Frank Branston - Blogging for a Better Bedford

I took part in the formal opening of the office complex West One on Bromham Road last week. It was not the first time I had been inside the building because I knew it when it was the HQ of the National Graphical Association (NGA).

While I was being shown round by one of the develpers I asked whether they had found the secret underground vault where, the story goes, the NGA hid its cash during the days when ther goivernment was seeking sequestration of its assets.

He said me they had and went on to tell me an interesting story.

The building was bought from the NGA - which is now called something else - and they were shown round by the son of Bill Keys, a legendary NGA leader. Mr Keys junior showed them an enormous safe which was locked. After discovering that it would cost £30,000 to remove, the developers decided that they might as well get it open so a safe-cracker was brought in.

Anxious not to reveal the secrets of his trade, he told the developers` and Mr Keys to take a walk while he did the business but they had not gone very far when they got a mobile phone call to say the safe was open. They found it empty of money but full of check stubs and the financial records of the NGA. A treaure trove if anybody gets round to writing about the twilight of one of Britain’s most mighty unions.

I try to restrain myself when county leader Madeline Russell comes out with her latest nonsense but it’s so difficult.

In this week’s BoS she comments on fellow Tory county councillor Doug Reedman’s somewhat startling reaction to county councillor Peter Hand’s decision to oppose Russell for leadership. Mr Reedman described it as an ‘fxxxing joke’ Russell said it wasn’t ‘an obscenity’.

Well pardon me, Madeline, but it is generally considered that there is only one word worse than the ‘f’ word. If she thinks the ‘f’ word isn’t obscene I hate to think what piece of anglo-saxon she might use to describe me.

She also claims yet again that the county is the fastest improving council and adds: ‘No one can take from us’.

Who knows? Maybe she’s right. We’ll find out when we examine the books after April 1 2009.

So Suffolk county councillors voted 37-31 to confirm Andrea Hill’s appointment. Lucky them.

It will be interesting to see if her attitude to meeting lesser mortals will have changed. A headteacher has told me that it was considered easier to get to to talk to a Government minister than Andrea, and various backbench councillors, MPs and chief execs of other authorities have told similar stories

It’s all over. The orders laying the ground rules for the change from three district councils and a county council have been laid before both Houses of Parliament with no objections and as of today (Friday, March 28) the path is set for Bedford and Central Bedfordshire to become unitaries from April 1.

There are still signs that county leader Madeline Russell is hoping to control the process as a back-seat driver. I do hope not. The borough will not accept that although we will be happy to work WITH the county.

For those county staff reading this, remember we have no interest in taking over an empty shell. Think of me as Lord Kitchener saying your unitary borough needs YOU!

CONFIRMATION that the county council has spent no less than £543,270 plus the cost of staff time on its unitary battle does not come as much of a surprise to me. In fact I wouldn’t mind betting it will be higher than that when all the bills are analysed. Still £1million - when you include an estimate of staff time - will be enough to be getting on with.

What the gross figure doesn’t say is how much of that is the cost of the judicial review. If you remember, the county estimated £75,000. If that figure were right, it implies that £468,000 was spent on its ludicrous ‘I love Bedford’ campaign and its dishonest ‘Save our Services’ which seems unlikely.

If the county loses its judicial review it will also be liable for the Government’s costs and possibly a proiportion of those of the borough and Mid and South Beds.

All-in-all, a council which paid £7 million to get out of an outsourcing contract which it had only a couple of years earlier labelled a triumph, spent a few millions more on an e-government failure, has lost enough money to finance the lion’s share of Heather Mills-McCartney’s divorce settlement.

I can’t help thinking that its rationale is, “If we win, it doesn’t matter, and if we lose the borough and Central Bedfordshire will have to pick up the pieces”.

However, let us be generous. If the county puts its bitterness behind it and proceeds to co-operate with the borough and Mid and South Beds in the open manner required of it, we can all herald a new dawn for local government in Bedfordshire.

County council leader Madeline Russell will face opposition at the annual meeting of the county Tory group from Cllr Peter Hand, a member of both county and borough councils.

From the beginning Hand has maintained a principled opposition to the county’s judicial review which Russell still believes to be the county’s last card. He says the million or more wasted in opposing the decision to make Bedford unitary and set up a unitary Central Bedfordshire has ‘badly tarnished the Conservative brand’ in the county.

