Frank Branston - Blogging for a Better Bedford

One of my frustrations is the frequent adverse comments I get about the state of Bedford Bus Station.

I KNOW it is often a tip, but it is not the borough’s tip. It belongs to Stagecoach. Every now and then we forward comments by members of the public and sometimes it results in a short-term clear-up but things are soon back to noisome normal.

But if it is not our property, we can’t march in and clear up however much we might like to.

We also get comments about Allhallows car park and again I know it’s not the nicest car park in the borough. The other three multi-storeys cost the taxpayer nearly £6million to improve. We can’t spend that sort of money on Allhallows because it is due to be pulled down and replaced by other parking in the bus station redevelopment.

Unfortunately the credit crunch has put a temporary (I hope) stop to that but I doubt if the taxpayer would thank me if we spent the same sort of money on Allhallows only to pull it down in a year or two.

A member of the public recently challenged me on the state of the loos there and said I should try sitting in the cubicles for ten minutes or so. I thanked him for his suggestion and declined. We do what we can with temporary measures and increased security but there is only so far we can go.

Most of us on the borough council are saddened by the death of Bob Elford on Monday even though it was not unexpected.

He had been ill for some time and we had been discussing whether we should bring forward the ceremony of making him an honorary alderman, the award given to somebody who has served on the council for more than 20 years.

Doing so would have meant a ceremony round his hospital bed in which I would have said what he meant to the council before presenting him with the commemorative document. The argument against was that it would have said to somebody as perceptive as Bob that we did not expect him to recover. On the other hand, that might have made him determined to do so just to show us. You could never count on Bob to do what was expected of him.

It was sad that he lost his seat in the May elections because he transferred his allegiance from the Labour group of which he had been a member for 35 of his 36 years to Independent. He was unable to canvass for himself but his family did their best for him. He had always said he would serve as a councillor until they carried him out; he missed that by about seven weeks.

I had known Bob for 40 years, almost as long as I have lived in Bedford. We had been in business together; we had been in politics togetherr. And both of us enjoyed tickling up the pre-1974 borough council with its line-up of aldermen who thought they governed as of right.

Bob’s father is still alive, heading for his 100th birthday. I offer my condolences to him and the rest of Bob’s family.

While I am writing of old stagers who have passed on, the death of Gilbert Beazley two or three months ago, was never adequately marked.

Gilbert was a predecessor of mine as Mayor of Bedford. In fact he has a place in mayoral history. At the 1974 local government reorgansiation Bedford initially decided not to apply for borough status to placate the former members of Bedford Rural District Council who had been dragooned kicking and screaming into the borough area as it now is. The mayoralty was reduced to a toy town mayor for the old borough area which was purely urban.

After a couple of years it was decided to seek the restoration of borough status which was done at a time when Gilbert was chairman of the council so he became the first mayor of the borough as now constituted.

Gilbert was a very clever operator and networker. Sometimes his pronouncements were a bit delphic and required him to amplify what he was saying so that lesser minds, such as mine, got his drift. He was particularly alert to the meaning of changes in the transport system.

Although not from farming stock, he acquired Bartlemas Farm in Pavenham. During the golfing boom some years ago he converted part of it to a golf course although I suspect it was one of his few duff business decisions. He was also an estate agent, mainly for rural properties and was involved in many aspects of rural life. I last saw him when I went to Pavenham on the first of my rural rounds earlier this year.

His family was determined to have a private funeral and to have as little fuss as possible, which doesn’t surprise me because Gilbert loathed fuss. I always thought he looked uncomfortable in mayoral roabes. It was one of the factors which made me determined never to wear them.

So belatedly, I salute the memory of the present Borough of Bedford’s first mayor.

I am told Nadine Dorries was on the Sunday’s BBC East politics show and bad-mouthing Nirah yet again.

Let’s have a test. If you had to choose between an organisation supported by JUlian Pettifer, television reporter, presenter of nature programmes and former chairman of RSPB, Harvard Professor Edward O. Wilson, father of the bio-sciences and a number of other distinguished academics, Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, architect of the Eden Project, Keith Edelman, who got the Emirates Stadium built on time and to budget, as well as 14,000 local people,

or

Nadine Dorries who got elected promising to defend the green belt then supported a 300 acre development on it and who has still not satisfied everybody by her confused and rambling explanation of her expenses,

Which would you choose?

You’ve got five seconds to decide.

In the increasingly shrill and desperate bid by supporters of three-tier education to defend middle schools I have been accused of lots of things, including supporting two-tier because I want to have a primary school named after me (!!!).

Recently the frenzy has been over who takes the final decision, myself alone or the executive composed of nine members from all groups plus me as chairman, or by full council. Three-tier supports are arguing for full council.

As I have pointed out many times, to individual correspondents and the media, I would also prefer it taken by the full council of 36 members plus me. In the event of a tie, the Speaker would have the casting vote. In other words my vote would be one among 37.

This is not an issue which has been faced by any directly-elected mayor so it was decided to seek counsel’s opinion. It has now come back and I can’t help smiling at the irony.

The recommendation has to go to the executive. Any decision to change will go forward to full council. But if the decision is for status quo it can be taken by the executive and would be final.

In other words, if I and the executive were to take the decision it would signify that supporters of three-tier had won. If it goes to full council, it will still be to play for.

The middle-school defenders should remember the old saying: be careful what you wish for.

