Frank Branston - Blogging for a Better Bedford

What follows is a summary of my plans for a second term of office. A report on my first term follows on.

Education (if we achieve unitary status): the county’s schools are below the median line in all key stages except the first. In the event of Bedford achieving unitary status improving this situation will be a priority. Working with heads and school governors, the borough will use its proven methods of improving services to identify and overcome barriers to improvement.
• The Rainbow School for special needs children should not have closed. I will look at how provision can be made for those children with special needs who cannot be expected to flourish in a normal school environment.
• Roads and Transport (if we achieve unitary status): more money to be made available for repair and a rolling programme of in depth repair.
• I will urge the building of a new river crossing at Batts Ford. With the Western Bypass this would allow pedestrianisation of Bedford High Street.
• I will speed up provision of Park and Ride Services north and south of the urban area.
• Having got advance funding for the Western Bypass between the A421 and A428, I will look to repeat this success for the stretch from the A428 to the A6, completing the bypass and relieving north south traffic from the need to enter the town.
• Children’s and adult services: the borough does not have responsibility for children’s services. Despite this it has financed street rangers to work with children to reduce anti-social behaviour. In the event of achieving unitary status, I will institute a comprehensive survey into young people’s provision, particularly in areas of deprivation.
• I will look to spend money more effectively by reducing duplication in adult services.
• Rural affairs: I will continue to provide rural skips, and capital grants through the rural affairs committee. I will continue to visit parishes to hear their views and concerns.
• Leisure and culture: Museums and art galleries should be paid for by the county council but in Bedford this does not happen. Nevertheless, I regard improvement of the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery and Museum as important to the new cultural quarter based on Castle Lane. The borough has allocated £2 million to this project and there are substantial commitments from outside bodies including £5.3 million from the Government.
• The borough’s excellent sports facilities will be maintained and improved; the borough continues to support the Willington Rowing Lake.
• Economic Regeneration: I will continue to support efforts to secure regeneration of the borough in rural as well as urban areas. I will continue to support Nirah. I will launch a countywide tourism initiative to publicise the many leisure facilities in the area and encourage the Bedford Development Agency’s marketing initiative to draw the attention of businesses to the benefits of relocation in the borough.
• Community safety: Bedford has a good record in co-operating with the police to bring down crime and I will continue to support this.
• Housing: Bedford Borough has not been a housing authority for nearly 20 years and provision is reliant on agreement with developers. With several major schemes coming on stream a steady flow of affordable homes will be come available. In addition, I will be maintaining pressure on owners of empty homes to bring them back into use.
• Sustainability: since I appointed a sustainability sub-committee of the executive and a portfolio holder a number of initiatives have begun including use of bio-fuel and exploration of the possibility of hydro-electric power generation on the river. This will continue.
• Wasteful use of energy in council-owned properties has been attacked and substantial reductions made with more to come.

Frank Branston, Better Bedford Independent candidate for Mayor

I have now been Mayor of Bedford for more than four years. What follows is my report to the Executive of Bedford Borough Council of the issues I have dealt with during that time.

Report of the Mayor as Portfolioholder for Borough Regeneration

Preamble

At a meeting last year, the council asked that portfolio holders provide regular reports on their activities to the council. This was forwarded to the executive albeit the decision was finally mine. While I was not prepared to make this a rule which would then be binding on all future mayors and executives unless countermanded by full council, I could see its merits and promised to encourage portfolio holders to write reports to the council. What follows is my report on my activities since election.

In preparing this report I have been aware that the topic cuts across most other portfolio areas, particularly environment, housing, planning, community safety, arts and culture, transport and parking equality and licensing. I take this opportunity to thank all those who have held or are holding these portfolios for their help and support over the past four years. I also thank the officers for their generally sage advice and hard work.

Town centre

The period before I was elected gave me the opportunity to find out what people from all over the borough thought of Bedford town centre. The response was not flattering. Complaints ranged from dirty, litter-strewn streets, the multi-storey car parks which were described as dirty, dark and dangerous, poor quality shopping, the price of parking (particularly in areas close to Rushden and St Neots where parking was free), too many drinking establishments in the town centre; a feeling of insecurity on the streets; heavy, slow-moving traffic especially when children were at school.

The bus station was a particular focus of dislike because of dirt, litter and the claim that nothing was done to stop it being a refuge for drunks. There was also a cynicism about whether it would ever be replaced.

There were complaints of a lack of facilities for young people and for more mature citizens who were not attracted to evenings of drinking. Many bemoaned the lack of a theatre and the Granada Cinema was much missed.

It was a cliché that the river was ‘the jewel in Bedford’s crown’ but people said too little was made of it.

Many people preferred to shop in one of the towns around Bedford. There seemed to be a belief that parking in Milton Keynes was free, although in reality only a small area at one end of Central Milton Keynes was free; the rest was charged for.

It was evident that past attempts to ‘talk up the town’ had failed to alter attitudes and visible action was needed to show that Bedford could and would move forward.

