Residents Groups Marginalised By Political Participation

Letter To the Evening Advertiser: Groups’ vital role (Published 2nd Sept 2011)

In a recent Swindon Advertiser article members of the Eastcott Community Council, with the support of local councillors, have suggested that it may cease if the community does not show support.

Unfortunately, residents’ associations across Swindon have been marginalised by political participation that can only serve to alienate a large section of the community from participating.

Of the four Eastcott residents’ associations, two are chaired by councillors, one is regularly promoted in conjunction with the local councillors and the fourth has managed to remain neutral.

Unless Swindon residents’ associations can detach themselves from the local councillors, or any political body for that matter, they will not be taken seriously by those disillusioned by the political process or by those who are not supporters of that particular Party.

A resident’s association must have, and be seen to have, unfettered universal public access in order to gain the trust of the local community.

It is right that councillors and council officers should attend residents’ association meetings, but they should not be setting the agenda, hold positions on the committee or attempt to hijack the meeting for their own ends.

Furthermore, these meetings should not be seen as an opportunity for political self-promotion, information gathering for political leaflet drops or a substitute for councillor surgeries, as seems to be the case.

It must be a priority for all residents associations to evolve constitutionally in order to ensure that they throw off political ties in order to gain broader acceptance and support.

Residents’ associations should not measure their success against attendance numbers.

Lower numbers may suggest that the local residents are relatively content or are able to resolve issues through other channels.

It is more important for the residents’ associations to be accessible and ready to act should a local issue arise.

A prime example would be the Croft Area Residents’ Association, whose attendance at their last meeting exceeded 150 due to the issue of the proposed new school.

I wish the Eastcott Community Council well and hope it continues to represent the local community.

Chris Watts Dunsford Close Eastcott Labour Party

Magpie Lib Dems Steal Credit For First Kingshill Crossing

In 1984 Margaret Thatcher survived an assassination attempt when the Provisional IRA bombed the Grand Hotel in Brighton, Band Aid  was founded  by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia and the late and much respected Eastcott Councillor Keith Small (Lab) delivered the Great Kingshill Crossing (later to be known as the first Kingshill Crossing) in the backdrop of a Conservative controlled Wiltshire County Council (WCC).

Nearly 27 years later, prior to the May 2011 local elections, it came as a shock to senior members of the Labour Group that the local Liberal Democrats would shamelessly claim credit for the installation of the Kingshill crossing in 1984 and attempt to rewrite history in a way that would have made Stalin proud. Those who worked with Labour Cllr Keith Small recounted his tireless efforts to deliver the crossing on behalf of a group of mothers who had come together with this aim.

A 2011 pre-election Lib Dem leaflet had a named picture of a mother with her Children, attributing to her this statement:

“The Lib Dems got the first Crossing on Kinghill and are working hard to get the second.”

Also, in a 2011 pre-election letter to residents the Lib Dems stated that:

“In the 80s the Liberals were in control of the County and we got the First Crossing.”

The claims are demonstrably untrue as the installation of the crossing, as confirmed by an FOI, happened on 9th Aug 1984. On this date the WCC was under the control of the Conservatives and the Eastcott Councillor was Cllr Keith Small (Labour).

I find it deeply disturbing that the Lib Dems would attribute their untruths to an unsuspecting member of the public (along with a picture) who was unaware of the facts when I challenged her on the claim.

I am not suggesting that the fresh faced political activist Stan Pajak was not involved in the campaign back in the 80s, as was Frank Richards (Con) and Mike Bawden (Con) as demonstrated in this 1983 leaflet, but for the Lib Dems to make the above claim is nothing short of misleading to the electorate of Eastcott.

Backgound information:

Freedom of Information Request FOI 101000275336

Question 5. On what date was the Kingshill Road Pelican Crossing installed.

Answer – The Pelican crossing was installed 9th August 1984. It was upgraded to a Puffin crossing on 22nd Mar 2004.