Ever since becoming mayor in 2002 one of the issues I have had my eye on is that of public transport, especially in the rural areas where a surprisingly large number of people have no instant access to cars.

The problem was that until April 1 this year it was a county function and all I could do was watch various initiatives in demand related transport chew up money. Meanwhile Stagecoach had the county in its jaws and shook more money out of it by announcing that such and such service was not paying its way and would be withdrawn unless the county increased its subsidy.

This was bad enough in the urban area but it made life much more difficult for the transport poor in the rural area if the increased subsidy was simply transporting air around the county in empty buses.

When I formed my cabinet after April 1, I split public transport from the environment portfolio and took it on myself. The county’s officer in charge of public transport, Chris Pettifer, frustrated with the county’s unwillingness to look beyond the obvious, was raring to go.

Three months later the ideas are beginning to flow and we are looking at ways of trying them out. One demand has been for more late buses in the urban area. At the moment one can go into town in the evening by bus but not home again. We are looking at running buses up to 11 pm during the week and to 6pm on Sunday.

We also have school buses which are laid up between the morning and afternoon school runs. Using them outside those times for general transport would cost more in staff time but provide better use of the buses,. perhaps in support of door-to-door services for the elderly and disabled.

What excites me most is the idea of using taxis for rural areas paid for by a version of the oyster card prepayment system used in London to access all forms of public transport (except taxis). Different types of card would have to be used for concessionary fare bus pass holders to avoid fraud but that should not be impossible.

This system is ready to be trialled in four test areas as soon as the card readers can be bought and if it works it should be a real lifeline for the transport poor of rural areas and young people in town for a night out who have left themselves without the money to get home.

I am very excited by these projects which offer great prospects of making life a lot easier for many people. It will also help taxi drivers who constantly complain of too much competition whittling away their profitability (although there is rarely a shortage of applicants for licences). Watch out for announcements in the local media and do use the new services; it’s use them or lose them.

Nadine Dorries’s moved the adjournment on in the Commons on Monday with a motion that Bedford’s two-tier/three-tier issue should be settled by referendum. Apparently I got a mention (as mayor) several times with Nad claiming I wanted two-tier as my legacy.

‘What was the point of that; the government is never going to order a referendum?’ asked somebody who had watched the debate.

Silly man. The point was to get Nad more publicity in which it no doubt succeeded. Peasy.

More interesting, Nad claimed that I had not attended any of the consultations nor engaged with any parents. Not true. I attended, and answered questions from the public at a well-attended scrutiny meeting and have corresponded with many parents and teachers, mainly three-tier supporters. I have also attended eight parish council meeting in recent weeks and this has been on the agenda of six of them

This is in contrast to Nadine herself who, despite having three wards of the borough in her constituency appears not to have engaged with any of our officers on the issues on which she chose to speak in Parliament.

Well, we went to Bletsoe and left with our skins more or less intact.

In fact a packed parish council meeting, while not happy with the result of the gipsy and travellers’ site appeal, were mostly courteous and seemed to accept that the borough had done what it could to support them. Only one appeared to be fixated on the idea that we could have changed the planning inspector’s mind if only we had designated the proposed site at Meadow Lane earlier than we did.

I explained that the site, while council-owned, was leased to somebody else who had to agree to vacate it and the existence of rare birds was hardly our fault. Eventually he fell out with the chairman who had to tell him to shut up.

Paul Rowland, in charge of planning, was quietly courteous and explained everything in detail making no promises that we could not keep. People seemed to appreciate the fact and that we had gone there prepared to face the flak. The applicant only got a three year permission and provided other sites are identified in time, Bletsoe should be restored to its previous state of calm at the end of the period. Meantwhile, Paul said he would be in talks with applicant Tommy Allen as to the best way of implementing the conditions.

I am pleased to have discovered the root of the failure to notify the media of the inquest on David Ledsom.

It took place in March, you may recall, and there was no report of the proceedings until May after I had idly asked BoS editor Steve Lowe when it would take place. That enquiry yielded a sketchy report in the following week’s paper and the revelation that, despite having made their perfectly legitimate interest clear, the usual sources had not informed the media of the date of the inquest.

I have been plugging away at this mystery, fearing that it was another step down the ladder of news censorship.

Which it may have been, but not caused by coroner David Morris, nor Dave Ledsom’s widow Lesley, who between them had taken steps to deal with what they had assumed would be major media interest. They even delayed the start of the inquest when no media arrived assuming the wrong time had been given.

It seems that the coroner had followed his normal practice of passing date and time on to the police who had passed it on to the press office which, if normal procedure had been followed, would have passed it on to the media. But it didn’t.

Chief press officer Jo Hobbs, a former BoS journalist, said it was an error and added defensively that it was not the press office’s duty to pass date of inquests to the media, which begs two questions: one, whose duty was it? and, two, what information did the press office consider it their duty to pass on? Remember those jokes about the shortest books in the world? I suspect that one would be a front-runner.

So most of the mystery is solved. The coroner did what he could to meet legitimate media needs. The remaining question is what else was going on in the press office to make the most important inquest in years so forgettable?

Having got this far I will now drop the issue in deference to the pain Lesley has suffered and is no doubt still suffering. I would have preferred not to have gone down this road but in an age where every jack-or-jacquie-in-office tries to control information to the public I think it important to resist where one can.