City council: filling their boots but not emptying the bins

Fancy that! Bristol City Council is predictably sitting on its hands doing nowt to support their own bin men asking for less than twenty quid a week extra in their pay packets to help feed their families during a recession.

Idle Lib Dem leader, Barbara “Call me Ma’am” Janke, even went on BBC radio this morning to explain she hasn’t even bothered to get properly briefed about the strike and was doing nothing whatsoever about it.

Instead she’s bravely leaving everything for her officers to sort out. Presumably on the basis there’s nothing in it for any of her rich friends so why bother?

What an outstanding leader.

But meanwhile the council have managed to find plenty of spare cash for yet another inflation-busting pay rise for yet another senior officer who has done nothing for the city.

It seems the council’s Human Resources Committee agreed, in secret obviously, on Friday that a post – the grammatically challenged, ‘Service Director Transport’ – deserves what they call a “market supplement” – or a whopping pay rise to you and me – “in order to secure the appointment of the best person for the job”.

Since the decision was conveniently taken in secret, we don’t know how much this “market supplement” is, but rest assured it will be somewhere between £10-20k a year over and above the £80-100k a year the post already pays.

This idea that we, the council taxpayer, should pay alleged private sector “market” rates for an underachieving, unsackable career bureaucrat is patently absurd and is yet another example of the council’s senior management team fleecing the council taxpayer and looting the public purse with the total acquiescence of the city’s politicians.

Why are our politicians only too happy to give all-party support to these puzzling and unnecessary pay rises while turning their backs on the low-paid?

Especially when the simple fact is that this transport bureaucrat will make very little difference to anything. There’s two things that need to happen in the city as far as transport is concerned: (1) The First Bus monopoly needs to be challenged and dismantled and (2) we need to attract huge sums of investment.

These are not management problems. They are political problems that quite simply will not be solved by paying a manager any amount of money. They will be solved by decent politicians. Something this city patently lacks.

This latest pointless management job, we also learn, will be recruited using specialist (ie. expensive) CONsultant headhunting firms, who also seem to have been the prime movers behind the demand for this “market supplement” after they apparently failed to headhunt anyone suitable at the standard (already excessive) pay rate.

But rest assured they got a fat fee for failing anyway and no doubt will receive another increased one for this latest recruitment scam.

We’re being ripped off blind.

RTPI

It looks like the city council’s planning officers are off doing whatever the hell they feel like again to help their private developer friends without going to the bother of consulting elected politicians.

It says here that the Royal Town Planning Institute’s networks, “provide a forum for linking planners in the public and private sectors with representatives of the wider property and development industry”, which is nice isn’t it?

But, we’re told, these poor multi-millionaire property developer types are apparently having a bit of a hard time, what with the state of the economy and everything else at present.

And would you believe that just last month the RTPI debated, here in Bristol with attendees from across the UK, the future of section 106 agreements – which dictate how much developers should give to us, the public, in terms of cash, benefits and services in exchange for building their profitable blocks of buy-to-let high-end flats?

And would you believe, “the opening proposition was put by Bristol City Council head of major projects Gary Collins”?

And would you believe he said, “his authority has devised a concordat with the local property sector that aims to reduce the burden of existing planning conditions and section 106 agreements in the hope of maintaining delivery on key schemes.”

Is, by any chance, a city council CONcordat similar to a city council CONsultation?

All nice and cosy isn’t it? Private property developers – who are supposed to bear risk – get hit by the recession so, we, the public, thanks to the city council, have to immediately pick up the tab and forego various public service and infrastructure necessities we might need as a direct result of these major development schemes.

So forget, for the foreseeable future – courtesy of our poor, downtrodden private developer friends at least – any new schools, public transport improvements or the affordable housing we still urgently need despite what must have been the boom time S.106 deals negotiated by the council until recently.

Oh, and did we miss it? Where was the announcement from the city’s political leadership of this new policy favouring private property development interests and profits over our collective needs?

Or are major policy announcements for the city now made by unelected town planners at obscure networking events?

Ormondroyd: the interview

Shambolically useless interview with Chief Exec Bum Disease Ormondroyd in this week’s issue of Venue.

Unfortunately I’ve left my copy at work so can’t post it in full until tomorrow but mainly the interview’s a study in what happens if you let an uninformed arty-farty twit from Southville conduct a political interview and I’ve twittered various comments on it already.

