The Salisbury lesson: Fight for local democracy

IT’S easy once you’re elected as a councillor to get bogged down in detail.
Whether that’s discussing how quickly we can afford to switch our grounds team to electric vehicles, or poring over planning applications to do what little we can to protect our environment. Debating how to spend the public art budget, whether or not we spend people’s taxes lighting a Jubilee beacon, refurbishing public toilets … whatever. 
I’m not saying these details aren’t important. They are. They affect all our day-to-day lives. And I get heavily involved.
Let’s face it, Salisbury’s is only a parish council, not a strategic authority. What did I expect? To be changing the world?
Well, of course not. I didn’t expect anything other than what I’ve got, and I am exceptionally lucky to have been given a leadership role in working for the benefit of our lovely city.
BUT. And there is a big BUT. It’s also easy amid all this detail to lose sight of what persuaded me to put myself up for this job in the first place, and to do it the hard way, as an Independent, rather than joining a party and sharing the load.
And this was it. Salisbury gets a crap deal out of the current local government setup.
It has lost so much since the creation of the unitary authority at Trowbridge. Nobody in their right mind could argue otherwise.
Demotion, crucially, has cost us our role as a planning authority with a say over how our area will develop in future. We are struggling to finalise a Neighbourhood Plan that will give us a very limited input into the process. I’m not saying we shouldn’t do that. We should.
But we need to take a long, hard look at where we stand. What we shouldn’t have to do is to put up with this third-class status. Why aren’t people up in arms?
I was driven to these reflections by an article headlined The Salisbury Lesson, which I’m attaching to this post. Its theme? “Protect Democracy: Keep It Local”.
It was written by Richard Pavitt, an Independent councillor in Uttlesford, Essex – a community that’s threatened with a similar fate to ours by government bean-counters who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
He draws on the invaluable experience of our former MP Rob Key to warn Essex voters not to take it lying down.
For anyone interested in the future of democracy, and concerned about the drift towards ever more centralised decision-making, it’s a thought-provoking read, pointing out that as the organisations running our lives get larger and larger, people are more and more inclined to vote for a party rather than an individual, because they don’t know the candidates.
And that means we get candidates whose loyalty is to voting along party lines regardless of what might be best for us peasants. Independents get squeezed out.
I’m not directing this at any elected individuals in particular. And I suspect that those who can be bothered to read it will be the ones who already share my views.
But hey ho, I feel obliged to keep telling people: “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” Get involved.

Maybe Boris should pop along to the Playhouse

WITH uncanny timing given the state of international affairs at present, Salisbury Playhouse’s latest production, The Children, is set in the wake of a nuclear disaster.
This is due, not to war, but to a tidal wave swamping a poorly-designed power station on the coast and causing some kind of meltdown. 
You can tell from the lack of detail in this description that I’m not a scientist! Unlike the three characters in this unsettling but absorbing play, who are all scientists, of the retired nuclear variety.
I do recommend it. No need to give away the plot, but it operates on several levels – about sexual relationships, about parenting, about our failure to live up to our global responsibilities, about what kind of world we are leaving to future generations. 
It’s often funny, which might seem weird given the seriousness of the subject matter, but it’s a slow burner building to a distinctly unfunny climax. Very clever.
Anyway, you hardly need me to draw the link between potential nuclear catastrophe, the recent Russian occupation of Chernobyl, and the terrifying carelessness of those invading forces.
But it’s not unreasonable to also look at Britain’s response to the current situation. How do we reduce our reliance on oil and gas to protect ourselves against future disruption to supply systems? Why, sure, with more wind and solar farms, but also, according to Boris Johnson, with eight more nuclear power stations dotted around our coastline.
“This is the home of nuclear energy,” boasted our Prime Minister. “We’re bringing nuclear home!” 
He made it all sound so simple. So safe. Not quite a quick-fix solution, but a great soundbite to quieten current anxiety. Another of his three-word mantras – Bring Nuclear Home. I’m sure he meant to instil confidence in his listeners. If only I could share it.
Perhaps he should pop along to the Playhouse. 