First steps

My first actions were to increase the frequency of street cleaning, gum clearing and graffiti cleaning in the town centre (the Gold Zone) on the basis that this was the area which would impact first on locals and visitors alike. The centre street cleaning was doubled, a gum busting machine was purchased for £90,000 and another graffiti cleaner was also bought. The intention was to deal with graffiti complaints within 24 hours in the town centre and 48 hours elsewhere, although it was hoped - and generally achieved - to reduce those times.

There were and continue to be problems with the gum-buster as it is slow, painstaking work and could not be done while the streets were busy which effectively reduced the times of operation to the small hours.

It has to be accepted that by its nature, cleaning up is a never-ending process. As I pointed out to those who complain that no sooner is an area cleaned-up than more rubbish appears, you don’t only wash your face once a week.

I took two other actions immediately after taking office: one was to support the work of Bed:Safe, designed to make Bedford’s night time economy safer. I take this opportunity to applaud the excellent work of Gillian Anderson and her colleagues in making Bed:Safe a model operation of its kind.

The other was to write the case for Bedford to become a pilot town for a Business Improvement District (BID) which I completed within a week of taking office. In due course Bedford became one of a score or so towns and business centres to be allowed to set up a BID which has now been in operation for 15 months.

Markets

I next turned my attention to markets with an intention of setting up a gourmet food market, a flower and plant market and an antiques market, on different days of the week. The food and flower and plant markets have now been operating more than two years and as more people come to live in the town centre these will improve. Discussions with similar enterprises elsewhere have demonstrated that markets take a long time to develop. It was unfortunate that we had to go straight from free stalls to full price after three months as we lost a number of stallholders at that time but we had a limited budget which would not have allowed the market to be rent free any longer. It would also have gone down badly with the stallholders on the Wednesday and Thursday markets who resented even the three months rent-free period. My response was that those markets have had the benefit of being established hundreds of years while the new markets had to be promoted.

There has been an unforeseen benefit in that a number of traders on the food market in particular have chosen to take stands on Charter Market days. Increased trade on farmers market days and during visits from French and Continental visiting food markets also show that there is a demand to be met

Security.

Security in the town centre had been a problem, with the police reluctant to commit resources for deterrence rather than dealing with actual incidents. More on this later.

Town Centre West

All the above measures were, to some extent, palliative. It was evident that the problems of Bedford as a commercial centre could only be remedied by increasing its attractiveness as a place to shop and do business and this meant redevelopment. There were three obvious sites: the Bus Station and the surrounding area, Castle Lane and Riverside Square.

The bus station - now more accurately known as Town Centre West - had already been in the council’s sights and by the time I was elected a process had been undertaken to invite interest from developers. A rather downbeat assessment of the town centre resulted in a disappointing five responses. By the time I took office this was down to three, St Modwen, London and Lisbon (which passed its interest to Thornfield) and Amey. All three presented initially; St Modwen and Amey stuck to the brief as agreed with Stagecoach as owner of the bus station; Thornfield went ‘off piste’. Despite this, Stagecoach expressed a strong, indeed forceful, preference for Thornfield. When the town centre jury selected St Modwen, Stagecoach threatened legal action. I will not go into the details, but in the end Stagecoach dropped the action and paid the borough’s costs. A new and more co-operative era between the parties followed and continues to this day. However, the legal problems caused a substantial delay although, when taking into account the town centre development report demanded by English Partnerships which took nearly a year to complete, it probably made little or no difference.

From the word go I insisted that Bedford would not tolerate another shoddy shopping centre of the type that had disfigured the town centre since the early 1960s. Quality design and materials were insisted on and this was well-understood by St Modwen. An outline planning application was presented early this year.

This is a complex site in several different ownerships including BPHA properties to the north. Moving existing tenants and owners needs to be carried out with sensitivity and a proper regard to their preferences for alternative accommodation.

Greyfriars police station will also have to be demolished and negotiations with the police are under way. The new development will have a ‘police post’ within it.

The upshot should be a lively and vibrant town centre which will include a department store, a town centre food store, a cinema, parking to replace that lost in town centre schemes, and more people living in the town centre. I would hope that an operation such as Waitrose will come in as Bedford is well-supplied with ‘value’ stores (Poundstretcher, two Lidls and a possible Aldi in Goldington) and Bedford needs to go upmarket. There is already a Waitrose in Rushden and Ampthill and my fear is we could lose ground to those centres unless we can match their offer. The developer is in the driving seat in this respect but I have made my desire clear.

Work on Town Centre West is due to start in 2008 with an estimated completion of 2011. If those dates are met, progress from 2004, when St Modwen was chosen, will have been remarkable. The average time taken for a scheme of this size from choice of developer to completion is 13 years.

