by Paul Scully | Oct 27, 2014 | News, Uncategorized |
Sutton council’s consultation on the future of the borough’s two theatres is coming to an end this week. Many residents involved in the arts locally share my view that seven weeks is just not long enough for groups of volunteers to get together a business plan to take over the running of the theatres without any funding from the council.
The council had seven months since Danny Alexander decided how much his Lib Dem colleagues in Sutton would have to cut from their council budget. However the inconvenience of a council election in May meant that this was not consulted upon until recently. Even now not all of the information needed for interested parties to do due diligence is fully available. That having been said, it is not all bad. Officers in the council have tried to make up for lost time and are actively working with groups to ensure they have what they need. The need for a business plan has changed to just an outline now with more detail required over the next few months. However the plan is still for the theatres to close at the end of March until someone is in a position to reopen them.
Last week, I invited Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport to join me in getting an update from Samia Tossio, the Chair of Arts Network Sutton, Rebecca Moreland from the Theatres Trust and Gary Milsom, a tenant at the Charles Cryer Theatre who runs the Crunch Studio there. Sajid was surprised at the timescale, citing other places where transfers had been made over a longer period to ensure that everything was in place and that the theatres could continue uninterrupted with a smooth transition. However he has offered support if required to ensure that the council and our local theatre groups can learn from these other examples across the country. Sutton council does not have any experience in this area so it is important that we seek as much help as possible. The Theatre Trust has seen this all before, so their help is invaluable. If the Secretary of State can keep an eye on the process and knock heads together if anything stalls, then that has to be good for the future of the arts in Sutton as well as us, the taxpayers.
by Paul Scully | Sep 21, 2014 | News |
Restaurant reviewers from national newspapers don’t seem to venture to Sutton very often but Matthew Norman of The Daily Telegraph made an exception recently to review Brasserie Vacherin at the top of the High Street near the station. He was very complimentary of the restaurant in his review which you can read here and rightly so. I’ve been a few times and very much enjoyed it on each visit.
However it was his review of Sutton which bookended his opinion of the brasserie that really hit home. A few quotes:
The location is deeply uninspiring, but the food at Brasserie Vacherin is vibrant and accomplished.
The barren desert amid which Brasserie Vacherin may be stumbled upon is an ugly street encircled by a brutal one-way system in the centre of Sutton, perched on the rim of London. After the slow and arduous process of parking above a nearby Morrisons, we entered it expecting a shabby imitation, and were startled to discover the real thing.
Location, location… no, it’s still not coming back. Even so, the point was made again by Vacherin’s emptiness on a Saturday lunchtime, when in most parts of the country it would have been rammed with shoppers seeking respite from the aridity beyond.
The only thing Brasserie Vacherin needs to fulfil its potential is to be airlifted to almost anywhere else.
That’s harsh. I’m not someone who runs my home town down. Sutton is a good place to live that’s why I’ve made it my home for 28 years. Restaurant reviewers get paid to raise hackles, be controversial and paint technicolor pictures. However his view from the outside, however Zone 1 it might be, bears further scrutiny. If we think that Sutton is the bees knees, an oasis offering the attractive appeal of a Surrey village like Abinger Hammer with the transport links of a city hub Clapham Junction, we won’t ever be able to create an ambitious vision for Sutton that allows it to compete and stand shoulder to shoulder with the soon-to-be retail king Croydon, the appeal of riverside Kingston and the unlimited choice of Central London, all of which are on our doorstep.
My view of Sutton was coloured by my first experience of the town centre. When I was about 17, my father moved from a Central London engineering company to a small international office located above what was then Tesco’s (now Asda). We were driving through Sutton to visit family in Croydon and he decided to show us his office. After three circuits of the one-way system in the car, we all decided that my aunt’s curry was too tempting an offer and gave it up as a bad job. A lot has changed since then, some for the better, some not. When I lived in a flat in Homefield Park, there were few good pubs and restaurants nearby. Now there is a better choice in pubs and restaurants whilst the retail offering is not as good, a decline hastened by Allders moving into the St Nicholas Centre before folding. Investment is coming into the town in the shape of Sutton Point and Sainsburys. However as much as the council’s Opportunity Sutton department likes to be directing operations they still seem to be a step or two behind developers. I can’t see a clear strategy for the town centre. Plans are considered on an ad hoc basis when they come up from developers rather than proactively seeking targeted change. There are too many of what Matthew Norman describes as “graveyard sites”, shops which seem to spend as much time boarded up as they do trading. Empty shops have a knock-on effect on their neighbours. Trade often relies on people passing and boarded up places encourages people to stay over the other side of the road.
