Derbyshire - no place for the young?

I've just come back from a protest march and a County Council consultation meeting in Chesterfield regarding its proposed closure of all its youth centres.

Unlike those who are making these decisions, it’s not our children who caused the recession; however not having a vote has made their services a soft target. With youth unemployment across Europe at an all-time high, tuition fees tripling and the EMA gone it’s no longer good to be young.

Those making these decisions say there’s no choice. If we are “all in this together”  a fairer way would be for those individuals and large businesses who can afford it to give a little more back to the people who generated their wealth in the first place. The truth is there is always a choice; it depends on where your priorities are.

Cutting youth services may save a little money in the short-term but in the longer term it is economically as well as socially, disastrous. If the County Council didn’t know this before the meeting started they certainly should do now. If, as they say, they are listening and haven’t made any decisions yet they had better start working on a different plan.

If you have the time, please complete the on-line survey available here: www.derbyshire.gov.uk/youthservice2012

Many thanks

Council housing - what's going on in Bolsover?

It comes to something when we have to rely upon the Government to tell us things that Bolsover won’t but there’s something rather strange about how the Council manages its housing. There’s a Council meeting at 10am on Wednesday the 25^th of January and here’s a couple of questions I’ll be asking the portfolio-holder for housing management:

1.       According to the data provided by Bolsover to the DCLG (Department of Community and Local Government) the number of vacant council properties in Bolsover over the past few years was as follows:

2008 : 10

2009 : 40

2010 : 106

2011 : 128

With average rents of over £63 this dramatic deterioration in performance has lost the authority over £350,000 in the last year alone.

During the same period there has been a national improvement of nearly 25% in reducing voids so can he account for Bolsover’s problems?

2.       According to the data provided by Bolsover to the DCLG the number of applicants on the Council’s housing register dropped from 3,299 in 2010 to 1,180 in 2011 meaning that nearly two in three applicants have been removed from the register.

As a result Bolsover now has not only the shortest list in the County but also the smallest percentage of households in its District on the register. Going right back to 1997, when DCLG records begin, Bolsover has never had so few people on its housing register. It is all the more remarkable that it has occurred when the national trend has seen another increase in households registering.

Can he explain what traumatic event in 2011 occasioned this outcome in Bolsover and what measures has he put in place to ensure that no-one in genuine housing need has been removed from the register?

 
I’ll let you know what reply I get.

Better News for 2012?

Some good and some not so good news from the last meeting of Bolsover Council in 2011. The good news first:

A presentation was given on the Council’s excellent apprenticeship scheme, which as the Leader pointed out, is particularly impressive because it last for 18 months and offers placement to people who do not have many, or indeed any, qualifications, a particular issue in Bolsover.

Second piece of good news was the Council’s decision to continue to investigate the installation of photo-voltaic cells on the Council’s housing stock even though the reduction in the feed-in tariffs reduces the financial returns. Credit to Bolsover for persisting when other Councils have pulled the plug. Yes it would have been even better if the Council had moved earlier but I blame the Government not Bolsover for this. Their U-turn leaves the claim of being the “greenest government ever” in tatters and threatens to destory our solar industry which includes companies employing people here in Bolsover.

On the debit side the Council received a very bleak report from District Auditor. You can choose your own adjective to describe it and the circumstances that led to it: “critical, damning, a good hiding and abysmal” were all terms used at the meeting. Either way the Auditor told the Council that this was the worse audit letter she had written this year. Gloomy though it is it does at show that the Labour group are now starting to realise the severity of the situation and that is the first step on the road to improvement. You can call me an optimist but I think some Councillors now “get it” and with a new Director we should be able to take some steps towards recovering public confidence. The nagging voice is of course that the Council said all this last year and instead of getting better it got worse.

No more "improvements" please

The handful of Labour Councillors on Bolsover’s Cabinet have just decided to close all the Contact Centres in the District on Saturday morning claiming they can’t afford to run them anymore. However the savings are less than the extra £25,000 that they had to pay the auditor this year because of their failure to prepare the accounts, and a lot less than the excessive amounts they voted themselves in member allowances. They seemed to have forgotten that in these difficult times the public need easy access to the Council more than ever and for many that means Saturday mornings.

At the last Council  meeting the Leader, Clr Eion Watts, claimed that they had been and would be no cuts. So it’s perhaps not surprising, if a little bizarre, that Bolsover’s press release tries to spin these closures as some sort of “improvement” (yes really). If that’s what they think is an improvement perhaps they had better stop trying.

The end for An

Whilst I welcome contributions I see no reason why contributors should need to protect their identity, so if you aren't prepared to own your comment, you may well find that it doesn't stay on the site for long.

So it’s goodbye to anonymous - it was nice knowing you.

Duncan.

Could do better

Bolsover's auditors have just published their annual governance report, and for the third year in a row it puts Bolsover at the back of the class. It has no fewer than 17 recommendations, 13 adjudged to be of high importance and concludes that the Council has important weaknesses in internal control.

Here’s a few exceprts

• Fundamental errors in the total comprehensive income and expenditure; the movement in reserves statement and the cash flow statement.
• Ongoing capacity issues that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency
• 14 material errors and numerous non-material non-trivial errors theses issues could have and should have been identified by our own review processes
• Significant scope to develop your arrangements for securing financial resilience
• Critical that the Council takes action to move to a single fit for purpose asset register
• Significant governance weakness in contract arrangements
• A number of agreed recommendations that have not been implemented from previous audit letters and reports

Does it matter? - well when you can’t account for the assets you've got it's hard to inspire public confidence in the purchase of Clowne Campus. Other issues raised by the auditors include a £176K under provision of Council tax debts, £157K under provision for Housing Benefit overpayments, £98K of six year old debts that need to be written-off, a £256K provision for an equal pay claim and a £25K bill for all the extra work that they have had to do on Bolsover’s behalf.

Probably most damning of all is the observation that although the Council needs to make savings of £6.5M over the three year period 2011/12 to 2013/14 yet by Sept 2011 it would appear that all Council members had not received a comprehensive overview of the progress in delivering the agreed level of savings. That comment is wrong of course, it should now say November instead of September.

None of this is new, the red lights have been flashing for years. Last January when responding to the previous auditors letter, the Leader, Cllr Watts, said that he wouldn't accept another critical report pointing out that in times of austerity if your financial data is wrong you can make serious decisions to sack staff, or close services, when it is not required. Looks like he was wrong on the first point but right on the second.

Increasing the number of accountants is a necessary but not a sufficient response. The problem runs a bit deeper than that. Some acceptance of responsibility from the Councillors of the Cabinet and Audit Committee would start the process of change but a complete review of the political and leadership culture that has given rise to this systemic failure is long overdue.

Alkane

I normally talk about Bolsover issues here but having looked at the DT this week it seems I've now got strong competition!

So for Whitwellians and Creswellians I must comment on Thursday's public meeting of Whitwell Against Alkane. I had invited Tamsin Hart from the new landowners, the Homes and Communities Agency, following my meeting with her in September. I hoped she would deliver some long awaited good news and I wasn’t disappointed. In her own words Alkane are "off the table" and any, (repeat any, yes that means any - I checked) offers to buy the site will require approval from Bolsover Council.

Thanks to Kev, Julie, Helen, Naomi and all who have supported Whitwell against Alkane we have achieved a hell of a lot - as Tamsin herself said "I think you've frightened them" - not a bad tactics that - never doubt what a well co-ordinated public campaign can achieve.


Duncan