Picture by Simon Aanand

                         

The old and the new - why some retirement flats are sticking on the market

WHEN my late mother went into a care home in 2019 we had to sell her flat.
She lived in a purpose-built ‘retirement development’ in Salisbury.
She had bought it five years previously, and in that time its value plummeted by £41,000 – almost 20% - in a market where other property prices have kept on rising. Why?
Because of the huge number of retirement developments going on all around Salisbury. The market was flooded, a local estate agent told me, and only the shiny brand-new ones were selling, despite their sky-high service charges.
Mum’s flat was spacious, sunny, well kitted out, not at all dilapidated, looking out on a lovely garden. But we had to pay the service charges even when it was empty, and slashing the price was the only way we could get anyone to view it, let alone buy it.
I was reminded of this episode by a chat with a fellow councillor the other day. He’s been asked to help someone in a similar situation, who cannot afford to pay the maintenance costs, along with the council tax, on an empty parental home, and has been trying to shift it for a year.
(I have to say that Wiltshire Council are generally helpful in allowing relatives to defer payment of council tax until a flat is sold.) 
Buyers are spoilt for choice. A look on Rightmove this week showed 107 retirement apartments currently on the market in Salisbury at prices up to £350,000, some of them vacant for well over a year. 
The cheapest second-hand one could be had for just £45,000. Yet many more are being built.
It seems that the glossy brochures and smooth sales patter, and the allure of the new and ‘trouble-free’ are still winning over our older generation.
It’s only when they no longer require their homes that difficulties can emerge.
Meanwhile there is a massive under-supply of affordable flats being built for young people desperate to set foot on the ladder. They deserve better than shoeboxes converted from redundant offices, like the examples we've seen in TV documentaries.
There is a campaign group called Better Retirement Housing that is pushing for reform of leasehold law to protect the interests of the elderly.
This takes place under a planning system weighted heavily in favour of developers, some of whom donate to the Conservative Party. 
That’s fact. Anyone can check it online. 
But although there is a political point to be made here, there's also a moral one that I can't imagine anyone could really disagree with.
We urgently need, as a society, to focus on the have-nots, and to provide them with decent, affordable housing close to decent jobs.
We’re talking about offering sanctuary to Ukrainian refugees - and not a moment too soon. We absolutely must. But where will they move on to in due course if they can't return home?
We still have families from Afghanistan languishing in block-booked cheap hotels with no hope of proper homes being provided for them.
We have thousands upon thousands of young adults relying on their parents for shelter at an age where they should be able to become self-sufficient. 

And we have older people who may have room to spare, living alone in family-sized homes, unable to afford luxury retirement developments.
Ramming the green fields of southern England with estates of pricey and highly profitable ‘executive’ boxes, with a grudging row or block of social housing tucked away on their least desirable plots, and luring ever more pensioners to places like Salisbury where public services - particularly medical practices - are buckling under the strain, will not solve these problems. 

They require more imaginative solutions.

I'm not being nasty. I'm a pensioner myself (my husband's not far behind!) and I can see that a day will come when one or other of us is no longer able to look after themselves in the family home.
But this is unsustainable housing policy.

City council leaders would welcome the Conservatives back on board

LAST night at Salisbury City Council’s budget meeting I made a genuine offer to the Conservative group to rejoin the shared administration of LibDems, Labour, and Independent (me).
My colleagues fully supported this gesture.
I did it because we think it is important for all of us elected members to work together in the best interests of our community. There aren’t really many issues that come up at parish council level that you could put under the heading of ‘party political’.
The Conservative leader, Cllr Charles McGrath, chose to respond dismissively in a comment to a post on Facebook, saying: “You can take this as our formal refusal of your invitation. Thanks, but no thanks.”
He then declined repeatedly to answer questions from members of the public about what the Tories would have done instead with the budget, had they been in charge, and how they would have funded it.
Cllr McGrath has made claims about what the council would and would not be spending money on. As a joint administration we have sent responses to these claims to the local media, and I have also responded to some of them on Facebook.
What I want to stress here for those who do not realise is that city councillors are all volunteers. 