Sutton council isn’t an estate agent. It can’t go around speculating on businesses itself but if councillors and officers had a crystal clear idea of what residents want from Sutton High Street, they can use their influence to attract the right companies and developers. They’re out there, just look at the amount of investment piling into Croydon and Tower Hamlets as two examples. We can do more to improve transport rather than just concentrate on the tram. It takes 12 minutes to get to the City from Croydon, that’s what Sutton has to compete with when vying for businesses who are looking to relocate. One way to improve our connections is to extend the London Overground from West Croydon to Sutton. That uses the existing track so is mainly a logistical exercise rather than a hugely expensive and disruptive construction project. The Overground would provide better connections to Canary Wharf and Stratford without having to change. It would also literally put Sutton on the map. The fact that Sutton would appear on the London Underground map for the first time would have a huge effect in itself in terms of making investors aware of the town as well as helping Sutton become an up and coming location.
First things first. Have a walk around Sutton town centre. Go and have an excellent lunch in Brasserie Vacherin and have a think about how you would like Sutton to look in 5 or 10 years time and let me know. Let’s be ambitious for the town that carries the borough’s name.
by Paul Scully | Sep 20, 2014 | News |
Sutton Council has proposed the introduction of a charge for green garden waste collection. If that sounds familiar, that’s because the council performed a screeching U-turn back in 2008 when they brought in a £35 charge which they scrapped in a carefully orchestrated move just a few months later when residents complained. That whole process cost about £176,000.
You have to admire their chutzpah. Their collective memories having been selectively wiped, the garden waste tax is due to make a come back at £59pa, nearly 70% higher than their last attempt. This time, if residents don’t like it, they’ll scrap the service altogether.
If you’re interested in finding our more about the 2008 debacle, have a look at what I wrote six years ago when I was Leader of the Opposition on the council here, here and here.
As for now, if you want to keep the free service let me know. It is only by the many speaking with one single, clear voice that we can make the council listen. The fact that such a high proportion of the councillors in Sutton are from the Liberal Democrats means they feel emboldened and able to make decisions that they know will be unpopular.
It’s true that many residents in Sutton don’t use the service with flat owners being the obvious ones. However for many others, the waste collection services are all the engagement with the council that they notice despite paying up to £2879 a year in council tax. Hard decisions have to be made in councils up and down the land however there is still plenty more that can be done before slashing services. Zero-based budgeting where each department starts from zero and works out what it needs rather than just putting a percentage increase/decrease onto last year’s figures is a good start. Adult Social Services, which happens to have the Council’s biggest budget persistently under spends its annual budget by a good few million pounds but those millions remain on the following year’s budget. We still have the Sutton Life Centre leeching a quarter of a million pounds of taxpayers’ money and a bandstand erected in the grounds of Wallington Library that is an inappropriate size to be used properly with no musical programme arranged.
Councillors in Sutton need to be scrutinised more than ever. The Conservative group are doing an excellent job which doesn’t always get reported but they need your help. The service reviews such as the green garden tax and the closure of the theatres are based apparently on the Local Government Finance settlement made last December. The council has had nine months to consider the implications. Rather than having an open and frank debate with residents throughout the local election campaign, they are moving with undue haste on each of these matters after they have secured another four years of power. They can’t be allowed to get away with that unchallenged.
by Paul Scully | Sep 16, 2014 | News |
If a politician comes up to you over the next few months and shoves a petition into your hands suggesting that St Helier needs saving again just before an election, heed the words of the Epsom & St Helier NHS Trust Chairman, Lawrence Newman at the Trust’s AGM last night:
“The easy answer is no, St Helier hospital is not going to close, it is not going to lose any of its services, it is not going to lose its A&E or its maternity services.
“Having said that, all of healthcare in London as a whole is being looked at and who knows what will come of that. As we sit here today we can say hand on heart it’s not going to close.”
So yes, let’s work together to make sure that clinicians know that local healthcare is best rather than traipsing across South London in an emergency but the hospital won’t be privatised out of existence, the BSBV review has been scrapped to concentrate on the five year financial plan for the trust. Twenty years of treating the hospital like a political football has not served local people well. It meant that Sutton Hospital has gradually been denuded of its services in favour of St Helier, leading to its forthcoming closure. The £219m funding for the refurbishment of St Helier was taken back after it was realised that no-one could agree what type of hospital was to be built on the site. Staff and residents have been demoralised after years of fear that local healthcare was coming to an end.