Castle Lane

As is well known, Castle Lane was cleared for redevelopment in 1963 and has been a rough surface car park ever since. While its existence in that form may have pleased people who wished to park behind the High Street, particularly those who disliked using the multi-storey car parks (MSCP) at night, there can be no doubt that it was a waste of an important site in the historic centre of town.

There have been some attempts at development, including a rather curious process in the late 1980s which resulted in a proposal for an Italianate colonnaded office block which was put paid to by the property slump of the late 80s. Another proposal was to sell it for around £150,000. While it was not the easiest site to develop, that seemed a gross undervaluation and it was not pursued.

Long before I was elected there was a great deal of interest from members of the public in the idea of a food museum but the preference of Mocha, the organisation concerned, was for a London site and the idea was taken no further at that time.

Upon being elected, I contacted Mocha again to see if its view had changed. It appeared that it had and members of the organisation visited Bedford several times and made a presentation to councillors. The result was that Mocha was invited to come up with a plan at its own expense. However, for reasons which appeared to be, at least in part, a reluctance of the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to fund any new museums, nothing transpired and in due course Mocha bowed out.

I then reverted to the idea of an architectural competition I had first mooted many years earlier. Money was obtained from English Partnerships to provide half the prize fund and a very large entry was received. It included one or two spectacular ideas which were, however, difficult to reconcile with the condition that they had to be economically viable. The winner was the London architects Ash Sakula with a mixed development designed to make the area a cultural quarter anchored on the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery and Museum (see below).

The chosen developers were Complex Development Projects(CDP). With a number of other councillors, I visited CDP’s completed site in Coventry which had many similarities with Castle Lane although it was bigger. We liked what we saw.

Site preparation work started this month, 44 years after clearance, and completion is expected in 2008. To encourage local traders wishing to start up in business, forms of tenure tailored to their needs will be made available in some of the units. There will also be live-work units as well as apartments, cafes and restaurants. It is intended that Castle Lane cultural quarter will attract visitors who do not wish to seek their entertainment and leisure among the High Street pubs and clubs. It is anticipated that improvements and changes to CHAG and Bedford Museum will increase the number of visitors to the area, benefitting both the development and the cultural offerings (see below). Work has already started on site and estimated completion is late 2008.

Riverside Square

As mentioned in my preamble, a common criticism of Bedford is that it does not make enough of its river. While the reach from the Town Bridge to the Cardington sluice is undeniably attractive, there is little to do other than walk. Even rowing is limited to the rowing clubs, something which may change if the Willington Rowing Lake is completed allowing less strenuous forms of boating on the river itself.

Except for the hotels and Nicholls Brasserie, there is nowhere for people to enjoy a drink or entertainment by the water and all except the Park Inn have a moderately busy road between them and the river. In consultation with officers and the Town Centre Working Group, the existing Riverside car park (owned by the borough council) was earmarked for a development which would include residential, quality restaurants, wine and coffee bars and some shops around a square on a plinth under which would be provided service access and parking for at least some of the apartments. Others could be provided with space in River Street MSCP.

This development proved controversial because its classical style of architecture was opposed by those who prefer modernism. While not opposing modernism, the view was that this important site deserved something special by way of a building. I took a cue from the Quinlan Terry designed development on Richmond, Surrey, riverside which, while disliked by many architects, is immensely popular with local people. I went there with officers and members and there was agreement that a development broadly along the same architectural lines would be suitable for Bedford’s riverside.

Quinlan Terry produced a drawing which was displayed at a town centre exhibition in May 2004 and received substantial support although a minority vehemently objected. In the end, Terry’s design was rejected because developers felt that his preferred methods of building would be too expensive and render the development non-viable.

The 17 developers who had originally expressed an interest were winnowed down to a shortlist of three of which the chosen company was MCD of Birmingham who gave the design work to Michael Morrison, an expert in the classical style who has worked for English Heritage. He drew up the plans which were accepted by a majority of the town centre working group.

The financial aspects were excellent for the council, with a guaranteed income of £168,000 a year (capitalised at £2.8million), £1.2million for social housing and a stainless steel foot and cycle bridge at a cost of £1.1 million, a return of more than £5 million.

The council has also demanded that sustainability of the scheme exceed the Government’s BREEAM target. A target of zero carbon footprint was not feasible but this style of building can be expected to last longer than one built using the most modern methods so net sustainability over its lifetime may be equivalent.

A number of steps can be taken to reduce carbon emissions by half which will be considerably better than BREEAM. These would include energy efficient light bulbs, grey water for flushing lavatories and cleaning cars. As is known, combined heat and power (CHP) and a ground source heat pump (GSHP) are also under investigation. The latter would cost £1 million which would not be borne by the developers unless they were permitted to save an equivalent amount elsewhere. As stated above, the return to the council is more than £5million, so contrary to the impression given by some people, a GSHP paid for by the council would not amount to a subsidy to the developers, although it would decrease the council’s return from the site by the cost of the GSHP’s construction. If the reduction in power costs enabled the developers to charge more for the units, half the overage would accrue to the taxpayer. Investigation is going on into the viability of a GSHP and potential funding sources.