The key claims made by Ormondroyd consist of what she sees as “the challenges” for the city. These are congestion, which she says we need to have “a debate about”. Education, which is “improving” (go tell that to parents of four year olds) and “selling the city”, which we don’t do enough of apparently, as if anyone really cares.

The one that caught the Blogger’s eye was this idea that we should have a debate about congestion. What? After Jan’s sent a Transport Innovation Fund (TIF) bid to London agreeing to “demand management measures” – or a congestion charge as normal people call it – for Bristol?

So it’s decide first and debate afterwards is it? What’s the fucking point of that Jan? You’ve already taken the decision. Now you want us to have a false debate for PR purposes. You really think we’re stupid don’t you?

Perhaps a better debate we might be having is one about whether we need these mendacious little shits running the council on six-figure salaries any longer?

Unfortunately not a debate we’re likely to get in our abominable local press.

RED TROUSERGATE: Bishop proposing multi-million public money favour to ol’ Red Trousers!

Despite Bristol City Council officers still quite deliberately failing to take a decision regarding the sale of our protected public park land to developers Square Peg (Blogger passim), the controversial Chocolate Factory development planned on the land at Greenbank is back before the Development Control (South and East) Committee on 1 April.

The decision on this planning permission was deferred by the Development Control (South and East) Committee meeting on February 18 because there was no S.106 planning obligations package properly in place.

An S. 106 agreement basically lays out how much a developer is going to spend on roads, traffic calming and public infrastructure – including affordable housing – and is therefore of significant interest, value and benefit to the public.

Here’s what Ferguson and Square Peg originally signed up to deliver as part of the development last year:

• Between 10 and 30% affordable housing
• Approximately 25% of the commercial floorspace to be managed workspace, (see below for definition)
• Provision of community space within Building 6
• A contribution of £210,000 towards improvements to highway infrastructure and sustainable transport
• A contribution of £721,134 towards education facilities
• A contribution of £58,212 towards library facilities
• A contribution of £514,943.35 towards public open space
• Provision of an on site car club
• Provision of a Travel Plan
• Provision of Public Art
• Provision of a Landscaping scheme

And here’s what they’re now proposing to deliver this year:

• 10% affordable housing (a total of 25 units including a variety of unit types and tenures)
• Approximately 25% of the commercial floorspace to be managed workspace
• Provision of community space within Building 6.
• A contribution of £50,000 towards improvements to highway infrastructure and sustainable transport
• A contribution of £40,000 towards public open space
• Provision of an on site car club
• Provision of a Travel Plan
• Provision of Public Art
• Provision of off-site Landscaping schemes

This means that Ferguson and his Merchant Venturer gang – who only really want to build housing for wealthy snobs anyway – are proposing to deprive the city of up to 50 units of much-needed affordable housing; £160,000 of the money needed to get the roads up to scratch to handle the development; £720,000 worth of educational facilities they can’t be bothered with (that’s enough to go a long way towards a new primary school concerned parents please note); no money toward a library and a lot less than a tenth of the amount required to sort out public open space around their tower blocks that will cover the current open space.

The Blogger’s back-of-a-fag-packet calculation says this adds up to around £1.4m worth of improvements we were promised by Ferguson that won’t be delivered.

And remember, some of these improvements have to happen. If Ferguson and Square Peg ain’t paying the bill for highways improvements then we are.

So Ferguson and Square Peg are havin’ a laugh aren’t they? Not according to David Bishop’s planning department they’re not. Planning officers say, “an approval based on the planning obligations package offered by the applicant can be supported.”

Yes it will be supported. By us the council taxpayer forking out over a million quid to subsidise a bunch of multi-millionaire developers pulling a fast one.

Is this report an April fool?

Bishop and his planning team’s justification for this multi-million pound council tax giveaway to some of Bristol’s wealthiest men appears to be contained in a section of the committee report entitled ‘Viability Appraisal’.

This long piece of jargon-rich, tortured prose – being presented to what should be a non-specialist committee – probably breaks just about every rule of plain english the council claims to uphold. Here’s a sample:

Taking a pure approach the residual valuation would allow for a positive value to be realised for the site before the site was deemed unviable. However, to take a reasonable approach and having considered other Bristol sites where some kind of an element of “Enabling Value” is required to bring it forward, the Council’s team have modelled this in reflection of similar sites where there was only redevelopment value. While this level is not agreed by the applicant we have had to make a reasonable value judgment based on other sites in a similar position to arrive at a base value. This followed the fact that both parties agreed that the price paid is not considered relevant to the process which is confirmed in the Council’s Affordable Housing Practice Note (AHPN).

