Category Archives: Cabinet

'Divesting' services, 62a and 62b, Buses, Cabinet, Council reports, Council spending, cuts, eXplore card, Locality Budget, Lollipop patrols, New Strategic direction, Quality of Life funding, Schools, Suffolk County Council, Transport, Uncategorized, young people, Your councillor

Woodbridge Town Council report Feb 2011

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This month’s report is largely about various – very worrying –  cuts and ‘divestments’ that the forthcoming SCC 2010-11 budget intends to legitimise. Specific reference to Libraries, Road Crossing Patrols, Bus Services (especially the 62a/b evening, Sunday and bank holiday service) and the young persons’ eXplore card, together with links to petitions to try and help save these.

SCC Budget 2011-12 – Update

The County Council is finally setting the budget at Full Council on the 17th of February.  The total level of cuts for next year will be approximately £43m from across the authority; this is combined – as  SCC is keen to point out – with a 0% increase in Council tax .

SCC does not mention that by electing not to raise council tax the council is eligible for a government grant of £7,200,000 – equivalent to them imposing a 2.5% rise!  SCC would therefore have to raise its council tax by more than 2.5% to get any benefit from doing so.

As you will have seen in the news, the County is wishing to cut back a wide number of frontline services, including Libraries, Buses,  the eXplore card.and School crossing patrols, all of which which I will discuss later.

Other areas that the Council intends to make savings include;

  • selling off Country Parks and recreation areas
  • The closure of seven Household Waste recycling centres – which are  supposedly as yet to be decided (although I have been told that already some redundancy notices have been issued)
  • Divestment or closure of Youth Clubs
  • Stopping the subsidy for community meals
  • Divesting the Fire Control Function to another service
  • Ending the Healthy Schools programme
  • Cease checking lorries to see if they are overloaded, and cease enforcement of environmental weight restrictions on County’s roads and bridges.
  • Ceasing offering advice to Suffolk residents on consumer disputes where the law is complex..

The interesting point about this is that there are plenty of neighbouring county councils with a Conservative majority who have not needed to do this, preferring to salami-slice cuts equally across the whole council and consulting their population as to their preferences . Norfolk is a good example.

For more information, and to view the papers which highlight the level of capital spending planned by the authority for the upcoming year, please head to: http://apps2.suffolk.gov.uk/cgi-bin/committee_xml.cgi?p=detail&id=1_15073

Suffolk Libraries ‘Consultation’

As you have probably heard, the County Council is intending to divest, or close a significant  number of the 44 Libraries around the County. They have divided these into ‘County’ and ‘Community’ libraries.

Woodbridge library is ’safe’:  that is, it will remain one of the 15  ‘County Libraries‘  free from divestment – that is, unless someone really really wants to take it over.  In which case it will be ‘divested.’. It will not, however, close.

The  other 29  (now designated Community) libraries  -including Wickham Market,  Framlingham, Debenham, Kesgrave, Leiston, Oulton Broad and Southwold – are up for divestment – that is, being taken over by community groups. However SCC says: “If the response to this consultation is disappointing, and the county council does not receive viable proposals and ideas from people, groups, businesses and other interested parties for ways to run community libraries, we propose that funding will stop from 2012”.

As is becoming standard in these SCC consultations,  ‘having your say’ on the future of Suffolk’s libraries doesn’t mean the administration allows  you any opportunity to say their idea is bad, and you want no part of it.

This consultation only gives you a chance  to explain your idea for running your divested library.   For example, Question 4 is:  “How will your idea  or interest generate changes or significant efficiencies in the way the library operates to reduce what the county council pays by a minimum of 30%”.

The ‘consultation’ which is titled ”Have your Say on the Future of Suffolk’s Libraries”  began on the 18th of January, and finishes on the 30th of April.  You can find it on the home page of Suffolk County Council under the Consultation heading. http://www.suffolk.gov.uk.

You may feel like filling in the consultation document. You may, on the other hand feel like filling in one of the e-petitions that are proliferating on the Council’s new petition site: http://petitions.web-labs.co.uk/suffolkcc/public/. There is a petition asking that Woodbridge library remains undivested, and another one requesting that the Library Staff remain salaried.

Cuts and threats to Woodbridge Bus Services

The County Council is making very significant reductions in the passenger transport  which enables commercial services to operate in non-peak time slots.

We had a shock announcement on Wednesday that our 62a and 62b services will go on 27 February. The announcement was made a day after Cllr McGregor had assured Cabinet that no decisions on cutting services would be made until after 17 February’s full council.