The developer has applied for planning permission. While there is expected to be some opposition, if consent is granted within a reasonable time, completion is expected by the end of 2009.

Cecil Higgins Art Gallery and Museum

Ever since I was elected there have been suggestions that these facilities were expensive and consideration should be given to whether they provided value for money given the comparatively small number of people who visit them. My response has been that Cecil Higgins Art Gallery (CHAG) contains art and other items worth upwards of £100million and I saw it as an integral part of Bedford’s heritage which should not be dispersed, especially as the borough would not be a financial beneficiary. In addition, if Castle Lane was to be built as a cultural quarter, there was no sense in getting rid of the culture. The challenge was how to make CHAG and the Museum more of a feature of Bedford life, attracting locals, tourists and other visitors.

When I took office the council was waiting for a report from Lords, an arts consultancy, on the future of CHAG and Bedford Museum which would provide the basis for an application for a £10 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). I was disappointed when it arrived because of what I saw as a lack of a vision and sent it back for further work. I did not feel the second version was much better but reluctantly accepted it rather than start from the beginning.

In order to attract outside funds, the council would have to demonstrate its commitment. The council allocated £2million to the project which, it was hoped, would draw in funds from other sources, including the Wixamtree Trust and the Bedford Charity. Substantial sums were pledged and, in addition, the Government offered £2.5 million of GAF money for taking storage offsite, refurbishing the Grade II listed art gallery (not to be confused with CHAG) and the Hexagon. The work has to be started by 2008 to ensure that the GAF money is received.

Subsequently it was reported that HLF was suggesting an application at regional level - under £5million - but it was believed that this could be achieved. A London architect with Bedford connections, Peter Inskip, was commissioned to produce proposals as to what could be done with the buildings to improve the audience offer. It was therefore a great disappointment when our application, even for the smaller amount, was rejected by the HLF for reasons which became no clearer after a meeting with its representatives who seemed to be unable, or unwilling, to explain clearly what the problem was.

The chief executive, the director of economic regeneration, Cllr Pat Olney, the portfolio holder for Arts and Leisure, and John Moore, director of CHAG and the Museum, and I discussed what could be done within the resources we had, provided those who had already offered money, such as Wixamtree and the Bedford Charity stayed in the game. We settled on making more space available to CHAG so it could bring home exhibits which were on loan because of lack of space in Bedford and identified the problem with the museum as being that it was too diverse and lacked a unifying theme.

The emerging opinion was that it should become a Museum of Bedford with perhaps two or three central themes and revolving exhibitions around that core. For instance one of the permanent exhibitions could be how geology shaped Bedford which would include the story of Oxford Clay, the brick industry (which, by that time, would be history), the immigrants it brought to the area with their oral histories. Another might be ‘politics and beer’, telling of the influence that brewing has had on local politics (referring back to ‘Radical Sam’ Whitbread, MP for Bedford at the time of the Great Reform Bill), which could include a traditional brewing facility with a sales line of Museum Ales. A third could include displays of the borough’s regalia and silverware, presently hidden in the Mayor’s Parlour where it can only be seen by invited visitors.

Among the revolving exhibits could be the history of the local media, and of the Beds and Herts Regiment (which has a museum in Luton which might be prepared to share its exhibits with Bedford). Other themes might include the siege of the Castle.

One of the most important educational ideas is to provide a timeline which would relate different strands to what was going on elsewhere at the same time. For instance, if one wanted a picture of Bedford at the beginning of the 20th century one would be able to pick up industry, politics, what was in the newspapers, furniture and dress, linked via colour coded captions which would direct the inquirer to related exhibits. It would have the benefit of unifying CHAG with the museum. It is intended to seek a museum ‘designer’ to work out how these themes could be addressed to encourage more visitors and repeat visits. The Grade II listed Art Gallery behind CHAG could then be used for travelling exhibitions for which, in some cases, entry could be charged.

Castle Mound and Cecil Higgins Gardens

The refurbishment of Castle Mound was largely designed and underway before I was elected. Additionally I approved the mosaic at the foot of the mound, the interpretations and the decision to make a feature of the ice house. Regrettably all of these except the mosaic have suffered some vandalism, most recently the ice house, but there is a widespread acceptance, including from English Heritage, that the area is now much improved.

Harpur Street Central

The Harpur Street Central improvements were designed before I took office but carried out after I was elected. Lessons need to be learned before any scheme which has to accommodate both pedestrians and large delivery vehicles is undertaken again. Rarely does a week go by without a lamp standard or other street furniture being knocked askew and the granite paving being damaged. Within those limitations, the refurbishment has been largely successful.

Car parking

As referred to above, there were many complaints that the MSCPs were dark and forbidding. A capital sum £4.8 million was spent on refurbishment and better signage and the three MSCPs which were improved, - Lurke Street, River Street, Queen Street - have received awards for their security.