I wonder what it means? And more to the point, do the councillors on the Development Control (South and East) Committee know what it means?

After all, they wouldn’t go making a decision on the basis of a report they didn’t understand … Would they?

Kate Pollard

Sad news arrives that Totterdown community activist/whirlwind Kate Pollard died in hospital in Sydney on January 2nd after a long fight against cancer. Kate died with her family in Australia, which is where she wanted to be.

Kate will be well known to many people in Totterdown – where she made her home – as well as in many other communities across Bristol. Through a long community work career Kate battled daily against injustice alongside other ordinary Bristolians making those small differences that we often take for granted but that really matter.

In Totterdown, Kate’s kindness, common sense, empathy and organisational skills allied to an extraordinary ability to persuade and cajole the people around her to stop watching the telly and actually do something will be sorely missed.

Even up until Christmas, despite a debilitating illness and all the way from Australia, Kate was still contacting Totterdown residents, using those persuasive skills to make sure the things that neeeded doing were going to be done.

Towards the end of 2006 Kate published her book, Totterdown Rising. The full title of the book is revealing : Totterdown Rising: The Story of a Community Enduring and Surviving a Planning Disaster.

It was typically Kate that a book about a community that was deliberately split in half and decimated to make way for a road that was never built, was not about a community beaten into submission by a hopeless council’s misguided obsession with the motor car but a story of how people rebuilt their community and reinvented that special Spirit of Totterdown right there in the face of uncaring and misguided government.

Kate was no victim; she stood on her own two feet. And she understood that people and communities had to stand on their own two feet too. You should never just be the passive and convenient victims of the grand schemes of those in power. Communities and their people, regardless of circumstance, can always rise again and fight for another, better day.

In a time when every two-bit political careerist and calculating bureaucrat perfectly understands the financial value and political utility of ‘the community’ to their own plans and their business partners’ profits, Kate understood and could communicate the real value of our communities here in Bristol – they’re our places to live, work, love, learn, laugh, cry, organise, manage, fight, win, endure, survive and sadly, die.

Friends of Kate in Totterdown will be organising a bash in a few months time with music and dancing and revelry to celebrate Kate’s life. If you knew Kate and want to be involved, email the Blogger and your details will be passed on.

BRT: York notes

Private Eye’s ‘Dr B Ching’ has been taking a look at First Group’s ftr (which stands for “future” public transport!) bendy buses that have been operating in York since 2006.

The system is very similar to the bendy bus BRT scheme proposed for Bristol, and we learn that First Group boss, the maybe/maybe not Labour donor, Moir Lockhead insisted in 2005 that, “ftr is the perfect solution for local authorities in the battle against congestion.”

Alas, now York City Council reveals that there’s been a 1.9% drop in bus use between 2006-07 and 2007-08 – in the time, in fact, since “the perfect solution” got underway.

Satisfaction rates among the public have fallen too. In 2003-04 71% were satisfied with their bus service in York. Today that figure is just 68% while there’s also been huge amounts of complaints about ticketing and delays.

Fans of open government will no doubt be interested to learn too that the architects of this cut-price public transport tripe – First Group boss Lockhead and, then, Transport Secretary, Alistair Darling – met to specifically discuss ftr in October 2005.

But alas we shall never know what was said as department of Transport officials say “no notes were produced” of this meeting.

Nice to see such transparency and openess between big business and government around our future transport needs isn’t it?

RED TROUSER GATE: the Cabinet questions

Here’s the answers to Ashley Fox’s questions to Cabinet on Thursday regarding the Railway Path land sell-off. The Blogger’s comments are in red.

It’s certainly a fascinating insight into the quality of governance we’re getting:

Questions from Councillor Ashley Fox to Councillor Rosalie Walker, Cabinet Member for Culture and Healthy Communities.

Q1. Does the Cabinet Member agree with me that the Council should always consult with local residents before agreeing to the sale or lease of precious green space?