He says his decision to stand has come after conversations with fellow Tories.

Not Doug Reedman, county councilllor for Kempston Rural, I’ll be bound. His response to the Hand manifesto was: ‘You must be F****** joking’.

Good to hear the true voice of the Tory backwoodsman.

Given the suspicions that the county Tory leadership is determined to leave the cupboard empty by the time the new unitaries take over, I can only hope that Hand wins (and that my support doesn’t torpedo his effort).

Andrea Hill’s move to Suffolk County Council may be shortlived because Ipswich - the county town - also applied to become unitary, which the government was ‘minded’ to improve.

What stayed the Government’s hand was Ipswich and Felixstowe’s artificial borders which have been little altered since Victorian times and bear little relationship to the siz of those towns now. If they are rebordered and Ispswich becomes unitary what happens to the rest of Suffolk?

I am told Ipswich and the county are at daggers drawen and have been for many years - which must be a familiar scene for Andrea. Maybe that’s the experience that attracted Suffolk County Council to her. So she may have the dubious honour of having managed two extinguished councils in succession.

If anybody wants to suggest that the borough is unduly harsh about the county council, consider this: now that the government has unequivocally named us as the unitary, we need to get moving on organising the transition. For this we need information from senior management at county hall.

They have told us they are still not permitted to talk to the borough and have said the command was issued by the county executive. Some of us think they should remember their duty to the public and ignore the command which I certainly would were I in their shoes, but they do not seem inclined to do so.

A report has now gone to the Minister for Local Government, John Healey, who, I am told, is getting heartily sick of Bedfordshire County Council, and who can blame him?

I have recently been given two examples of lies told by the county council.
One was a denial that County chief executive Andrea Hill had applied for a chief exec’s job in Cambridgeshire last year. I have recently seen a confidential memo that confirms it.

The second was that the county had set aside £2.4m to persuade top officers not to leave before the handover of power in 2009 (after which) I imagine they won’t give a toss. That, too, has been confirmed by inside sources. I assume that the pot of gold will be reduced now that Andrea has jumped ship. If not, I can see the long-suffering Bedfordshire taxpayer taking to the barricades.

I have in the past made my feelings known about Madeline Russell’s reversal of the truth over a statement that she alleged I had made (in fact it was she who made it) the day the government said it was ‘minded’ to make Bedford a unitary council.

In the report by Suffolk County Council on the appointment of Andrea Hill as chief executive, it was claimed that she had played a major part in bringing Nirah to Bedfordshire. Did she hell! I brought Nirah to Bedfordshire before she was even chief executive. After becoming chief executive she nearly scuppered the project by her inaction when one of her officers appeared to be doing his best to kill it.

It was only after it became plain that a major head of steam was building up against those who would kill it that she made an intervention, asking borough chief executive Shaun Field whether he couldn’t stop me calling public meetings where the intensity of feeling was made plain.

I do hope Suffolk didn’t give her the job in the hope that she could magic a similar scheme into their area.

Since the news that the Government has made a firm decision on unitary, some people have approached me almost salivating over the prospect of a bloodbath at County Hall.

Here is an excerpt from one email I have received:

“I have mixed feelings over today’s announcement. Delight over the fact that
the County Council’s reign is coming to an end and that the Borough has
won. But also a measure of concern for you and Shaun Field, as you take
over such a motley crew.”

I have had other calls suggesting candidates for the boot.

Well, I am sorry, but it isn’t going to be like that. Staff are statutorily protected and will have to be taken on by the new authorities, but even if they were not, I don’t blame them for fighting for their organisation and their jobs. Most of them will adapt to the new situation and even grow to like it. They will prefer working for an organisation which knows its job and gets on with it to one that goes in for kite-flying and sloganeering.

When I was elected Mayor of Bedford, there were people anticipating that I would soon part company from chief executive Shaun Field and Labour leader Shan Hunt. We had been tearing lumps out of each other ending up in the courts not long before.

But the grass grows over the battlefield and Field and I were soon getting along famously and have done ever since. Shan became my deputy mayor, and very good she was too.