I’ve been copied a letter by Melton’s Cllr Butterwick, as I believe the Town Clerk also has. He suspects that such  a cut without a 56day notification period is not even legal and has written to the Traffic Commissioner to ask his advice about it.

Suffolk County Council says it plans to ‘remodel’ much of local rural transport, by replacing services with a ‘demand-responsive’ alternative, booked a day in advance. However the council transport team (when questioned by me) admits that “demand responsive transport operates between 0700 and 1900 Monday to Saturday and we are unable to offer any extension to these hours”.

Therefore, when the 62a and 62b services close later this month, they will not be replaced with demand-responsive transport: they will be replaced with nothing at all. Residents in Woodbridge will have NO sustainable transport in the evenings, on Sundays and on Bank Holidays. Those residents who do not have, cannot afford to, or are unable to drive a car, will be stuck! This will have an impact on people from Ipswich to Wickham Market and Rendlesham.

I am deeply saddened about this cut because it represents a very retrogressive step in the history of our local bus service. It leaves those Woodbridge residents without a car with NO options for bus travel over, say, a bank holiday from about 6pm Saturday till about 7am the following Tuesday.   This is a cut that will affect car drivers not a whit but will impact very heavily on those who don’t have a car, those who can’t afford a car, and those who are prevented by age or health from driving a car..

Other threatened services are

70, 70a. 118: Ipswich – Bealings – Woodbridge – Grundisburgh – Ipswich

71, 163, 173,  IP179, IP512: Orford/Felixstowe – Woodbridge – Ipswich

We have not yet heard a word about their fate.

Luckily  we were sufficiently anxious about the possibility of cuts to have  set up an epetition to save Woodbridge buses a few days before the shock announcement about 62a/b… Can I continue to urge Town and District Councillors – who were so very helpful when we joined together to press for better bus services last spring –  to join together again to try and overturn this cut?   It will have huge implications for the people of Woodbridge.

http://petitions.web-labs.co.uk/suffolkcc/public/Save-Woodbridge-Buses

Abolition of the SCC Explore card

SCC has also made another  £1,700,000 cut to sustainable transport usage by abolishing the eXplore Card. Although the bus services in Suffolk have become extraordinarily expensive as well as patchy, up till now young people have had  to help with their travelling to post-16 education, to work and to find work, and for socialising.

Explore cards were available free to students 16-19, and have  enabled them to pay only half adult fares on buses and many off peak rail journeys. Poorer students have also had EMA.

As regards post-16 transport, the SCC post-16 transport policy relies on the fact that all post-16 students can have an Explore card to help with fares, and if their parents are poor, EMA too. This means that up to now transport to work and educational opportunities should be in the reach of all young people in Suffolk – and a very good thing that is too! This abolition means that there will be more cars on the road many, many more young people will be driven, or drive  to school, college, employment etc ,  and will put more, less confident cyclists on busier roads,  because they  are forced into cycling before they are ready. It will lead to less  take-up of  FE education because of difficulties of access (especially to colleges and Suffolk ONE ) and less chance of going for job interviews and training.

SCC says they hope that individual bus companies might take a paid-for version of this card up for the future, but I believe First have rejected the idea. It will, anyway be of limited use unless all buses take it on the same terms. And one of the things SCC Transport has been constantly telling us in the past is that the bus companies have no desire to work together – this is the reason we never managed to get an integrated ticketing service.

Again, there will be a petition about this on the SCC site http://petitions.web-labs.co.uk/suffolkcc/public/Save-the-eXplore-card-

The End of SCC School Crossing Patrols

You will be aware of the huge amount of anger that has been generated in Suffolk  by the Council’s decision to close all 98 School Crossing patrols to save £174,000. (In fact more like £125,000 as a number of vacancies exist which can’t be filled because of the current hiring freeze).. This includes the St Mary’s School crossing patrol.

School crossing patrols were formally recognised in Britain by the Schools Crossing Patrols Act of 1953.  Lollipop people are one of only four agents entitled to stop traffic by law and are established at sites where children are in danger from road traffic when walking to and from school as assessed  by national guidelines (established by the Local Authority Road Safety Officer’s Association and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents). Ten years ago  the (then)  Woodbridge Lollipop man, was knocked to the ground by an impatient driver while on patrol on Birkett Road, directly outside St Mary’s School.  More recently, I had two near misses when cycling past the school at playgroup collection time last week.

