TIME TO COME CLEAN NBC

In the recent article below:

http://tonyclarkeindependent.blogspot.com/2010/02/pinky-and-perky-get-their-sums-wrong.html

I explained that Lib Dem Leader of Northampton Borough Council Cllr Brian Hoare told us recently that we "might like" the efficiency savings they were making in this years budget, but that we were unable to judge at the time whether or not we would like them ,because there was no details given! What did they entail we asked?

"Things like savings on electric and gas" shouted Perky (Cllr David Perkins) as answer to what these efficiencies were. The audience at the time however not convinced with Perky's explanation asked how many redundancies would be involved, No answer was forthcoming.

Well now we know, after a trawl through the various "efficiency and reorganisation and restructuring plans we can reveal that at least 94 posts are proposed to be removed from the Councils workforce.

These are being 'Consulted on' with staff as we speak and some of those consultations finished on Monday and others continue right up until the day the Cabinet Set the budget next Wednesday, meaning that as Councillors we have to respect the privacy of those consultations by not revealing which posts are under threat.

So next week we will set a budget, the results from the public consultation, which took place in limited form won't say much because the Public were not told much. Alternative options from opposition Councillors will be few and far between because like the public, we have also mainly been kept in the dark, trying our hardest to glean information here or there but being told. "There are no redundancies planned as yet, only consultations"

Now don't get me wrong here, I never thought for one moment that the Council would be able to balance its books without some reductions in the workforce, and if asked I have plenty of suggestions as to what could be cut (The West Northamptonshire Joint Planning Unit for a start)
But Councils are supposed to be about elected members meeting to take part in full and robust debate on a range of options where we can make real choices and all strive to do what is best for the town.

They should not be about the ruling administration colluding with officers on secret plans, not disclosed to the public which are then presented as a Fait Accompli to backbench councillors and the public let alone the staff who may lose their livelihoods in the process. A Council is the whole sum of all its parts, administration and opposition, and on important matters such as this we should do more to act as one rather than the ruling party trying to play party politics by revealing the good news to us all whilst hiding away the bad from our eyes and ears.

I still can't tell you which jobs will finally go, as that would breach the confidentiality of the information which I have gleaned from the Council but expect less staff to be maintaining our housing stock next year, and less working in our parks and our cemeteries, and less cleaning of our streets, expect less neighbourhood management and less partnership working with the police on the anti social behaviour which troubles so many of our communities, expect less staff working on the recovery of our local economy, and expect less staff to manage our museums, expect less staff to manage or look after our community centres and expect at some time in the future for many of these services to be hived off to the private sector now that they have been made "procurement friendly" by hiding all of the on costs of managing such services.

But the Liberal Democrats will tell you that everythings fine, the public won't notice the difference, and then they will ask you to look at the marvelous new fountain on the Market Square and the not so shiny new paving slabs in Gold Street as proof of their "Improving Council"

It doesn't wash with me, and I don't believe it will with the public either because they didn't have the decency to inform them, instead you have to learn about it here, and wonder why they bothered in the first place to hold public consultations if they were hell bent on keeping the details from us.

If they had been upfront and honest then maybe there could have been some agreement between us as to how to proceed, maybe we could have put some alternative suggestions up for consultation? but their actions have been underhanded and their deception of the public unforgivable.

This lot are not Liberal and they are certainly no Democrats, they shame the very basis of their national parties founding aims and objectives, and those within their fold who know that what is not being said, but being done in their name should have the courage of their convictions and be as critical as the opposition are in their responses to next weeks budget, not just in their group meeting but in the Council chamber as well.

POP THE KETTLE ON IT'S VICTORY TEA

Well that's that then, less than a week into the "Tea War" and hostilities have come to end as Northampton Borough Council surrendered and declared an end to their proposed tea drinking ban in the Walled garden at Delapre Abbey.

Not though before many an attempt to try and make out they had no intention of doing so in the first place, let alone the odd comment or three suggesting it was all a slip of the tongue by an officer and nothing to do with the politicians.

But lets not carp on about the past, victory is as sweet as Earl Grey with three sugars, and amazingly 414 people had joined the campaigns facebook group in just 3 days.

The planning officer who let this slip though, has done everyone a huge favour, because if this had of gone by unchallenged then I believe FoDA (Friends of Delapre Abbey) would have been in real trouble in the coming weeks when trying to negotiate their lease with Northampton Borough Council. You see they have been banned from the walled garden since November of last year and the new conditions on the lease being proposed by NBC had in it the following inexplicable clauses banning FoDA from using the walled garden for any of the following purposes:

Community Events
Volunteering Activities,
Tea Room Seating,
Fruit, Flower or Vegetable growing, or
Greenhouse Restoration

I can now exclusively reveal to you that as part of the surrender treaty negotiations that FoDA have also now been given permission to pick their Leeks which have been growing happily away without interference in the greenhouses, (this is really all true) So lets now hope that the rest of the above ridiculous list of restrictions are now banished forever.

As I have said before if the Council has real concerns about say Marquees being erected or big events spoiling the ambiance or tranquility of the garden, then lets put in a serious clause about having to have permission from the council for such occurrences, but don't ban them out of hand because who knows? maybe NBC and FoDA might want to arrange a jointly held Victoria Sponge competition in a Marquee on the garden only to find they had banned themselves from such potentially dangerous activities.

Many have rightly guessed though that there was a lot more to this dispute than meets the eye, and I am certainly happy to confirm that a small minority within the Lib Dem group have been agitating for some time to upset FoDA and trying to cause trouble for them and their volunteers, but hopefully all that can now stop? A truce? and an agreement for all Councillors from all sides of the Borough Council to work together with FoDA and others to ensure that our hopefully shared objective of seeing the Abbey restored to it's former glory and accessible to the public now and in the future is achieved.

We can but live in hope.

By the way, thank you to so many of you who joined our campaign on facebook, and also thank you to those Lib Dem Councillors who responded so predictably and thus made our tea in the sun all the more enjoyable.