By extremely hard work over the last year we’ve managed to reduce our contract costs, restructure internally and scale back posts where workloads have reduced. At the same time we’re increasing funding where it’s needed and directing capital funds to improve the Borough.

Some may say that this is “only £15 a year” but over the last 3 years, reductions by 4%, .5% and now 1.5% will have put £150 back into the pockets of any Band D resident.

Alongside that for 65,000 households in the Borough, it’s put £10 million back into the local economy.

Now that’s helping combat the economic gloom, and reducing at least one of the household bills.

Add to that the monolith (signpost / waymarking) which is itself part of the improvements being made throughout Maidenhead Town Centre, and St Ives Road is definitely looking smarter than previously.

Take a look when you’re next in town!

Happy New Year !

The reception was to celebrate the Jubilee Woods project, which the Borough is doing its best to take part in. Ideally, the creation of a 60 acre wood to form a Diamond Jubilee Wood would be the contribution from the organisation or local authority concerned. There were a few other local authorities represented, but it was a good opportunity to meet with some of the key players driving the project forward.

Also present (not pictured) were Clive Anderson, the president of the Woodlands Trust and Richard Benyon, the Newbury MP and junior agriculture Minister.

Expect more on this topic as we go into 2012!

Writing in the Sunday Times today, she highlights how Labour showered money on buildings and equipment, but failed to improve education. It is because buildings and equipment don’t actually educate, it is passionate teachers and a challenging curriculum that delivers improvement.

The column (in the 21st Century Think Tank) talks not only about the prevalence of calculators, but also about the feeble IT curriculum.

The worry is that we are using our learning brainpower merely to understand how to use software, rather than understand how it works or how it is created and operates.

As a software engineer by training myself, I know how possible it is to get started in creating algorithms that sort numbers, solve mazes or draw ellipses on a screen. That knowledge can be further developed with the vast libraries of application building functionality that exist for all the portable devices we have today.

Where does one learn how to write an iPhone application? Or to store and use the information typed in on an input form? This is not so complex that it needs to be reserved to colleges and universities, we should be getting our bright schoolchildren to create brilliant and useful things for themselves and their communities at a far earlier age….

The object of his focus in Yes Minister was “Open Government” (which he was of course against).

Nick Clegg said, on publication of the current consultation “We will localise the retention of business rates”.

Getting the tough bit out of the way achieved, the detail actually lays out that the plan (some point at the Treasury) is to basically not give any meaningful control to local authorities at all.

The current proposal may allow some councils to keep some of any increase in rates over a period of time, the measurement of which will be – up to Whitehall. We have responded to the consultation to the effect that the complexity and small effect of the proposals will actually do very little for local government retention of business rates. In fact, if one or two large businesses relocate, we may end up getting even less of a percentage of our rates take despite contributing more to the national pot than most local authorities!

About 75 people there, a good occasion.

COUNCIL TAX AND COUNCIL SERVICES

 

The Royal Borough has the lowest council tax outside of London.

In 2007 we inherited a tax position from the previous LibDem Council that had increased tax by 24.3% over 4 years, but failed to introduce new services or markedly improve existing ones.

We were elected in 2007 with a commitment “to aim to keep Council Tax at or below inflation, without cutting services”.

Boy did we deliver.

In 2008, we cut council tax in real terms by 2%

In 2009 we cut council tax in real terms by 3%

In 2010, reducing the actual tax by 4% we cut by 2% in real terms

In 2011, assisted by the 2.5% windfall from central government, we cut the actual tax by half a percent which was a massive 5.1% reduction in real terms compared to September RPI of 4.6% .

How have we done this?

The first, and prerequisite element to cutting council tax is a political will to do so.

If the Leader and Cabinet are not instructing and insisting the Sir Humphrey to marshall their troops and align their budgets to be reducing in size, nothing much will change.

We sometimes get back – even very recently – “Can’t” as the response to a difficult request.

We respond – “can’t do” isn’t a “can do” response ! [Eds note : Mr Cameron made a similar reference to a "can do" attitude in his speech! ]

In practical terms the ways we make savings are numerous and not predicated on a single magic wand.