I think it is fair to say that road has not got any safer in recent years.

The school, parents, PTA, and many others, including myself  are anxious that this cut  could have  dreadful repercussions. I have asked SCC if they know what the council’s legal position would be if – heaven forbid – anyone was knocked down after the patrol has been withdrawn. I have, as yet, had no reply.

Again, there is a petition against this cut: http://petitions.web-labs.co.uk/suffolkcc/public/

Your Councillor’s Quality of Life and Locality budgets

On a more positive note, we heard at Cabinet that the County Councillors’  Quality of Life budget will be retained – though with less money. This is good news for Woodbridge. I hope this will allow me to undertake the Sandy Lane road traffic calming I had to postpone last year .

Of the three projects I have funded so far

  • The Duke of York (ex-Seal) Crossing is proving immensely successful
  • the (separate) 30mph LED sign for further down Ipswich Road is ordered and being constructed
  • The final consultation for the TRO finished last month. From various communications from constituents, it would seem to be the first they had heard of it!

I do not yet know the fate of the Councillor’s Locality budget, but I hope that this will also be retained. I have recently made grants to establish a Graffiti wall up in Kyson, to buy a seat for people in Kingston Fields, to provide  two bicycles for the Town pastors and  a lawn mower for the Scouts to use to raise income and to buy Olympic-branded jute bags to advertise the Wood-Olympics  next year.

62a and 62b, Buses, Cabinet, cuts, New Strategic direction, Suffolk County Council, Transport, Uncategorized, Woodbridge, Your councillor

Woodbridge’s 62a and 62b scrapped without warning!

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OK, I saw it coming – I knew the bus-unfriendly Guy McGregor, SCC portfolio-holder for Transport and Highways, was out to do it  – but it still makes me angry!

Woodbridge has now lost ALL its evening, Sunday and Bank Holiday bus services – victims to  the prejudices of a portfolio-holder who treats buses as  if they were Babes in the Wood – to be  led out into the woods and lost, their pathetic corpses buried under leaves.  He then has the brass neck to boast on his website that: ” I have driven the improvement in the provision of bus services in Suffolk.” To carry on the Panto metaphor “OH NO you haven’t!!!” You are presiding over its demise!

[Here I had to stop writing to take an urgent call from my constituent, the septuagenarian dancer John Raven who relies on the buses – particularly the 62a and b  – as he travels to and from Ipswich’s Regent theatre  daily, often in the evening. Mr Raven and I met years ago, as we travelled to Ipswich by bus. Neither he or his wife can drive, they both find it hard to walk far,   and they live a good  half an hour’s walk from the train station (which will bring him into the wrong side of Ipswich). This cut will devastate his life.  But is he devastated? NO! instead the feisty Mr Raven is LIVID  and he’s out to tell people so.  Mr Raven is not taken in by weasel words: he recognises that Cllr McGregor is figurehead for a regime that  simply diesn’t care]

It seems Mr McGregor’s desire is  to be shot of the subsidised public bus services to rural areas – a lifeline to many people in the countryside who cannot afford, or are unable (by reasons of health, age and poverty) to drive.  Not that Mr McGregor puts it so directly. Indeed he drips honeytonged appeasement. Its not that he’s cutting the services – oh no – far from it.  Mr Mcgregor merely  plans to ‘remodel’ much of   Suffolk’s  rural transport, by replacing services with a ‘demand-responsive’ alternative, one that (he fails to mention) has to be booked a day in advance and is not available outside working hours.

And he certainly doesn’t mention that the money to underpin this  Demand Responsive Solution to the death of the subsidised scheduled bus services was taken out of  his capital expenditure budget a full year before  the NSD was mentioned.

Bus users of Woodbridge,  your valued local service didn’t fall – it was pushed!

Let’s be clear here  – talking about demand responsive transport solutions  is  a load of  meretricious tosh if you referring to buses like the 62a and the 62b.  Why? Well,  if you press them, SCC  officers admit that:

“demand responsive transport operates between 0700 and 1900 Monday to Saturday and we are unable to offer any extension to these hours”.

So our 62a and 62b services will therefore not be replaced with demand responsive transport: they will be replaced with nothing at all, and residents in Woodbridge will have NO sustainable transport in the evenings, on Sundays and on Bank Holidays.

Those residents who do not have, cannot afford to, or are unable to drive a car, will be left sitting at home!