It is unfortunate that all three of the development schemes outlined above involve a temporary loss of car parking in the town centre. An assessment of parking need in the town centre has been made which has shown there is substantial over-capacity. Nevertheless there will undoubtedly be some difficulties, with a need for drivers to adjust to the situation until new parking in Town Centre West comes becomes available. The Park and Ride at Elstow is proving popular, and the situation would undoubtedly be helped by one or more of the other proposed P & R schemes coming on stream in the near future.

Meanwhile arrangements are being made for people, particularly the elderly, who need to be driven in for purposes of pleasure or worship. The first car park to be closed is that of Castle Lane. Availability of about 50 spaces has been identified in nearby streets. In addition, the Lurke Street MSCP will remain open late at night for a trial period of two months. When work starts on Riverside Square a similar arrangement will have to be made using River Street Car Park. If there is sufficient demand late parking will become a permanent feature,

It is estimated that by the time all three town centre schemes are finished the net number of town centre spaces will be close to present availability and there will also be the capacity generated by any additional P & R schemes coming on stream.

Should the borough achieve Unitary status it will take over traffic and parking management from the county council. With it will come an opportunity for creative thinking both on parking and the opportunities for integrated public transport which must be seized.

Community safety in the town centre

As stated in my preamble, there has been a perception that Bedford is a dangerous place, particularly in the town centre and its car parks. It may be that the perception exceeds the reality but that does not help very much.

From the beginning I sought to persuade the police to provide a greater presence in the town centre. Initially there was a reluctance to commit officers to preventative work rather than dealing with existing incidents. This has changed and we now have a town centre squad consisting of six officers, a sergeant and an inspector plus police community support officers (PCSOs), the latter part-funded by the borough. I thank community safety portfolio holder Cllr Margaret Davey and Chief Superintendent Andrew Frost for their hard work and vision in bringing this about.

In addition, as referred to earlier, the effect of Bed:Safe on the night time economy has been very beneficial, particularly in its ‘banned from one; banned from all’ programme and the taxi-marshalling scheme. These and other measures, including retailer net radio and increased activity by the BID-financed Blue Caps have led to an astonishing reduction in town centre crimes of shoplifting and criminal damage of 55 per cent over two years.

Off-centre

Kempston

In my first budget I was urged to allocate a considerable sum for the replacement of the Boilerhouse Gym at Hastingsbury School, Kempston, which was due to be closed because the school needed the space.

After discussions and negotiations with former Cllr Shan Hunt, a sum of £690,000 was allocated and I had the pleasure of opening it in May 2006.

I also responded to requests to clean unsightly graffiti from the Addison Howard Centre, even though it is not owned by the borough council, as well as taking up local issues at the request of, and with the co-operation of local councillors. These included fly-tipping, localised flooding, non-operating streetlights, and other matters.

Church Lane

Quite early during my term of office I reacted to demands that the Church Lane shopping precinct, Goldington, be provided with more facilities by bringing the former P&A Supermarket into community use. A good deal of time was spent on schemes emanating from a number of different local sources, but all fell on grounds of practicability and/or finance. It became evident that the only practicable option was a redevelopment centred round the Church Lane shopping area. Coplan was appointed as the developer and the first draft of its ideas have already been out to the community for consultation. They include a much improved shopping area along with better community facilities and a local supermarket. A development agreement is being prepared and it is hoped that work will start on the project late this year or early 2008.

Clean Sweep and Street Pride

Elsewhere outside the town centre, I instituted the Clean Sweep programme and Street Pride with the intention of increasing the ‘liveability’ of some areas which gave the appearance, justified or not, of neglect. These ‘blitzes’ have now taken place in Goldington, Queens Park, Kingsbrook, Cauldwell and Kempston and have been marked with street signs giving the name of the road and the legend ‘Street Pride 2006′.

It is my intention to continue this in 2007.

St Pauls Square

The square has been much improved by landscaping, getting rid of the old public toilets and replacing them with a state of the art facility where the former TiC used to be, a new TiC on the ground floor of the old Town Hall and turning 7a St Pauls Square into a one-stop shop for voluntary services including cleaning up the façade which shows a noble building under the grime. The listed buildings on the south side of the square belong to the county council. I managed to persuade that body to at least do a cosmetic clean-up of their facades.

Public events

Festivals

My first river festival as Mayor was 2004. Prior to this I had been concerned that the festival was beginning to lose out to cheap commercialism and was determined that it should return to its roots as a local event. Thanks largely to the hard work of Andy Pidgen and his staff this has been largely successful and the reward could be seen by the record attendances at the 2006 festival which saw large numbers spilling out into the town centre shops. An end of event free classical concert was so successful in the first year that it is intended to make it a regular feature.

A kite festival, launched in 2003 and repeated annually, has also been a success despite an almost uncanny lack of wind at all of them.

