Tories say it's council officers who rule Wiltshire

I’M still as fed up as ever with party politics in local government and the damage it does to Salisbury.

But from two leading lights on the local political scene, here’s another explanation for a lot of what goes wrong. They sound so disillusioned that I almost feel sorry for them.

Incidentally, I’m loving the effect our Facebook group, SOS – Save Our Salisbury, is having in stimulating debate like this.

I posted on SOS about the Handforth Parish Council debacle and pointed out that whilst we all howled with laughter at that, Salisbury’s grandly-titled city council is actually just a parish council, too.

It drew the following responses from the chairman of Salisbury Conservative Association, Kevin Daley, and one of his predecessors, John Brady. I’ve slightly edited them for reasons of clarity.

Firstly, former Wiltshire cabinet member and ex-district councillor Mr Brady, reflecting on how greenfield housing development alongside Netherhampton Road came to be permitted despite hundreds of protests.

“The real power does not lie with parish/town councils or with the unitary councils,’ he wrote. 

“It is the officers who make the decisions (recommendations). They know that councillors are transient and as with Harnham, where councillors persuaded them to take a proposed development off the Strategic Plan, officers reinstated it as soon as they could when dealing with a different councillor (cabinet member). 

“All the ‘consultation’ that has to be done is a complete waste of time as I know that this is merely a way of allowing locals to let off steam.”

Sounds very much like ‘Yes Minister’, doesn’t it? 

“Even if a planning committee goes against an officer’s recommendation and refuses a new development, experience shows that nearly in every case, this is overturned on appeal with costs being awarded against the council,” added Mr Brady. “There are notable exceptions but they are few and far between.”

And here’s what current Wiltshire and city councillor Kevin Daley replied.

“Well said. Councillors are frequently undermined and circumvented by the officers. 

“People become councillors because they see what is wrong and what they can do to make a difference, but after four years of banging your head against a brick wall you just give in.”

Of course there could be a fair bit of blame-shifting going on here, what with local elections coming up and some pretty unpopular decisions in Trowbridge having affected Salisbury again lately.

But what a devastating critique of our system.

Now SOS is trying to persuade people to stand as independent candidates for our humble parish council. But a lot of people, reading this, will shake their heads and ask: “What’s the point?”

Like Messrs Brady and Daley, I believe the unitary authority has been a disaster for our city and the communities that depend on it.

The asset-stripping that’s gone on makes it hard to see how  Salisbury could ever return to its former status as the administrative centre of south Wiltshire. 

But it could certainly do with a strong, independent voice to represent all its residents and businesses.

For me, it boils down to this: “If you feel strongly about something, do something about it.”

Make democracy work for every citizen

A REALLY constructive online event on the subject of Citizen Democracy has left me feeling both inspired and daunted by the scale of the task.
Organised by our local LibDems (I am not a member), it consisted of a talk by the very impressive Dr Ian Kearns, co-author of Citizens’ Britain, followed by a question-and-answer session.
Basically it was about how to transfer as much power as possible from elected elites to communities.
It involved educating people about how councils and the machinery of government work, and how they can participate and make their voices heard.
We live in a state that doesn’t know what to do with people when they want to be more than just ‘subjects’ or ‘consumers’, he said.  We’re not set up to cope with hundreds of thousands of people wanting to get involved.
Perhaps we need a Citizens’ Assembly, like the one that finally managed to achieve abortion law reform in Ireland.
Or something along the lines of Taiwan, which recruited computer hackers to help spread information about where people could get Covid masks, by creating a ‘mask map’, and enlisted ordinary people to help challenge misinformation about the pandemic online.
Or Better Reykjavik, an open online forum used by the Icelandic capital’s authorities to discuss ideas about projects and policy.
We SOS admins have been saying among ourselves that maybe what an independent non party political city council could become, or could set up as an extra, is a kind of citizens’ assembly, where everybody’s voice could be heard.
It’s happening elsewhere in the county. Check out Open Westbury’s website. We are not alone in feeling disenchanted. We need to reconfigure local government so that it represents us all, and not just one majority party.

