Mr Smooth
There’s little point Gordon Brown trying to keep up in the slick stakes with President Obama. Luckily he is too busy saving the world from ourselves to worry about what people think.
Spurred Into Action
At last night’s Executive meeting, in amongst more weighty issues, we were treated to a lecture from Cllr Dombey on how to get things done in local committees. This followed a recommendation from the Carshalton & Clockhouse committee to the Executive that urgent action was taken to repair the wall on the A232 by All Saints Church. Cllr Dombey’s contention was that it was better to speak to officers rather than trouble the Executive with such matters as illustrated by the fact that officers had started to gather quotes.
Unfortunately the Deputy Leader of the Council couldn’t have been expected to have all of the background to hand. The matter was recommended for referral to the Executive by Cllr Hamish Pollock, the single LibDem on the committee with the unanimous support of the remaining five Conservative members. He has been trying to get some repairs done for eight years without success. I am sure that he will be pleased as we all are that the recommendation to the Executive has had the desired effect of breathing life into a situation that has been mothballed for so long.
Freeze The Tax – Freeze The Life Centre
You will have received your Council Tax bill by now, showing another inflation-busting increase. Well, we tried. The only part of our bill set by a Conservative, that of the GLA precept, was frozen by Boris. George Osborne, Shadow Chancellor has pledged to give council’s enough money to freeze council tax if they can peg their increases to less than 2.5%. This is a fair partnership between national and local government; you do your bit and we’ll help. Meanwhile, we sought your views and shared them with the ruling administration.
We believe that Sutton could have joined the thirteen other London Boroughs that are freezing or cutting their tax, helping their residents when they need it most. You can see more on why we believe this is possible and how we could have acheived it without any frontline cuts at the website http://www.freezethetax.org.uk/.
Instead, the biggest drain on this coming year’s budget, the £8million Sutton Life Centre is coming up for the go-ahead at tomorrow’s meeting of the Council’s Executive. £4million is coming from a grant from national taxpayers, the other £4million is coming from us directly, here in Sutton. The Council have raided the reserves, taken money originally given to Adult Social Services, delayed repairs to schools and kept unexpected windfalls that you were owed, just to shore up this pet project. I’ve already written about the way that planning was obtained in a hurry. The Executive have had only six days to see the business plan. However, since it only contains six pages of financial information for an operation that is aiming to turnover £3/4million a year, they could come to a conclusion quite quickly.
The clincher is the target market. It is aimed at schoolchildren in years 6 and 8 that are within a 60 minute drive of the site. According to the figures contained within the user profiles in the report, it is safe to say that the Sutton Life Centre needs to attract 60% of the entire population of children in years 6 and 8 living in South London and North Surrey. Not even Bill Gates would attempt market penetration of that kind within a 12 month period. They are helped by the fact that they will stop the existing Junior Citizenship programme thus forcing local schoolchildren to go to the new building or miss out. The fact that the existing scheme costs schools £3 per pupil and the new one £9 per pupil suggests that schools are going to be out of pocket again because of the Local Authority.
The charge of £9 is another optimistic assumption. According to the report, there is one place in the country vaguely comparable situated in Milton Keynes. Sutton’s business plan requires twice the number of visitors paying a higher price simply to break even. I suspect that tomorrow night, the LibDems will be leaving their legacy to the people of Sutton. The likely £95k per year needed to keep the place open with just a 20% shortfall in income will provide 95,000 reasons why not to vote LibDem at the next local elections.
Residents show support for War Memorial Hospital
Last night, around 50 residents came to a public meeting in All Saints School, called by Conservative Parliamentary candidate Ken Andrew to talk about the future – or lack of it – of the Carshalton War Memorial Hospital.
Ken spoke of the history of the hospital, built by public subscription following the Great War, what it meant to residents today and the effect that its loss would have.
Andrew Grimes from the NHS gave a presentation about the overall programme of changes for healthcare in the area. The War Memorial was one part of a far wider-ranging project. You can see a copy of his handout here. He explained how although Carshalton was getting a good deal from the changes, it was decided that the Intermediary Care beds that had once been planned for Carshalton were being put into the Wilson Hospital in Mitcham. Andrew explained that no decisions had been taken, although the business case for the changes has been given to the powers that be for approval.
I added some points that I have made several times before, including the fact that it was like selling the family silver with the land lost to public service forever. The NHS change their mind on healthcare provision as often as a Jimmy Choo devotee changes her heels. If we continue to shed sites like this we will end up with the predicament that residents in the west of the borough find themselves in. Worcester Park has seen a lot of house and flat building in the last few years. There is a massive shortage of GP places and school places but no land to fix this infrastructure problem. Since I live in Salisbury Road, I also joined the residents in their additional concern about what will go in its place and the effect on the area. As I have reported before, Cedar Close is involved as part of a land swap to maximise the revenue available to the NHS as well as getting more modern facilities for the present residents with learning difficulties.
Residents then had plenty of opportunity to raise their concerns. Some of the more elderly neighbours questioned the legal right of the NHS to sell off the land. I have been promised the legal opinion obtained by the NHS. Others believed that the lack of intermediary care in Carshalton would push patients back into their homes prematurely. We have been promised a further public meeting about such care matters in the near future. The feedback from the meeting was positive with residents able to get their views across. I’ve had a pop at the poor communication from the NHS in the past, but Andrew Grimes did a difficult job very well for the NHS. I hope that the decision makers continue to listen and take heed.
LibDems Greatest Hits from 2008
I came across this video during an idle moment and thought it was worth revisiting as a reminder of another example of the remoteness of the present council administration. It is a clip of the local ITV news from last autumn discussing the changes to school transport for children with Special Educational Needs. In case you weren’t following the story, the change went through, rubberstamped by the LibDem backbenchers at a full meeting of the Council. Autistic children were exempted from the change after some passionate campaigning from affected residents.
The changes are being introduced anytime now. I’m still not convinced that the expected savings will materialise. In the meantime, children and their parents are being put through massive upheaval to their already difficult lives. Rather than fronting up about the fact that this is a cost-cutting exercise, the Lead Councillor claims that the move is greener and will give the children exercise.