate, and Christine McHugh, Lib-Dem mayoral candidate, have been vying with each other as to who can shout ‘Hands off our hospital’ the loudest.

I had invited Helen Nellis to talk to my executive about the challenges facing the hospital and on Wednesday she came with chief executive Jean O’Callaghan. Apart from the members of the executive, there were nine other councillors, including Attenborough and MCHugh waiting to have a go.

Actually, though it was all very mild. Questions were asked, about the deficit - £12 million; and were there any other nasty surprises due and the number of ward closures (which Ms O’Callaghan surprisingly didn’t know); was accident and emergency safe; had they seen the BBC programme in which industrialist Gerry Robinson sought to turn round a failing hospital (they hadn’t).

Firmly denying the possibility of closure, Ms O’Callaghan, said: “We have never considered closing”, to which I felt constrained to point out that it wasn’t down to her. One problem they admitted is that they may not be able to cover all specialisations so patients aren’t guaranteed to have whatever procedure is needed in the hospital of their choice.

Mrs Nellis said she was confident that the hospital’s financial recovery plan would work. I hope she’s right. As she is leaving in three months time she will at least be spared picking up the pieces if it isn’t.

At the end of the discussion I thought they had come out well and so did they.

IT is all too easy to assume a depth of knowledge on the part of one’s readers which maybe they do not possess. At the same time, I don’t want to be teaching granny to suck eggs (mind you, I have never known a granny or anybody else who sucked eggs - yet another skill that has died out, like winning test matches).

So forgive me if I spend a little time explaining the difference between two-tier and unitary authorities and why I believe one is better than the other.

Bedford is currently a two-tier authority, which means we can do such things as collecting rubbish, cleaning streets, maintain some side roads in the urban area, but by no means all, most planning but not when it involves mineral extraction sites or transport issues, promote urban regeneration, deal with playgrounds, sporting facilities, play schemes, housing the homeless, benefits, maintain parks and gardens, collect council tax on behalf of the county council, police and emergency services, and ourselves, local festivals and a number of other things.

To do all this we receive just ten per cent of the council tax we collect from you.

What we cannot not deal with is transport including trunk roads, through routes, traffic signals, roundabouts, education, social services, children’s services, strategic planning, mineral extraction etc. That’s what the county does

The county council receives 75% of your council tax. The last five per cent goes to police and emergency services.

A unitary council provides all the functions currently delivered by county and district councils.

On Bedford Borough, we believe that the two tier system is wasteful. It means that in the administrative county of Bedfordshire (excluding Luton which is already a Unitary) we have four councils, the borough, Mid-Bedfordshire and South Bedfordshire and the county, all with their own chief executives, deputy chief executives, finance directors, directors of planning and their deputies. We argue that better services could be delivered with less money by unitary authorities.

Perhaps surprisingly, the county agrees. The borough is applying to become a unitary authority and so is the county, but the county wants to incorporate all the district councils and itself under one umbrella whereas our plan is the Bedford strikes out on its own, and Mid-Bedfordshire and South Bedfordshire combines to become a now Central Bedford unitary authority. This was recommended in 1994, when Luton became a unitary, but was not picked up by the Government of the day.

Bedford is a good authority, as measured by the Government’s grading system, and is expected to be upgraded to the top level of ‘excellent’ in a few months. We also have lower than average council tax, outperform any other council in service delivery and are at the top of the value for money league table.

The county council was graded the worst shire county in the country with the third highest shire council tax. While it has improved in some areas it is still classified ‘weak’.

As all councils in Bedfordshire agree that unitary is best, why would we want to adopt the county model and be run by a weak county council when all three district council in Bedfordshire are graded above the county?

We believe that as a unitary we would offer the borough’s taxpayers better value for money than we can at the moment with the further advantage that our residents would know who was responsible for their services instead of being bounced from one council to another as has been known to happen in the past..

I am not much one for science fiction but I have always been a fan of Red Dwarf for its anarchic plotlines so I was pleased when my wife picked up a couple of Red Dwarf videos with which to while away the more boring parts of the festive season.

That pleasure didn’t last long when we discovered they were ‘out-takes’.

I just don’t understand this craze for out-takes. They are never more than slightly funny, and rarely that, yet they are common in the schedules. I can understand the point from the TV companies’ point of view - they are cheap, but does anybody find them funny enough to watch for half-an-hour? Maybe we should start an anti out-take movement - a campaign against rubbish TV. Who’s for CART?

BACK in harness, what next for 2007?

It promises to be an exciting year: May will see the local elections which will include the post of Mayor. I am standing again and have been heartened by the good wishes I have received, including from people I don’t know, but I am aware that the political parties are, rightly, putting in a big effort.

I hope they will make firm, quantifiable pledges rather than woolly statements like ’stamping down on crime’ or ‘facing up to the challenge of global warming’ which mean nothing unless they can show exactly how they are going to deal with these very serious issues.

Somewhere around mid-year we will expect to hear the result of the Nirah planning application and you won’t need me to say that my fingers are firmly crossed.

The battle for unitary status will, I hope, be settled by the year-end. If it is in our favour the serious work will have begun which will include deciding on staffing levels, where the offices are to be, how we will deal with privatised contracts.

When people tell me they are unsure of the benefits of becoming unitary I list lower council tax (that makes their eyes light up), fewer councillors and elections, better and quicker road repairs, a transport strategy tailored to the borough’s needs, and so on.

But perhaps the most important would be a much improved ability to meet the aspirations of our community. Let me give you a hypothetical example:

For years there has been a widespread desire by some residents to have a proper theatre in Bedford and I have had to explain that, as a district council, it is impossible. Why? Obviously it boils down to money, but in complicated ways.

The borough has substantial reserves; why then could they not be raided to provide the £5 or £6 million needed to convert the Civic Theatre from the disgrace it presently is to a proper theatre, capable of housing professional as well as am-dram productions.

The first answer is that interest on our reserves helps keep our council tax down. The interest lost on £5 million equals £265,000, or about 4.5 per cent on council tax.

Then there is the fact that few theatres run without subsidy and £500,000 a year would be a fairly conservative sum, or about 8 per cent on the council tax. Add that to the 4.5 per cent lost interest and you have an increase in the borough’s council tax of 12.5 per cent to cover the theatre alone. But the Government caps council tax increase at 5 per cent, so even if I were inclined to do this - which I am not - I wouldn’t be allowed to.

The reason why these comparatively ’small’ amounts make so much of a difference is that the borough only gets to spend 10 per cent of what it collects. The lion’s share, 75 per cent, goes to the county council, and the rest to the police and emergency services.

But if we were to go unitary, with 85 per cent being retained by the borough, the mathematics look very different. Although the amount being spent would be the same the effect on the council tax would be about 1.5 per cent a year.

I give this only as an example. If we became a unitary we would have to examine the situation left by the county council and decide on our priorities. They might be youth services (a county responsibility shamelessly ignored) or road repairs or better public transport or children’s services. As Aneurin Bevan almost said: “Priorities are the language of politics”.

The thing is that our priorities would be decided by ourselves, not some other council down the road over which we had little influence.