Unlike Wiltshire councillors, we do not receive thousands of pounds a year. We get an expenses allowance of £750 a year – BEFORE TAX – to fund all our work. For the leaders – and I’m not complaining – it’s a full-on job at times. 
We as individuals all face the same rising costs and household bills as our fellow residents. And the council as a body faces the same cost pressures in taking care of its buildings, vehicles and staff.
It is nonsensical to claim that we would be cavalier about the way we spend council taxpayers’ money. 
Every single person who voted for us has their own priorities in terms of what they would like us to do. We can’t please them all. And often, these turn out to be things the city council has no control over, such as roads and traffic, development planning or pavements, which are Wiltshire’s responsibility.
Just so there’s no doubt, here are the priorities that your administration has chosen to focus on, as cost-effectively as possible:
Climate change and the environment – an avenue of trees for Hudson’s Field, a citywide tree planting strategy and assessment of how we can improve our open spaces for people and wildlife, more money to increase our energy efficiency and reduce our carbon footprint. Electric vehicles.
Better public engagement – more consultation meetings at the Guildhall with a PA system that actually works, and a new opt-in email system to keep people informed and ask their opinions.
Business efficiency – taking all our grounds maintenance work in-house and buying our own depot, instead of renting.
Public art – a new £10,000 fund using local talent to brighten up public spaces across the city.
Community support – money for youth activities, for work to support families. 
Maintenance – no longer putting off vital but costly repair work to the Guildhall, the Crematorium and public toilets. It’ll get dearer the longer we leave it.
Safety – we are funding the city centre security guards for another year until their contract expires, and will review the situation after we see what the Police Commissioner’s promises to improve city policing actually mean. We are meeting him soon.
The Conservatives agree with some of these things and not with others. However, they chose to walk away from our joint leadership, which means they don't have to take difficult decisions about things like this. We didn’t ask them to go. We didn’t want them to go.
Our offer to them remains open.

Police station latest: Thoughts of the Commissioner

OUR police are fed up with their current arrangement at Bourne Hill alongside Wiltshire Council.

The limitations of their facilities mean they can’t give the public the service that they would like to, and that the public want.

That’s frustrating and morale-sapping, and has led to some experienced officers quitting.

It’s not me saying that. It was the Police and Crime Commissioner, Philip Wilkinson, responding to questions on Friday at an online focus group to which I was invited.

Let me say at this point that I am much more impressed by Mr Wilkinson than I was by his predecessor Angus Macpherson. Actually, that’s not hard! But this former senior military officer and security policy adviser is clearly trying to engage with the whole community as he fine-tunes his Wiltshire & Swindon Police and Crime Plan for the next few years.

He’s been looking for a stand-alone site, preferably within the ring road, since he took office in May, and it’s proving hard to find. He’s been told categorically that he can’t have the old police station on Wilton Road.

He needs 1.5 acres, including parking, if Salisbury is to have a custody suite.

So if he can’t negotiate a better deal spacewise at Bourne Hill, he might have to look for somewhere a bit more fringe, although he hasn’t ruled out going for a new-build if he has to, and he’s got some money set aside just in case.

It was a fascinating and very open conversation. Following previous consultations he’s acknowledged that confidence in the force is not as high as it should be, and that people feel less safe than they used to. Also that 47% of people would not feel confident to contact their local Crime Prevention Team. 

He described this as “disturbing”, and accepted that better vetting and training of recruits is required.

He promised more frontline officers, but pointed out that these might not be visible ‘beat’ officers. They might be investigating cybercrime, or domestic abuse, or modern slavery.

But his top priorities are improving reporting of crimes and response to them, along with reducing violence and serious harm. Exactly as it should be.

The public’s priorities, he reported, are antisocial behaviour, speeding, drugs, rural crimes such as flytipping and hare-coursing, and violence, including knife crime.