Q1 Reply – The Council is under a statutory obligation to advertise the sale of any area of open space over which the public has access. Additional public consultation is proposed under the parks and green spaces strategy, and this has been arranged in regards to the Chocolate Factory.

Note the paste tense here. A consultation “has been arranged”. Does anyone know any details about this consultation? Like who’s doing it, who’s being consulted and, maybe, when, where and how it’s happening? A consultation has been promised since early September, now it’s been arranged. But where the hell is it?

Q2 Does the Cabinet Member agree with me that the Council’s recent sale of parts of the embankment of the Bristol-Bath Railway Path threatens to damage the character of one of the country’s finest cycling routes in an Authority now designated a “Cycling City”?

Q2 Reply – No sale has taken place. the local planning authority will consider whether the development would damage the character of the Bristol to Bath cycling route. I would remind you of the Council motion to protect the cycle path agreed earlier this year.

“No sale has taken place”? Weasel words because an “in-principle” sale has taken place. It’s also remarkable that the Executive Member directly responsible for protecting our parks and ensuring that the Parks and Green Spaces Strategy is properly adhered to has handed this responsibility to the local planning authority. Talk about washing your hands of it. It is not – and never has been – the job of the local planning authority to decide whether park land should be sold. It is Ms Walker’s job. Why doesn’t she do it? Is she mad? Why bother going to the effort of getting elected, getting a seat in the cabinet, gaining a little bit of power and influence and then abdicating all responsibility?

Q3 Does the Cabinet Member agree with me that the apparent informal and unrecorded manner in which this property sale was transacted could leave the Council open to accusations of impropriety or favouritism?

Q3 reply – See answer to Q2 above.

What see the answer that doesn’t answer the question? Is this a joke? An in-principle agreement has been reached to sell the Railway Path land to a local property developer. The agreement is on public record as being as being transacted in an “informal and unrecorded manner” over the phone and through, apparently, unminuted meetings. The question, then, still stands: “could [this in-principle transaction] leave the Council open to accusations of impropriety or favouritism?”

Questions from Councillor Ashley Fox to Councillor John Bees, Cabinet Member for Transformation & Resources

Q1. Does the Cabinet Member agree with me that all decisions and meetings relating to the sale or disposal of land held by the Council should be open, properly recorded and fully transparent?

Q1 reply – There are procedures and protocols by which these matters are undertaken.

Good. Care to explain more? Like what they are and where we might find them?

Q2 Does the Cabinet Member agree with me that the apparent manner in which the recent sale of parts of the embankment of the Bristol-Bath Railway Path was transacted warrants further investigation?

Q2 reply – See answers to questions above. the Head of Legal Services has reviewed the decision making process and is satisfied that the Strategic Director has acted within his delegated powers.

The answers above do not discuss whether there’s a need for an investigation here or not. Mainly because that’s not the question those answers are addressing. But we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt on this one and assume that the answer is “no”. No further investigation is warranted. On the subject of the Head of Legal Services “review”, I wonder, is it publicly available? And let’s hope he was given all the information he should have been by Head of Planning, David Bishop, and any other officers or all that egg flying around near faces could get a bit messy couldn’t it?

Q3. Does the Cabinet Member agree with me that it is important to ascertain the reason for conducting aspects of this transaction without a formal record or minutes taken at key meetings held?

Q3 reply – See answer to Q2.

That’s a no then. Helen Holland’s administration sees no need for formal record or minute taking at key meetings.

Q4. Will the Cabinet Member undertake to remind all Officers engaged in the disposal of Council-owned assets of the importance of the principle of Integrity (within the Code of Conduct for Employees) that “holders of public office must not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might influence them in the performance of their official duties”?

Q4 reply – I am sure officers are fully aware of their obligations in this regard.

Yep. And the pigs will be cruising at an altitude of 30,000 feet and today’s inflight movie is ‘Clueless’.

Regardless of your views on the Railway Path sell-off, is this pathetic level of oversight of our affairs, land and money really good enough?

You decide: should Kerry McCarthy MP kick the Director of First Bristol in the bollocks?

Bristol East MP, Kerry McCarthy has just announced on her blog that she’s “seeing Mr First Bus tomorrow, with Dawn Primarolo”.

I assume she means this week’s Managing Director of First Bristol – our excremental bus provider – Justin Davies. So I’ve suggested that rather than sitting around listening to his pointless excuses for an hour, she just walks in, kicks him in the bollocks and announces, “that’s from the people of Bristol”!