Stan Pajak term of office start date: 02/05/1985

Wiltshire County Council Under Conservative Control: May 1981 to May 1985:

Dixon Street: A Curious Lib Dem Motion for Eastcott

The Eastcott Labour team’s success in helping residents of Dixon Street to reclaim their alleyway seems to have awoken the local Liberal Democrat Councillors to a problem that has existed in Eastcott Ward, under their watch, for many years. The Eastcott Labour Team successful actions in Dixon Street have spurred the Liberal Democrats to put forward the following motion to the July 2011 Full Council.

Councillor Dave Wood will move:“Following the precedent set to clear the un-adopted alleyway behind Dixon Street, this Council resolves to: Ask Cabinet to consider clearing the two similar long-term problem sites behind Dover Street and behind Shelley Street and to work with residents on all three sites to encourage and facilitate placement of a gate to stop such problems being repeated in the future.

Unfortunately the Liberal Democrats have completely missed the point. They have not engaged with the Eastcott Labour Team or indeed the residents of Dixon Street as to how we achieved our goal. A precedent was not set as suggested by the Liberal Democrats in the above motion. Residents, in cooperation with a member of the Eastcott Labour Team, removed and bagged the materials from the alleyway for the council to collect at an agreed place and time. This Liberal Democrats misconception has resulted in a ill conceived Council motion that is based on the incorrect assumption that the council cleared rubbish from private land. This sends out completely the wrong message to the residents of Eastcott who wish to reclaim their alleyways.

Eastcott Labour are concerned with this “bull in a china shop” approach by the Lib Dem councillors. By raising this motion they have politicised an exemplary example of co-operation between residents, the council, SCS and Eastcott Labour that achieved a positive outcome. This approach is likely to cause the Council and SCS to rethink its current working practises. This would be to the detriment of all the groups who currently benefit from similar partnerships in other wards, such as Central and Western Labour wards.

The Labour Group will forward an amendment to the rash Lib Dem motion in order to limit damage that may be caused, stating:

“The Council congratulates SCS for its cooperation with concerned citizens when they wish to take direct action to remove spoil from public and private land that endangers health and blights the environment.”

We hope that the Lib Dems will see sense and support the amendment or withdraw the motion outright.

UPDATE:

The motion was amended by the Labour Group and seconded  by the Conservative lead member for StreetSmart. Councillors advised the Lib Dems councillors of Eastcott that a precedent had not been set. When challenged as to why Lib Dem Councillors had not been active in clearing rubbish in partnership with residents in this way in the past, Cllr Stan Pajak shouted that they had. This begs the question as to why the Lib Dems thought a precedent had been set in Dixon Street.

It was also question as to why the Lib Dems thought it necessary to bring this to Full Council as a motion, with one councillor suggesting it was for the purpose of having something to put in their leaflets.

A BIG THANK YOU TO EASTCOTT

Best Result in 21 Years

I would like to extend my thanks to all the residents of Eastcott. We have been overwhelmed by the support and extremely pleased with the result that saw Labour’s best performance in Eastcott for 21 years. With a swing of +17% since 2008 and a 35% share of the vote, this give us great heart as we continue to serve the community.

Graph supplied by Bogomil

Ed Miliband Helps Out in Eastcott

Many thanks to Ed Miliband and his team for helping out with a bit of door knocking in Eastcott. The residents of Kent Road and Ashford Road were very welcoming and many issues were covered. This topped off an excellent day after a question and answer session with Ed at the New College in the morning.

Swindon WiFi found Wanting (Letter To Swindon Advertiser)

Published Fri 11th Feb 2011

I AM perplexed as to why the council and directors of Digital City continually state that the Wifi project has been over scrutinised. Public scrutiny has found the Wifi initiative to be wanting in many respects.

In its inception Digital City was incorporated with the wrong directors. Shares were allocated to the wrong companies; including a company in the tax haven of the Isle of Man. Digital City had no tangible track record in this marketplace or viable credit ratings to secure a £450,000 loan. The business plan was beyond over-ambitious and the process that the council used to proceed lacked transparency.