So, a lot to tackle there.

To help do that, he’s seeking a rise in the policing element of our council tax of 4.3% - equivalent to £10 a year, or 83p a month, on a Band D property.

And I did like his parting shot: “If I don’t deliver, get rid of me.”

He’s still consulting on his Making Wiltshire Safer plans until the end of this month. If you want to read or comment on them, or ask questions at a Facebook meeting with him, copy and paste this link:

www.wiltshire-pcc.gov.uk/the-pcc-and-you/have-your-say/making-wiltshire-safer/

Climate of despair

I HAVE just had to walk away from the News At Ten after 15 minutes. So, halfway through the bulletin.
The major part of what I’ve just watched focused (quite rightly) on the way we can’t really tackle humanity’s headlong hurtling towards climate doom without the presence of India, China and Russia at the Cop summit.
Next up, the sepulchral tones of Orla Guerin (an incredibly brave journalist for whom I have the utmost admiration) on how deforestation is dooming us all.
"Yes but," is all I could say as I literally went from sitting room to kitchen with my fingers in my ears to save myself from further distress.
Yes but, what can we do about it?
There is nothing, despite the daily diet of hand-wringing fed to us by our TV sets, that we ordinary, relatively comfortable Western folk can do that will have the slightest effect on the really big causes of these problems. 
Sure, as individuals we can eat less meat. We can recycle more. We can buy less tat. We can buy a packet of wildflower seeds and feel good about planting them.Yes, I do all that.
BUT
We don’t even have a planning system in the allegedly enlightened UK that can force developers to include climate-friendly measures such as solar panels, heat pumps, EV charging structure, on homes that are being built right now, despite everything we know about the damage we are inflicting on the planet.
Tell me why I shouldn’t despair.

The unitary system leaves Salisbury unable to defend itself

REDUCING a city like Salisbury to parish council status is like forcing someone to fight with one hand tied behind their back.
It’s the main service centre for smaller towns and villages for miles around. It’s got a hospital that serves an even wider area.
It’s where so many roads converge, as we know to our detriment.
Yet developers can blithely work up plans that will have a massive impact on our community and our lifestyle and ‘explore’ them informally with Wiltshire Council without the people of Salisbury even being informed, let alone having any input.
If not for social media, it could have been ages before we heard about proposals so large in scale that they would effectively join Salisbury to Amesbury.
And by then it might well have been too late to exert any real influence over the outcome. 
I’m talking about 1,200 homes at Vineys Farm alongside the A345, opposite Archer’s Gate.
I’m talking about a huge new 146-acre extension to the business and light industrial development at High Post.
And I’m talking about another scheme for business development and 500 homes on an enormous 355-acre site running south from there to a point opposite the new Longhedge housing estate.
Amesbury town councillors did know about the Vineys Farm plan. Most city councillors didn't have a clue. Because none of these greenfield sites lies within the Salisbury parish boundary, arguably they are none of our business. 
Patently, any one of them alone would have a significant impact on the city’s inadequate infrastructure, particularly on our roads. Their combined impact is mind-boggling.
We can’t say no to all development and expect it to go away.
But bearing in mind Salisbury's role at the heart of south Wiltshire its residents, via their city (parish) councillors, ought to be involved - or at the very least informed - right from the word go when a major site allocation right on its doorstep is contemplated, and not just 'consulted' once it's effectively a fait accompli.
As should other neighbouring parishes that may be affected. It's simple courtesy.

For all I know these schemes, which are not yet on any official shortlist, may come to nought in the end.
But right now, the south of the county (indeed, the whole of southern England) is looking like a very happy hunting ground for the volume building industry.

And if any of this land does find its way onto Wiltshire’s list of  strategic sites, important decisions on how it is developed will be taken not by local people, but by a strategic planning committee in Trowbridge made up of councillors from all over the county who meet in the middle of most normal people’s working day, because that’s a) the most efficient way to get things done or b) the easiest way to discourage pointless protests, depending on your point of view.