Where the People Friendly money went

TRAFFIC schemes may stop and start but the consultancy gravy train rolls on.
An investigation by Auto Express has found that £412,000 of our money was invested (or wasted, depending on your point of view) in closing the city centre to through traffic.
Of that, £250,622 – yes, a quarter of a million of our hard-earned pounds – went on ‘consultancy and monitoring’ fees. When anyone living or working in Salisbury could have told them for free that the project was poorly designed and ill-timed.
We’re following a predictable and costly outsourcing pattern in public spending here.
Unitary councils such as Wiltshire are put in charge of huge, diverse areas but are kept on such a tight rein that they can’t handle big projects in-house, and have to hand over Boris’s handouts to private companies to help them sort things out.
The results, as we see from our recent experience, can be less than impressive. 

I gather that the Swindon & Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership are covering the council's losses. But it's still public money wafting around.
Now I come to think of it, doesn’t that just about sum up the handling of the coronavirus pandemic? 
A massive redistribution of public money, yours and mine, to private sector cronies of the current administration. Look how successful that’s been!
And apart from that 60-odd per cent, what happened to the rest of the LTZ money? 
According to Auto Express, £64,800 was spent on construction (must have been those barriers), £4,328 on road signs (presumably including the ones that told potential visitors to stay on the A36 and head straight on past Salisbury) and £92,250 on enforcement cameras which will at least come in handy when the scheme – hopefully in a much more people-friendly form – is inevitably resurrected.
Because there’s nothing wrong with trying to make Salisbury greener and more people-friendly. You just have to ask local people what that might mean, before you fritter away their taxes.

Oh, and by the way, suspending the project cost another £10-15,000.

Salisbury needs an independent democratic voice

WE seem to be inundated with “public consultations” all of a sudden.
You name it, Wiltshire Council is asking what we think about it.
Whether it’s sites for new housing development (a foregone conclusion), cycle lanes (a load of old bollards), or a River Park which will reduce the city’s future flood risk while handily creating a much more attractive waterfront to tempt developers, this is the moment to speak your mind.
So much is going on that I hope the members of our recently-formed Facebook group, SOS – Save Our Salisbury, don't feel they're suffering from information overload!
I'm really pleased that so many people have seized the opportunity to air their views on our page.

And in helping to force the withdrawal of the unpopular Low Traffic Zone, for the time being at least, they’ve already chalked up one success.
At a time when everyone's forced to spend so much time indoors, what we've created is a widely accessible channel of communication with a remotely-based local authority that now has to conduct all its business online. 

Somewhere for people to say proactively what they really think, rather than simply ticking boxes in questionnaires designed to produce one particular answer. And we can make sure they aren't ignored.
It's not perfect, of course, and it never will be while some people don’t have the tech to take part, but it's easier for people to see what's going on than back in the day when everything important was discussed and rubber-stamped miles away at Trowbridge in front of the proverbial one man and a dog.
It is, of course, election year, and there’s nothing like the possibility of being booted out of office to concentrate the minds of councillors on keeping in touch with their voters.
But how much does it achieve to consult people once the options have already been pared down to one?
I’m not saying don’t do it, but just don’t pretend that by doing it, you’ve covered all the bases. This is one reason why there’s such a disconnect between politics and the general population.
As life gets more and more complicated, we need to evolve ways of ensuring that the Average Joe (or Joanne) doesn’t feel left out, or left behind. Communities have got to be involved with developments before plans are worked up and before so much has been invested that there's no turning back.
And this is why I’m so proud of what SOS is already achieving. A revival of local grassroots democracy is our aim. It’s a big ask, but an awful lot of people are responding very positively.

Lesson of the Laverstock monolith

IT was only an obelisk on the Laverstock downs. 

Just like dozens that have suddenly appeared the world over.

I’d hazard a guess that its creators were simply copying the original that created such a stir when it was  discovered in the Utah desert. Maybe a better way of expressing that thought is that they were inspired by it, and thought it would give us all a bit of fun.

And in these depressing times it did just that, creating a little buzz of excitement, something to marvel at, something to get out in the fresh air to visit and yes, to touch it, to take in a little piece of its magic, because we love to think that there is something out there that we don’t instantly understand. 

