‘I for one do not want to see one community grant reduced, or one service for residents cut, just to pay for a plethora of surplus to requirement District Councillors desperately hanging on to office and confusing the issue, while money is squandered, and Babergh and Mid Suffolk staff take the pain of job losses and redundancy.’
I suppose that it was too much to hope that yesterday’s extra Council Meeting would all be over by coffee time. I was rather hoping it would since I have developed a nasty cold and wanted to go and sit by the fire.
There were only two papers on the agenda. The second was a ‘Part 2’ item and therefore confidential so I can’t say a word about that. Suffice it to say that mercifully it didn’t take too long and I did get home for a late lunch.
The first looked innocuous enough, so I felt I was safe in expecting to be home by noon.
No such luck.
The proposals asked members to approve (or reapprove) the business case for both the merger of officer structures of Babergh and Mid Suffolk and also the potential constitutional merger which would form one council out of two. This sounds a bit dull, but stay with me reader, for you will learn much about the nature of political goings on at Babergh District Council if you do.
In their wisdom the Liberal Democrats had asked that this business case be verified by an outside auditor some time ago. Although I had faith in the scheme as prepared by our officers, since much of the scope for cost cutting is very transparent, I had no real issue with having a third party take a closer look.
This verification has now been done. The excellent work that was prepared by officers from the finance departments of both councils has been unequivocally endorsed by representatives from CIPRA. This body has been very active in recent years examining plans for corporate activity between local authorities in the UK and are generally considered to be the number one experts in the field. ‘Robust’,’ sound’, ‘conservative’, ‘accurate’, were some of the adjectives used by the man from CIPRA who came specially to the Council chamber to present his findings to us. Even if the costs of implementation of the scheme increased by 100%, he said, the business case was a sound one which would meet the Boundary Commission’s ‘Value for Money’ parameters.
This means that from a financial standpoint what we are doing, and what we are planning to do, is A VERY GOOD THING.
It seems however that the Liberal Democrats, despite the ringing endorsement of the scheme from people who, I would have to say, know rather more about the issue than they do, have now decided that they have lost their enthusiasm for a full merger. This is despite the fact that just five months ago all but two of their number voted, in principle to go ahead subject to the business case being verified. (See blog for Tuesday September 28th 2010 which describes the debate).
It was hard to grasp what was troubling them now that didn’t trouble them five months or so ago, and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that with an election some weeks away , and with their own party doing even worse than the Conservatives in the opinion polls, they have been panicked into an attempt to create some political difference between themselves and the Conservative Group.
In the debate I urged Babergh members to consider the financial benefits to their constituents of a full merger (additional savings of at least £800,000 per annum for the new council), to put politics behind them, and to ‘do the right thing’. I for one do not want to see one community grant reduced, or one service for residents cut, just to pay for a plethora of surplus to requirement District Councillors desperately hanging on to office and confusing the issue, while money is squandered, and Babergh and Mid Suffolk staff take the pain of job losses and redundancy.
I don’t know if my words made any difference but the outcome was, in the end, just about satisfactory, as the motion to approve the business plan was carried by 19 votes to 15 with one abstention. The names of who voted which way have been recorded*
What is really frightening about the Liberal Democrat’s flip flop on this issue is that they risked bringing the whole discussion of a full merger to a full stop. If they had prevailed that would have been it, finished, the end. The residents of Babergh and Mid Suffolk would have been denied the right to vote on the question in the planned local poll that is due to take place immediately after the Local Government elections in May.
Not much liberal about that....or much democratic either.
*Three Independents voted for the motion, and three against, with one abstention. Our one Labour member voted against, but to give him his due, he has been entirely consistent in his opposition to the scheme, preferring to support a more fundamental unitary solution. Were this to be an option at present I would agree with him.