Other events

Other successful events have included Bedford by the Sea and a continuation of the Victorian Christmas Fair and various continental markets, all of which have increased town centre footfall.

Rural areas

Aware that the rural areas often felt they were the poor relations to the urban area I took early steps to change this perception by setting up a Rural Affairs Committee as a sub-committee of the executive with delegated powers. From the beginning it was chaired by Cllr Ian Clifton of Riseley, currently deputy mayor, and had delegated powers to take certain decisions, including spending ones, without recourse to me. All executive members from rural wards - four out of nine - were members. In addition all councillors representing rural wards were invited to attend and speak.

Among the achievements of the committee were the maintenance of the rural skips for disposal of bulky waste and allocation of capital grants for rural areas amounting to £1 million over four years. These grants have enabled many parishes to get on with projects they had earmarked as important but for which they did not have funds.

Projects ranged from playground equipment and additional village hall facilities to providing Odell with £47,000 to buy the freehold of its village hall which would otherwise have been sold on the open market. Underspends have been rolled forward.

I took an early decision that laybys on the roads through the borough should be cleaned up as many were in an appalling state. Since then, entry into the borough has been identifiable by the blue bins in our laybys which have greatly improved them. For the same reason I launched a programme of cleaning the verges which culminated last autumn in a six week blitz in which 12,000 sacks of rubbish were collected. This process will continue this spring.

I made it a target to visit every parish council during my term of office and achieved 40 out of 44. I discussed current issues and took questions from the floor. No previous council leader of Bedford Borough Council had done that. I also visited Brickhill Urban Parish Council. In almost every case their primary complaints concerned matters not under our control, mostly to do with the roads and public transport. This has confirmed my view on the necessity of a unitary authority for the borough.

In Bletsoe and Stevington I advised on how to approach Stagecoach and the county council in an attempt to restore or improve their bus services, and have taken up many other matters with the police and county council and other statutory bodies.

At Souldrop Cllr Doug McMurdo and I insisted that the unsightly mess of the former Castaways Club on the A6 be cleared away and the site is n

You would have thought that even the most muddle-headed politicians would struggle to make a mess of the Unitary issue. All that was necessary was to look at the applications, decide which met the criteria and put that forward for the next stage.

Which is mostly what the Government and its civil servants have done.

Except in the case of Bedfordshire where the Government has taken two opposing bids, put both into the next stage while apparently kicking away the cornerstone of one of the bids.

Yes, both borough and county are going forward into the consultation stage, but Mid and South Bedfordshire have been ruled out which means …what, exactly? Unitary status can hardly be given to Bedford on its own unless the county is going to be reduced to Mid and South Beds, in which case why rule them out in the first place?

I was at a reception last night attended by a number of local politicians and it is fair to say they couldn’t believe it, and that included a county politician who one would have thought would be quite pleased at his authority’s survival, but he wasn’t because he didn’t know what was going on.

We can only hope that the Government knows what it is doing and will one day let us into the secret.

Meanwhile ‘la lutta continua’ (the battle continues) as leftie political groups used to be fond of saying. We will continue to make our case.

March 2007 has been a magic month.

In the space of a couple of weeks three major developments have reached the starting blocks.
Groundworks have begun on Castle Lane, the land cleared for development in 1963. Work has also started on The Wixams development on the brownfield site of the old Elstow Storage Depot. Eventually 4500 homes will arise, nearly a quarter of the total demanded from the borough.

And the last paperwork has been signed for development on land west of Kempston which means that a 70 year wait will soon be over. In June, work will start on the Western Bypass, the need for which was first stated in the 1930s. Another 2,700 homes will be built there.

I don’t claim any credit for the Wixams, where planning began long before I was elected, but I am proud of the part I have played in the other two. It was an architectural competition which led to Castle Lane at last being developed, something I suggested in the early nineties and brought forward a couple of years ago. It will be a cultural quarter linking up with the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery and the Bedford Museum.
Work would not have started on the Western Bypass until 2014 had I not gone to the House of Commons, with the backing of the then MP for Mid-Beds, Jonathan Sayeed, Patrick Hall, MP for Bedford and Kempston, and Alistair Burt, Bedfordshire North East to meet roads minister Bill Jamieson.

I told him that the only way we could get the bypass built in time to provide infrastructure for all the homes the Government wanted, was if it received advance funding. Otherwise we would have to wait for the developers to build and sell 700 homes before work could start.

A few months later, we got notification that the Treasury and English Partnerships between them would fund the road up front and claw back the money - some of which can be spent in the town centre - once enough homes were built.

This has set a precedent. The Treasury has always resisted advance funding until now.
It still took a long time for it all to happen and sometimes I wondered if it ever would, but on Thursday we had a signing ceremony between the land owners, John Ibbett of Bedfordia, Richard Wingfield, whose family own much of the land, the county council which also has a stake and myself representing the borough as planning authority.
In local government you seem to wait, sometimes forever, before anything happens so three major projects in a month is wonderful news. Now if we get to hear next week that the borough can advance to the next stage of the unitary process my cup really will be running over.