Much the same phenomenon was at work with corn circles. Although people have shown time and again how it can be done, there are still some people who refuse to believe that they are created by humans. And there’s still a part of many more of us, that wishes these astounding works of art were  truly otherworldly.

Because once we’ve analysed and dissected everything in that horrible way that humans have, in our insatiable quest for knowledge, there’s something in our psyche that still yearns for the unknown, the unknowable.

Especially when what we do learn is so grim at the moment.

So to the miserable toad or toads who uprooted the monolith, dragged it downhill, and took with it a small joy for so many people, I hope you have a bloody rotten 2021.

To the runners who tried so gallantly to rescue it, thank you, and well done. You’re on the side of the angels.

Please, whatever happens this year, grab small moments of happiness like this wherever you find them. Be hopeful, and feel sorry for those who don’t know what it means.

Time for Salisbury to take back control?

TAKE back control. That was the catchphrase that did the trick for Boris.

I wonder whether it would work the same magic for Salisbury?

Because what we don’t have here is control. Not a shred of it, or not when it matters.

The destiny of our city is almost  totally in the hands of Wiltshire Council up at Trowbridge.

Schemes for ‘improvements’ are dreamed up at County Hall, or in cahoots with the business-led Swindon & Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership.

Any government dosh that comes our way tends to be doled out on preordained projects through these channels.

‘Consultations’ garner a pathetic number of responses. Many people aren’t even aware of them. If they don’t read the local paper, and aren’t among the handful of ‘usual suspects’ who sit through area board meetings, they are highly unlikely to scroll through Wiltshire Council’s notoriously impenetrable website on the off-chance that they might find something interesting there.

And then we’re lambasted as ‘ungrateful’ when we finally put our collective foot down, and everyone warns us that we won’t get offered any more sweeties if we don’t say thank you nicely.

Take the People Friendly Streets fiasco, for example. It needn’t have gone so wrong, if only anyone had taken the time to ask local people to help draw up a scheme in the first place.

Our parish council, grandiosely housed in the Guildhall, resplendent on ceremonial occasions in its red robes and civic regalia – a sad reminder of the glory days when the city managed its own business - gets what it’s given and seems unable to wean itself off its addiction to party politics.

Several of its members are ‘dual hatted’, i.e. they are Wiltshire councillors, too. How can that be right? There must inevitably be conflicts of interest. 

It’s time all this nonsense came to an end.

It’s more than time that Salisbury regained some of its former powers as the heart of south Wiltshire.

But since we’re smugly assured by those who benefit from the present system that it won’t happen, what would be the next best thing, do you think?

An independent city council? Made up of members chosen for their ability, not their party allegiance? Free to think as they will, but united by an undertaking to work collaboratively on key issues to get the best possible deal for Salisbury from the unitary authority, regularly consulting residents and businesses and reflecting their opinions?

Pie in the sky? It doesn’t have to be. 

Surely there must be a few public-spirited,  free-thinking individuals out there who will  stand for election in May and undertake to pool their talents for the greater good?

And a few voters willing to set aside their usual a) party loyalty or b) apathy to get them into office?

 

No-one bothered to tell city council the money for People Friendly Streets was gone

 NOW it appears that the city council had no chance of getting Salisbury’s People Friendly Streets experiment reinstated.

Even if they’d all voted for it on Monday, it wouldn’t have happened.

Because Wiltshire Council had already announced the indefinite suspension of the People Friendly Streets package to ‘green up’ Salisbury, and the SWLEP, the fund-awarding body, had consequently taken its money elsewhere. After all, if it couldn’t be spent in Salisbury by March, there were bound to be others with ‘oven ready’ deals on offer. Deadlines work against genuine democratic decision-making? Sorry, them’s the rules!

If only someone had thought to tell the Guildhall Gang. I wonder why they didn’t and I do wish Wiltshire Council would be a bit more forthcoming with its version of events.

Given the number of city councillors who double up as members of Wiltshire, it’s surprising no-one appears to have known that they were wasting their time, along with blood, sweat and tears of all those members of the public who sent in letters and the 10 of us who laboriously and nervously prepared statements to read out to the assembled online throng.

Is it any wonder that the voting public becomes more disenchanted with the political class by the day?