There is no doubt that the Better Services, Better Value review was a real risk to the hospital but it is important that we do not get to a situation with the boy crying wolf. Vigilance must not be replaced by scaremongering for political opportunism. The Epsom & St Helier Hospital Trust are due to break even this year for the first time and their finances are looking stable over the longer term, their excellent staff have led to some terrific performance figures and they have a record number of volunteers giving up their time to support the two much-valued hospitals.
For most of my adult life, I’ve had local MPs telling me our hospital was going to close imminently and national Labour MPs telling me Jack Bauer style that we have 24 hours to save the NHS. Let’s keep focused on the real healthcare issues and campaign to ensure that our hospital is well-resourced.
by Paul Scully | Sep 11, 2014 | News |
Sutton Council have given notice of their intention to shut Sutton’s two theatres if they cannot find a community group who can put together a credible outline business plan for the venues within the next seven weeks. The Secombe Theatre in Sutton town centre and the Charles Cryer in Carshalton are at risk of joining Wallington Public Hall in a council sell-off to save cash.
At a meeting of Arts Network Sutton, a senior councillor told the room that the council had to save £40m over the next 5 years as a result of the Local Government Finance Settlement announced by the government back in December 2014. Despite work starting on a report on the viability of the theatres, there was no mention that this was on the cards for the seven months following the announcement, least of all throughout the local election campaign when the ruling administration successfully retained power for another four years. Now, local community arts groups have been given just seven weeks to ascertain all of the financial information for the theatres, details of future bookings and exactly what the council are looking for in a good outline business case. At time of writing this information had not been released by the council in its entirety, thus limiting the time scale even further.
Meanwhile, the Sutton Life Centre which attracts roughly half the number of visitors (for the main facility behind the library) than the theatres is not earmarked for a review of its viability until next year. So why the undue haste? It appears that Finance officers want departments to have their savings reported to the top by January 2015. Despite a lengthy consultation of Sutton’s Future where residents are being asked where the axe should fall, the council seems to have made its mind up.
Now I’m not against looking at ways that our local arts scene can survive without subsidy from the council. The mood from the meeting last night was that the local arts community shared that view. They were happy to look at ways that this can arise. However a seven week rush does not give much opportunity for a disparate group of people to share their ideas and vision and come up with much detail.
There are some minor things which to me demonstrate the council’s haste and suggest opportunity for more major concerns down the line. Firstly at the council meeting where consultation on the future of the theatres was discussed, the council report asked for the method of consultation to be ‘agreed’. At the meeting this was downgraded to ‘noted’. Semantics? Maybe, but with that come a few ramifications. No elected member has actually had a say in agreeing that a seven week consultation is the way to go. Members of the committee noted that officers seemed to have taken the decision for them. Where will that stop? When I cast my vote back in May, I was looking for a councillor that would make decisions on my behalf, not hand them over to unelected officers.
Secondly, the council officer who bravely attended the meeting last night, told the group that she had spent yesterday thinking about what constitutes an outline business case. Surely the sensible thing to have done was to have considered this before the consultation started, not during. How can community groups be confident that they are working on something that is vaguely in line with council thinking when the council hasn’t even come up with it’s own view? It’s not all doom and gloom. The lead councillor and officer were adamant that facts and figures would be put up on their website and answers that arose from various parts of their consultation would be available within days. Nonetheless, the timetable already seems to be running ahead of the decision makers and the people that may suffer will be the theatre groups who rely on the two local venues and the 22% of the borough who visit the Secombe and Charles Cryer.
You can have your say until 3rd October at the council’s Sutton’s Future website but show your support for our local Arts scene by signing my petition here. Even if you are not a regular theatre-goer, once they’ve gone, they’ve gone for good.
by Paul Scully | Sep 11, 2014 | News |
The second Sutton, Cheam & Worcester Park Shop of the Year competition is in full swing. You can vote for your favourite local independent shop at www.suttonlocal.org.uk and by doing so to say thanks to the many independent local shops in our area. As before, one lucky voter will be picked at random to win £100 to spend in the winning shop. Voting is open until 16th October and this year’s winner will be announced on 23rd October.
Kate Irwin of Precision Chiropractic in Cheam, who won in 2013, said ‘it’s a fun competition, supporting local businesses’.
I run my own small business and know how difficult it can be working long hours in tough times. That’s why I am committed to supporting local retailers who create jobs for local people, protect the character of our high streets, and help to build a healthy local economy. I hope you’ll take a moment to express your gratitude for the hard work of the staff at your favourite local shop, by voting online here.