I have always thought the saying that ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel’ was wrong; but it is the last refuge of the politician with nothing else to offer.
My view has been confirmed by the people waving the Union Jack after I said I would have been quite happy for the Olympic Games to have gone to Paris. According to Cllr Nicky Attenborough, my Tory opponent in the Mayoral election, that means I should resign as chairman of BOOST, the organization I set up to gain whatever benefits there were to gain from the Olympics.

As you, me and everybody in the country, will be paying for the Olympics for many years to come (I estimate £570 per family and rising), I can’t see what is wrong in trying to get something out of them for Bedfordshire.

Nor is what I said to a group of school pupils anything new. When London’s win was announced I said that while I had not been a supporter of the Olympics bid - a three week party with a likely 20 year hangover - I would set up BOOST in a bid to gain for Bedfordshire some of the possible benefits in tourism and legacy facilities. I have not changed my mind. The recent announcement that the cost is now estimated at £9.4 billion with five years to go has confirmed my doubts.

The reason the original Olympics collapsed was that the cities states of Ancient Greece bankrupted themselves in their attempts to outdo their neighbours.
Remember the one about people who forget history being condemned to relive it? Now that’s one saying I do agree with.

AS a former (reluctant) national serviceman - yes, I’m that old! - one of the greatest ironies of my present life as Mayor of Bedford, is when I take a march past, as I do on Remembrance Day and as I did yesterday.
Especially when I get to inspect the troops.
Yesterday, 2 Battalion of the Royal Anglian Regiment exercised its Freedom of the Borough which it had been awarded in 1946 to march through the town with colours flying and bayonets fixed after which I made a formal inspection of the troops lined up for the purpose. As usual, I got an almost overpowering urge to really inspect, to find some tiny little imperfection, like hair a millimeter too long, and say to the soldier: “Am I hurting you, Private?”
To which comes the puzzled or weary response (according to how often the soldier has heard it), “No, Sir.”
“Well, I ought to be, because I’m standing on your hair. GET IT CUT!”
I don’t, of course. But one embarrassing moment comes when I respond to a senior NCO’s question by calling him ‘Sir’. It’s 45 years since I was the least military conscript in the entire British Army. It’s like one’s army number; there are some things one just doesn’t forget.
Anyway, it was a lot of fun. I stood alongside the commanding officer as the Minden Band of the Queens Division marched and counter-marched. Seated nearby were veterans of the Beds and Herts regiment, now absorbed into the Royal Anglians. I wonder how many of them were like me, couldn’t wait to get out, swearing they would sever all connections with their former military selves only to come over all nostalgic in later life?
I have seen the Minden Band many times at Beating the Retreat ceremonies and it really is excellent. I’m looking at the possibility of getting it to play at the next River Festival.
The battalion also has its own fife and drum band which doubles up as the machine gun section. I asked which came first: does one have to be a machine gunner who can play, or a player who can machine-gun? Apparently it’s the first. If you join the machine gun section you are taught to play an instrument. Even if you start unable to play a note, at the end of a 21 week course you end up proficient on either fife or drum.
If you want to hear the Minden Band, it is putting on a concert of music from the cinema in the Corn Exchange on March 21 in aid of the Army Benevolent Fund. Unfortunately I have the delights of a special - and unnecessary - council meeting that night or I would go to it. but it will be well worth the price of £10 a ticket . The musical snob who said ‘Military music is a contradiction in terms’ was wrong.

A FEW days ago I was walking to the Town Hall when a group of young people; all except one, the oldest and biggest, wearing some kind of blue uniform walked towards me. I saw them throw rubbish on the pavement and evidently they were reproved by an elderly woman and her husband.

As I suppose one has to expect today, they jeered at them, especially the big lout and shouted at their retreating backs. When I came up to them I said: “I suppose you’d do that at home”. The lout said aggressively: “Yes, I would”. I told them I wasn’t surprised, and got the same treatment.

Some days later I saw another group – younger than the others – doing the same thing. I spoke to them and they seemed slightly more abashed, at least for a few yards, but they didn’t pick up their rubbish.

Sandwiched between those two skirmishes in the war against yobbery, was an article by Jeremy Paxman in the Guardian asking why is Britain so filthy? The reason could be seen by these two incidents on Bedford’s Embankment where there is no shortage of litter bins for anybody prepared to walk a few yards. The question is what to do about it.

A woman responded in the letters page that whenever she saw this kind of behaviour, she complained to the person or persons responsible. Brave woman, but not many people would have that sort of courage.

Paxman said a couple of campaigns had been effective in Australia. One was: “Don’t be a tosser”; the other was a television advertisement which showed a family at dinner throwing their rubbish on the floor. The voice-over said: “You wouldn’t do this at home. Australia is your home”.