These fundamental errors demonstrate a complete failure to apply basic due diligence by the council.

I am concerned to hear that the deputy leader of the council would like to see similar projects excluded from the scrutiny process in future.

All these errors and more were discovered through public scrutiny. If it was not for the combative and evasive siege mentality of the council in answering relatively simple questions, then scrutiny would not have taken so long. To suggest that the failure of the project was due to excessive public scrutiny is a distraction. The project has failed to achieve, or get close to, any milestone on its own merits.

I sincerely hope that the council can successfully conclude Rod Bluh’s Wifi rescue bid and that the company that will take over wifi has the relevant experience and adequate financial backing to move the project forward without political interference.

FairFares4Swindon.com launched

www.fairfares4swindon.com

In this time of austerity, it will be imperative for the economic wellbeing of Swindon that we attract new business to offset the loss of jobs in the public sector. The West country will be hit hard in 2011 and many local organisations such as the FSB (Federation of Small Businesses), Swindon Chamber of Commerce and SSEP (Swindon Strategic Economic Partnership) will be working hard to ensure that we can attract the private sector companies to pick up the slack.

When I attended the Council Scrutiny meeting in November 2010, I was shocked to hear the Council state that companies that had refused to relocate to Swindon had cited the high cost of rail travel as a primary reason. First Great Western officials present at the meeting were unmoved by this claim and suggested that we receive good value for money in our train service.

Swindon is in a unique position of being the gateway to the south west  and Wales and should be a viable commuter town for those working in London. These links are ideally suited for companies that would relocate outside London in order to reduce costs in these times of austerity whilst maintaining good links with the Capital.

If excessive rail fares are a barrier to the future economic growth of Swindon, then we must challenge this head-on. We have the full support of the Local Labour group, the MP for South Swindon, Lord Will and the FSB. We hope to join the FSB in lobbying Parliament in the near future.

This is not a campaign that seeks to simply reduce the cost of rail travel for a handful of commuters. We seek to attain fair ticket pricing that will benefit the socio-economic wellbeing of all who live and work in Swindon with additional employment and inward investment.

What Happened to Democracy in Swindon?

Letter to the Swindon Advertiser (Tue 7th Dec 2010)

The short answer is that the Swindon Borough Council cabinet system has skewed local democracy to such an extent that a majority of the councillors are not involved in important decisions that affect us all. In the last twelve months, upon reading about the inception of the WiFi project and the proposed sale of the Oasis leisure Centre in the Swindon Advertiser, I contacted many councillors across all parties for further information. These councillors stated that they knew as little as I, and had only heard about these decisions through the local press. These decisions were not debated at Full Council nor made public at Cabinet meetings. I believe that unilateral decisions are being made behind closed doors by so called “lead members” of the the council without right and proper recourse to public scrutiny.

Some may argue that we have a Cabinet system because over sized committees have proved to be inefficient and impeded the decision making process. Inversely, a Councillor with as little as eleven hundred ward votes should not have a mandate to dictate their will across a whole Borough. With this in mind, I would advocate a system where each lead member is overseen by a small all-party sub-committee. This would ensure that all councillors have a say in how our council is run, transparently and democratically.

The Council will be debating the adoption of a “Strong Leader” form of governance at the next full council meeting, Thursday 16th December 2010. This proposal would enhance the cabinet system and strengthen the Council Leader position in bestowing a four year term. The proposal is available for public inspection until Thursday 16th December 2010 at the Civic offices. If you are concerned that our council sits on a fine line between autocracy and democracy, I would urge that you contact your local councillors without delay.

Chris Watts

Eastcott Ward

(printed by Swindon Advertiser Mon 13th Dec edition and published on the Swindon Advertiser web site  http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/yoursay/swindonletters/8725179.Letter_from_Chris_Watts/ )

Unfair Rail Ticket Prices For Swindonians

Email To Robert Buckland MP (South Swindon) 28th Nov 2010

Dear Robert

Please can you pass this complaint onto the Secretary of State for Transport; Phillip Hammond MP? I would hope that you would also be lending your full support to this complaint.