Kerry and Dawn can then retire to a quality Bristol boozer where we can all join them to celebrate this seminal moment in Bristolian political history.

What do you think? You decide and I’ll feedback the results to Kerry and Dawn. But vote quick – there’s not much time;

RED TROUSER GATE: If Bristol City Council made lager …

If there’s ever a competition to find the crappest investigation in the world. Ever. Then Bristol City Council should enter their Complaints Manager, Tim Sheppard’s absolutely pathetic attempt to investigate the circumstances of the sale of Railway Path land at Greenbank to developers Square Peg and their red trousered buffoon of an architect, George Ferguson.

After another month of waiting, it turns out Sheppard’s investigation was nothing of the kind. Instead he’s had a cosy chat with the the man at the centre of the scandal, the council’s Head of Planning, David Bishop, published exactly what Bishop said without question and has called it an investigation. Pathetic.

The full transcript of the fiasco is available on Vowlsie’s blog with a useful commentary added by the campaigner. However the key statement is:

Discussion about the proposed land sale and the questions that it raised, was had with Transport, Property and senior Culture & Leisure Services staff

Note the term “discussion” as opposed to “meeting” or “reports obtained” here. And where are the minutes of this “discussion” leading directly to a delegated (from elected politicians) decision?

And this is interesting too:

If such a [development] came to fruition … more people would be attracted to cycle and walk along the path in future. Bristol’s residents would get healthier as a result and any traffic modal shift would make a contribution to reduced congestion and enhanced air quality, all aims the Council is vigorously pursuing.

I wonder if there’s an evidence base for any of these assertions? Or is this just what Ferguson and the developers told them? Vowlsie describes it as a sales pitch, which seems fair enough. To hype a “traffic modal shift” to cycling at a new development with 250 car parking spaces sounds unrealistic to say the least.

And that’s about it for the investigation really. A mysterious and secretive “discussion” between senior officers, a couple of evidence-free assertions and there goes our protected park land and the much-touted Parks and Open Spaces Strategy,

The Blogger understands that a further Freedom of Information request will now be going in to find out the time, date, location and attendance at these “discussions” and to ask for any agendas, minutes and reports that might derive from them. Enquiries will also be made about the evidence base the officers were using to inform their decision.

This, of course, is all stuff that pointless-waste-of-our-money Sheppard should have obtained as a matter course during his “investigation”. Why hasn’t he?

City of green syphilis

by Keren Suchecki

Bristol has been named the only UK city short-listed for the European Green Capital award – news met with utter incredulity by most residents.

Bristol used its much-waved parks and green spaces strategy to bolster its bid. Despite massive public protest, this strategy advocates selling off huge chunks of green space in deprived neighbourhoods, which has now sparked an investigation into the practices of its most senior officers.

Bristol’s public transport performs appallingly and is prohibitively expensive – I live under a mile from the city centre and it costs £3.60 for a return journey, if the bus actually turns up. Plans for a rapid transport system collapsed under ridiculous bickering with neighbouring authorities. In recent years the city centre’s green space has been concreted over with a disastrously unclear road/pavement layout, resulting in the deaths of several pedestrians. The newly revamped bus station still sits a traffic-choked mile from the train station despite a vast expanse of derelict brownfield land immediately next to Temple Meads. And, even though traffic only flows in school holidays, the council scrapped its school bus pilot.

Further efforts to strangle the planet include trying to elbow through plans for a waste incinerator at the same time as landlords of recycling facilities are removing them due to mountains of rubbish piling up because of infrequent emptying. The council also wants to build a park and ride on urban allotments whilst advertising the non-job of food policy officer to tell Bristolians how to eat healthily.

At this rate (and I’ve barely scratched the surface) you might wonder how Bristol got itself short-listed for this ridiculous PR exercise. Maybe it’s to do with Bristol being home to a host of very politically savvy organisations like Sustrans and the Soil Association (and, more embarrassingly, the Heather Mills-endorsed, Viva!). But being overrun with hoards of publically-funded eco warriors doesn’t mean you’re green, any more than having syphilis means you’re sexy.

This article first appeared in ‘New Start’ magazine. Keren Suchecki was a regeneration worker in South Bristol, now she can be found in South Bristol boozers spending the redundancy money.