9 December - Resistance is futile
The Places Scrutiny Committee is arguably the most consistently interesting
of the three farces. Melvin Seymour does an OK job as chairman, at least he has
never done anything I considered to be unfair or unduly biased, and the report
on Regeneration and Growth is usually worth hearing. What’s more it can be heard
thanks to Deputy Director Jane Richardson’s appreciation that the microphone in
front of her is for speaking into and not to be shoved to one side.
Some of the Tories seem to do that deliberately. Councillor Brian Bishop was
sitting next to councillor Val Clark and Bishop came over as clear as a bell and the
useless Clark was close to inaudible. The Labour councillors can be barely heard
either but only when one is forced to sit behind them as was the case last night.
The
new council chamber is an absolute disgrace for it failure to address the needs
of the public. There is almost no chance of being able to catch out anyone watching the football
as happened in Croydon on Monday.
The extra attraction last night was the Labour Group’s attempt to deflect the
path of the Old Farm Park sale consultation process.
I wouldn’t have known about it except that Labour leader Alan Deadman wrote to
some residents to make them aware of the additional Agenda item and one of them posted it on Facebook.
It was repeated here on 5th December.
I was under the impression that every decent councillor is working for residents
and part of that would be keeping them well informed; so when I heard on the
grapevine that Alan Deadman had been taken aside by a senior Tory and told he was letting
the side down I took it with a big pinch of salt. However, last night, I heard
chairman Seymour confirm that the grapevine was indeed correct or at least on the right track. Councillor
Melvin Seymour was “sad” that Alan Deadman had distributed his letter. It may be significant that
the grapevine said that Alan’s critic was
the same Tory who was alleged
to have called Alan a cu…, well you know the rest.
Are the Tories losing it and becoming the even nastier party?
Labour’s
supplementary Agenda item referred to the Summer consultation on the sale of four
parks which asked the public to judge the merits of disposal based on the fact
that their sale would provide one million pounds towards the maintenance of
the remaining open spaces. The figure was wrong, it should have been £710,000 for
all 27 (now 26) parks and not just the four parks of which Old Farm is the largest one.
The public may have seen £710k. for 26 parks as rather less attractive than a million for only four.
It was argued that the mistake rendered the consultation invalid but obviously Bexley’s
Tories were not going to accede to that.
Chairman Seymour began by saying he believed Alan Deadman’s letter implied that the Scrutiny
Committee had jurisdiction over the sale. I’ve read it again and still don’t see how, but that was his excuse for calling
councillor Deadman’s decision to keep residents informed ‘sad’. He continued by saying much the same thing as I had been telling
everyone who asked me what effect Alan Deadman’s letter would have.
He “took no pleasure in telling you“ the Scrutiny Committee had
“no remit” to stop the statutory consultation, “however I have no option but to allow“ the Labour
submission. Note the implied reluctance in the phraseology.
The council officers were asked to justify their use of misleading figures.
First the facts; on park maintenance the council is looking to save £200,000 in 2016/17 rising to
£800,000 in 2017/18. The £800,000 comes from “the anticipated capital receipts
of ten million pounds”. The sale will avoid financing costs of 8%. That is 5%
debt repayment provision (a legal requirement) and avoided interest of 3%.
“Continuing grounds maintenance requires an overhead of £90,000“, hence the
target savings of £710,000. “These figures were agreed by council last March.” The
million pound figure was to allow for “potential overachievement on the land
sale”. Carefully estimate a number, then casually inflate it.
It was confirmed that the consultation was wrong to have referred to the savings
coming from the sale of four parks and not 27. Councillor Ferreira said that
this error could leave the council open to a challenge.
Deputy director Toni Ainge
whose difficulty with numbers is already well known
said the council’s let out clause for not using the £710,000 figure is because
she said “up to one million” which as excuses go is a pretty lame one. She made
no attempt to explain away the four parks versus 27 or 26.
She said that even if the park sale produced a million pounds it still wouldn’t
be enough to pay for ground maintenance elsewhere. In a further attempt to
justify her mistaken arithmetic Ms. Ainge said those consultations were
non-statutory, or to put it another way, she believed
she could legally mislead the public without fear of any legal challenge.
For the statutory (current) consultation she had placed an advertisement in the News
Shopper. There was no requirement for the council to make the information available in
other places such as libraries and she had not done so. Members of the public
were not impressed. In my road, more than 60 houses, the News Shopper distributor
calls at only two. He has no idea why, but they are his instructions.
Councillor
June Slaughter (Conservative, Sidcup) was invited to speak. She defended the
right to question figures put out as part of a consultation exercise but she
felt there was “a danger that we will lose sight of the main issues for opposing
the sale of Old Farm Park. We should concentrate on the reasons we are opposing
the sale. We should be encouraging as many people as possible to take part in
the [current] consultation”.
Councillor Stefano Borella (Labour, North End) defended his leader’s decision to write to residents
and like me, could not see that it did any more than encourage them to attend
the evening’s meeting. (Around 40 had done so.)
Councillor Borella emphasised the need to put correct figures into consultations
and those used had been “confusing”. Ms. Ainge repeated her lame excuse about
“up to one million pounds”. An excuse for saying four instead of 26 or 27 still eluded her.
Councillor Seán Newman (Labour, Belvedere) added his weight to the argument.
“The consultation was on a false premise and the responses cannot be accurate
and the information put before cabinet cannot be accurate. How much would it
cost the council to deal with the legal process if this was reviewed in some way?”
Cheryl Bacon said it was all a “red herring”. “Figures get
changed all the time. It is disingenuous to suggest the consultation is faulted
because of some variance on the figures. It doesn’t aid the debate. It is not
for this committee to be dealing with the decision. The responses I have heard
from Ms. Ainge have satisfied me.”
Councillor Joe Ferreira (Labour, Erith) circulated his Motion calling for the current
consultation to be abandoned and to rerun the earlier one without the misleading
figures for monetary gain.
Councillor
Val Clark was the first to object but what she actually said was inaudible
because she likes to keep at least three feet from the nearest microphone.
Cheryl Bacon made her objections abundantly clear, she didn’t think
the Motion should be accepted at all. Her justification was some nonsense to do with the use of
the word disposal when no decision had yet been taken and she thought it would
be better if the cabinet member took account of any problem with the
consultation “when the final decision gets made”.
Committee vice-chairman councillor Nigel Betts, not the sharpest tool in the
box, was even more petty objecting to the phrase “referring back”, when he said
it hadn’t been referred in the first place. He was paid £750 for that interjection.
Councillor Cheryl Bacon attempted to throw a desperate spanner into the works by
requesting a legal ruling from the Committee Officer that the Motion was unacceptable. The ruling went
against her. She argued against that ruling and lost again.
Councillor Borella who appears to have a photographic memory of the arcane rule book said a
Motion should not be debated or questioned until it was both proposed and
seconded, and it certainly hadn’t been seconded at that stage.
The chairman was understandably getting fed up with the too-ing and froing and
called for an immediate vote on the amendment.
Yes.
And No.
Councillor Slaughter appears to have her arms folded. Councillor Aileen Beckwith sits on her hands.
The inevitable had happened. Nothing is going to deflect Bexley council from selling public amenities to the highest bidder. It started with the public toilets and it will go on until everyone is sufficiently pissed off with this council to chuck them out of office.