No doubt some senior officers at County Hall are already remodelling their career plans, but the bulk of the county’s staff will soon be doing the same jobs either for us or Central Bedfordshire and, initially at least, will scarcely notice the change.

The game is over. The Government has spoken and the desired solution of the three Bedfordshire distrricts is to be implemented. Bedford will become a unitary authority in its own with Mid and South Beds combining to become a second. Like Berkshire, Bedfordshire will now be an all unitary county.

The county council - unloved by most people who don’t work there and quite a large percentage of those who do - will be abolished.

Most people I know are relieved and I was being congratulated by people I didn’t know from Adam as I did my shopping in the gourmet market on Thursday, the day it was announced.

The signals coming out of County Hall were mixed, not to say schizoid - even though they all came from the same person, Madeline Russell, council leader. Publicly she was breathing defiance, saying there was still the verdict on the judicial review to come, ignoring the fact that the decision laid before the House of Commons that morning was a new decision and would not be affected by the judicial review. Her private memo to members was subtly different and basicly said the government had got it wrong but the council had done its best.

The whole judicial review process, which will have cost taxpayers, local and national, at least £100,000 and probably twice as much, was another shocking waste of money by a council notorious for wasting money. It has spent public money like water in its own interest.

The BBC’s teletext service report seemed to imply that the county was ready to go to law again. I do hope not. If Madeline tries her colleagues must vote her out. Using rolled up banknotes to tilt at windmills is unlikely to endear them to the taxpaying public.

Another legal challenge would further delay the implementation of the changes. Already the county’s decision to renege on the commitment we all made to work together whatever the result has cost an invaluable eight months. If the county tries to delay it again the Government will have to step in and put one of its people into County Hall to bring them to their senses. It won’t be the first time it has happened. Three years ago the county council’s reputation was so bad that it was put in ’special measures’ with a civil servant brought in to control it so they know where to go.

Nobody from the press ever goes to the borough’s sustainability committee, which is a shame because it is usually serious and constructive and far more interesting than the tedious knockabout which passes for debate in full council.

I set it up because I was fed up with its predecessor, a talk-shop without any powers. The committee has executive powers and has already had a number of quick wins including a substantial reduction in the amount of power used to light up the Town Hall at night when there is nobody there and the use of bio fuels in council vehicles after years of talk and no action.

Unlike the executive, which I also chair, I let everybody have their say, whether members of the committee or not and so far they haven’t abused it.

Wednesday’s committee heard a report on progress towards hydro power on the River Ouse, to be fed back into the national grid, another on progress towards becoming a Fair Trade borough and a presentation about the bid by the village of Ashton Hayes in Cheshire to become Britain’s first carbon-neutral community.

They have been going at it for about a year now; most of the village is behind it and several initial sceptics have become enthusiasts, especially the landlord of the village pub who found himself saving £2,400 a year on his fuel bills.

After Professor Roy Alexander had finished his presentation and answered questions I threw down the gauntlet and asked who was prepared to take up the challenge. Cllr Pat Olney from Oakley replied that her village had already done so and was making plans to go down that road. Also Castle Ward has set up a carbon neutral group.

Other committee members representing rural areas were a bit more non-committal but maybe some of the seed will have fallen on fertile ground and will produce green shoots in due course.

To Bedford Modern School on Friday to catch its ‘We Will Rock You’ version of the long-running show by Queen.

To be honest, the group has never impinged much on my consciousness. The first time I heard of it was when the story broke that Freddie Mercury was dying/had died of AIDS which, I appreciate, makes me a bit of a saddo. Having seen the show I can’t say I was much impressed by the trite story line nor by the songs of which the only ones I knew beforehand was the title song and ‘We are the Champions’ without realising it came from Queen (I had thought it was a football chant).

But my goodness, the energy and quality of the young cast. They really were terrific. At times they made me forget about the cramped, hard seats and the gradually intensifying pain in my hip.

Several of the cast I would not be suprised to see in the professional theatre some day soon. Let me correct that. Several of the cast I would be surprised NOT to see in the professional theatre soon.

The show was quite raunchy in places. How times change. In the course of my former trade I have interviewed Old Bedford `Modernians who have told me they had been caned for being seen holding hands with a girl. I wonder what the headmaster of those days would have thought of the references to various sex acts in the show. He would have blown up like Krakatoa, I imagine.