How successful that would be here I don’t know. I visited a housing estate a few hours before I wrote this. At the end of the path of the first home I went to was a scum of drinks cans, fast food packs and other rubbish. If these people couldn’t even be bothered to clear up their own path they probably do throw rubbish on the floor where they are having dinner.

There’s no point in demanding enforcement. We haven’t got money for an enforcement officer on every corner, although a police zero tolerance programme might help. Essentially, though, care for the local environment has to be instilled at home or at school. Yet on a school visit this week I noticed a lot of litter in the communal areas. I once asked why the pupils couldn’t be sent round with a sack to pick it up, perhaps as a punishment detail. The answer I got was that the head did not consider this part of the school’s job.

I would have said that driving home the message that somebody had to pick up the litter that other people were so ready to throw down was very much part of a school’s job.

Late last summer we had a clean-up blitz on the roads through the borough, filling 12,000 bags with nine tonnes of rubbish. A new blitz is about to start and I’ll be interested in seeing how much is picked up this time, barely six months later.

Meanwhile, if you have a solution to this problem which has evaded me and others and doesn’t include hanging and flogging, neither of which is going to happen, please tell me.

It has dawned on the Lib-Dems that they dropped a bit of a boo-boo when they caused the borough to hold extra meetings over a planning technicality (see River of Tears, below).

They tried to frighten people into believing that the riverside would be unprotected because some planning policies were being abrogated pending new ones being accepted.

They were told at the time that there was a ‘whole suite of policies’ to protect the riverside but they ploughed on regardless. They have now seen the error of their ways. Unfortunately, though, the special meetings will still have to take place at some cost in staff and councillors’ time as well as money so the Lib-Dems are seeking a scapegoat, claiming to have been misinformed by an officer.

The truth is that they thought they had got a nice little bombshell and weren’t going to let the facts to stand in the way of a good story for their Focus newsletter and mayoral propaganda.

The resolution was moved by Cllr Paul Whitehead and seconded by Cllr Dave Hodgson. In the latter’s case, it isn’t the first time he got himself into a spot of bother by jumping to conclusions. It was also backed by Tory Mayoral candidate Nicky Attenborough.

So the 2.7 per cent council tax is through, the lowest for many years. All achieved without cuts in services.
The Lib-Dems tried, as ever, to spend more money in ways which would not, this year, affect the council tax but, as they undoubtedly know, it is all down to the taxpayer in the end.
They also tried to embarrass me with words from my last manifesto that I had promised a referendum before any above inflation tax increases.
Too bad they forgot that each year we gave every taxpayer a full breakdown of spending and options for reducing the increase by cutting services and each year a substantial majority approved our recommendation.
Even naughtier, their leader, Michael Headley, forgot that his party had opposed spending the money to inform you the taxpayer.
They knew our case was good and didn’t want you to know.
Cllr Ian Nicholls, Labour, asked whether our finance portfolio would agree that the low tax increase was the result of prudent financial management for the past decade (sub-text; before I was elected). Barry confined himself to a one word answer: No.

SAY what you like about the Lib-Dems: they may not have come up with a single constructive idea in four-and-a-half years, but they know how to make bricks without straw.

And say what you like about the Conservatives, but they know how to shoot themselves in the foot.

Last night’s council was asked to repeal a raft of policies which are no longer needed because a new policy framework is being prepared for submission to the Government The Lib-Dems must have trawled through these looking for something – anything – about which to kick up a song and dance.

They found policy NE15, which covers protecting the riverside. What was to replace it, they demanded to know. They had asked the county council, which was supposed to be preparing it, to provide them with a draft and had no response.

Cllr Paul Whitehead implied that repealing NE15 without a replacement would leave the Great Ouse and all the wards through which it flowed naked and unprotected from rapacious developers until the new policy was brought in.

David Bailey, the normally acerbic director of planning and development, who eats dim councillors for breakfast, was unusually mild. He brandished a thick file and said: “We have a suite of policies to protect the river”. He must have thought that the Lib-Dems were genuinely fearful that in the few weeks between one policy being repealed and the other replacing it a few weeks later, the river would be raped. As though anything happens that fast in Bedford.

He pointed out that the repeal of the redundant ordinances was a Government requirement before it could approve the new policy framework; that it had to be done before the end of March and that if it was not done that night, it would have to go before the executive and a new council meeting would have to be called to repeal it before the end of March.

Maybe he thought that even in the middle of an election common sense would rule. Silly of him, really.

Instead, the Tories great white hope for the Mayoral election could see the Lib-Dems posing as the river protector and naming her as careless of its future. She swung her group behind them and by the narrowest of margins, 23 to 22, NE15 will get another three weeks of life.

Will the Lib-Dems thank Nicky Attenborough, their rival for mayor? Don’t be daft. They are even now preparing their leaflet to pose as champions of the waterfront in all those wards through which the Ouse passes.

Such is politics with an election in the offing; 54 councillors, a dozen or so officers and I will be back on March 21 just to repeal NE15. Heigh-ho!