On Friday, I had to attend a customer site in Battersea. I met my business partner on site and was shocked to see that he had paid only £70 for his return ticket from Tiverton Parkway (Devon) to Paddington, whereas I had paid £110 for my return ticket from Swindon. After checking on-line, I found that the comparative prices between other stations and Paddington return are as follows:

Return ticket from :

£36  Reading

£46  Didcot

£110 Swindon

£66  Cheltenham Spa

£101 Bath Spa

£105 Bristol TM

I believe that the rail companies are unfairly exploiting the people of Swindon and using Swindon as a cash cow in a system that favours the commuters of Reading and Didcot. I recently attended a Swindon Borough Council Scrutiny Committee Meeting in which representatives of First Great Western tried to justify the exorbitant ticket prices that we have to pay. Topics of discussion were:

1.Highest per mile price in Europe:

The representative was informed that an independent body had found that in Swindon, we pay the highest price for walk-on tickets per mile in Europe. He refuted this stating that the Heathrow Express was more expensive per mile and that he believed that a service out of Stuttgart may also be more expensive. I trust you would agree that, as a defence of the pricing structure, this was weak and even a little insulting.

2. As we receive a regular service we should expect to pay a premium:

The representative tried to explain that we were in a lucky position as we were serviced by up to 4 trains an hour and for such a regular service we should expect to pay a premium. The reality is that in peak hours, not only do we pay a premium, but also have the pleasure of having to stand for most the journey. We are being penalised because Swindon is used as a route to London for trains from Cornwall, South Wales and Gloucester.

3. A considerable percentage of the fare goes to Government:

The representative explained that a percentage of the fare was paid to the Government and that FGW were required to pay up to £200,000,000 for their franchise early next year. This still does not justify the disproportionate fares that we in Swindon have to pay. It also raises a separate issue in questioning the amount FGW paid for the franchise that needs to be supported by the price of tickets.

The FGW representative finally justified the cost by insinuating that the passenger numbers from Swindon to London had increased and therefore the pricing must be fair. There could be an argument for ‘supply and demand’ costing of the tickets in a competitive environment, if it was not for the fact that the rail industry is a monopoly. We have little choice if we wish to conduct business in central London.

I believe that this unfair pricing structure adversely effects inward investment into the town and also has a negative effect as far as commuters wanting to relocate to Swindon. What rubs salt into the wound is the recent announcement that the first phase of electrification of the railway will stop at Didcot. It is of little comfort to know that the excessive fares paid by Swindonians will be used to improve the rail service for others.

Yours sincerely

Christopher Watts

Reply from Robert Buckland 30/11/2010

Thanks Chris-much appreciated.  All the points you raised in the email are ones that I have been taking up with Mark Hopwood, the MD of First Great Western.  They all boil down to the fundamental point that Swindon station is unfairly disadvantaged when it comes to fare charging.  I am glad you went to the Scrutiny Meeting; First Great Western attended at my invitation, because I think as you do that the cost of rail fares is of real relevance to our economic future. 

We will pass on your concerns to Philip Hammond.
Yours
Robert

Click on the radio to listen to the Jon Ratcliffe Interview on Swindon 105.5 community radio.

Could Eastcott Ward soon be Bedsit Central?

The Tories and Lib Dems have scrapped planning permission requirements for converting residences into Houses of Multiple Occupation. (HMOs)

A landlord who wishes to house multiple families in a single residence no longer needs to seek planning permission. This change has given landlords a free hand to maximise the profit from a residence without any consideration of the effect on the local community. Unfettered conversion of housing to HMOs is highly irresponsible and will effect the quality of life for many residents with possible noise pollution, pressure on the roads and residential parking and devaluation of property in the worst effected areas.

I have written to the Swindon Borough Council Planning Department to seek clarification as to how we can protect ourselves from the threat of unsuitable and unregulated HMO conversions.