When contracts are up for extension – when a retendering exercise is the alternative, considerable leverage emerges.

We have renegotiated contracts – our Parks contract we’ve just renegotiated now has an inflationary uplift of CPI. Minus 3%. And that contract has been benchmarked at a reasonable cost. So in the next four years we will be paying 12.5% less for the same service, and we’ve had some goodies thrown in as well like a contribution to a fountain in Windsor.

The point here is not only is this a great deal for residents, it has been my elected Members that have refused the first deal we have negotiated – and gone back for more.

We did the same on our refuse contract. We kept going back for more savings, more reductions and squeezing the price until the team were pleading for us to take the deal.

So we asked them for a bit more, and then we settled…..

What else do we do?

We’ve implemented lean systems thinking to make ourselves more efficient, as widely used in the private sector.

We still review every request for recruitment, four and a half years after beginning, and discover that the world doesn’t stop turning when requests for admin assistants, project coordinators and – dare I say it - equality and diversity officers are turned down.

We have instead sought to share posts or departments where feasible – in road safety, in legal services, for conservation officers, for CCTV.

We were the only Conservative Council to be a vanguard for the Big Society. That doesn’t mean that we swap paid professionals for volunteers, but it does mean that our management will be asked take a look at whether volunteers can fulfil nice-to-have roles they would normally have recruited to.

We track demand more carefully, so we need fewer planners when the economy is limping but perhaps more benefits staff.

We insist that everyone remembers whose money it is!

So in conclusion, keeping taxes down is a hard task, but it’s worth it.

How do I know this?

In May this year, after four years of cutting taxes, the Conservatives in Windsor and Maidenhead gained 15 seats from the Liberal Democrats, the most gains of any Conservative council in the country.

  . . . but not for any good reason !

  Pictured is Richard Fagence of this Borough, last seen in combat locally losing an election in Clewer South, after he had recently lost an by-election in Park and previously, lost the “safest” LibDem ward he won back in 2003, to my Conservative colleagues in Clewer South in 2007.

All the conference excitement must be too much, and he features in an even more impressive spread on page 10 of the Daily Telegraph today!

That would be fine, except all too often local authorities don’t have the right of self-determination despite best efforts to the contrary.

Under Labour, a Local Development Framework could simply be “fixed” by an unaccountable Inspector despite having had oodles of meaningful local consultation and revision.

Under the Coalition, the new plans won’t allow inspectors to actually change plans – but then authorities won’t get a badge of approval. What then, when the developers appeal a local decision to – yes – the unaccountable planning inspector – are they likely to uphold the plan they don’t approve of, or the application that goes against that plan? I think it is the latter.

I don’t buy all of the negative rhetoric about a license to build all over the countryside, but my worries are (1) getting the approved local plan in place and then (2) unaccountable inspectors not respecting it when it isn’t a carbon copy of the government guidance.

Planning policy work is difficult and frequently impenetrable to an ordinary citizen, whatever the good intentions of government. To really achieve a localist outcome, planning decisions simply need to be made locally by democratically elected councillors – which means no appeal to an unaccountable “professional”.

I was told when I became a councillor “when you sit on the planning panel you are sitting in quasi-judicial capacity”.

But the loser in a jury trial cannot just appeal every decision that they don’t like to a higher court that then sits without a jury!

So why can applicants for planning permission appeal a elected panel decision to an unelected inspector, who isn’t local or accountable to the community that has to live with the outcome of the decision – that overrules the local decision?

As the Pope said to Michelangelo

Look! I’m the bloody pope, I am! May not know much about art, but I know what I like!

Ordinary folk can interpret and comment on planning applications far more readily than spend days constructing complex consistent compliant conformant sustainable planning policy.

Our focus should be on improving that aspect of local democracy, whilst absolutely deconstructing the terrible Labour legacy of horrendous complex top-down planning.

One such item is this talk on the “God complex” by Tim Harford at a TED meeting.

Watch the entire thing. It’s quite brilliant.