Last week I suggested to  Mr McGregor that he was targeting his transport cuts disproportionately at Suffolk’s sustainable transport as  I questioned his part in the SCC proposed budget for next year.  He agreed that this was the case, but added

“When they were consulted, residents in Suffolk said they were saddened that these cuts were happening, but they know the reasons why they have to occur.”

Oh yes, we DO know the reasons why our buses are being cut, Mr McGregor!  Its because you prefer to add a couple of millions to the already bloated roads budget than give a moment’s concern to those residents of Suffolk who do not drive cars. That’s what saddens us!  Decisions are being made on our behalf  by someone who doesn’t care a hoot for buses, nor for the people who use buses, and most of all, for the plight of the people who have no option but to use buses!

While I remember, it was at this very same Cabinet meeting that Jane Storey, deputy leader of the SCC administration, and arch apologist for the New Strategic Direction  really excelled herself. In bringing next year’s budget to Cabinet she had the unmitigated CRUST to say (with an ineffable blend of complacency and certainty), that this budget – yes the one that is cutting school traffic patrols, divesting libraries, abolishing the explore card and stopping the very buses that rural people most need  “will deliver first class services to the people of Suffolk. ”

Oh, and she also added that the administration have “tried to prioritise the vulnerable in our society.”

I kid you not!   I wrote her words down as she spoke them so I could make sure to pass them on in all their appalling glory!

Cllr Storey, like Cllr McGregor , you seem to have the same relationship to services for the vulnerable as the Wicked Uncle had to the Babes in the Wood. Oh yes you DO!

Oh NO you dont???

Well why not  put your money where your mouths are, and forgo your cuts to essential and irreplaceable services in favour of supporting the most vulnerable of Suffolk’s road users – those who are  dependent on your subsidised buses!

Residents of Woodbridge, and beyond – if you wish to persuade Cllrs McGregor, Storey et al of the error of their ways and hope for a regular panto Transformation Scene, please sign the online petition

http://petitions.web-labs.co.uk/suffolkcc/public/Save-Woodbridge-Buses

Or you can sign a paper copy in Woodbridge’s Shire Hall. We MUST keep reminding them that this is a bad thing to do – or they might carry on thinking that it’s prefectly ok.

'Divesting' services, Buses, Cabinet, Care homes, Council spending, cuts, Libraries, Lollipop patrols, New Strategic direction, Schools, Suffolk County Council, Woodbridge, young people, Your councillor

Cuts in Suffolk – don’t ever forget who’s holding that knife!

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As your county councillor I am horribly anxious about so many different  things simultaneously.  

This week  its been the almost certain loss of Suffolk’s libraries, school crossing patrols, care homes, bus services, the eXplore card, and services for families  that has  been most worrying me.  That, and the impact of these losses on the people of Suffolk.

For clearly, Suffolk residents are  likely to be losing all of these, losing them irrevocably, sacrificed to the ideological insanity of an ‘enabling’ council, run by affluent, untroubled  people who say:  “Do as I say, not as I do!”   It is  a Topsy Turvey world where those who run it can demand  pay moderation, job cuts, and employment freezes for everyone else but themselves;  can parrot the mantra of “Greenest County” and drive everywhere in a 4×4; can declare themselves determined to protect ‘the most vulnerable’  but do not include in this category the elderly, the very young, the disabled , or the disadvantaged.  

Pah!  

However,  I would urge you not to confuse national policies with our current disgraceful  local vandalism. For a start, such confusion could – no, WILL –  let those responsible off the hook! The New Strategic Direction has been a long time in the planning. It is making cuts greater than required in services the administration doesn’t value. A cynic would suggest that it is using the national situation as a cover for doing so.

Remember, in Suffolk the Liberal Democrats are not in any kind of coalition – they are very strongly the opposition party.  And as you know, both I and my colleagues have been fighting these cuts from the day they were first heralded, back in last September. Let us be clear here – although we are in opposition,  Suffolk Lib Dems are fighting this New Strategic Direction as a matter of common sense rather than party-political politicking.  We are fighting it because the effects will hit people of all ages, and backgrounds and political hue.

We – like any sane, sensible people – think there IS such a thing as society, and that  actually in Suffolk we had – till recently – a society that ran quite well. One that looked after its old and its sick and disabled, that tempered the wind to the shorn lamb. We think a  County Council should respond to its residents and their needs:  that the council is there to represent  and protect them and serve them. We are not so arrogant that  we forget that SCC  is paid for by the people of Suffolk, out of their own money! We feel that those who pay the piper should be allowed to call the tune!

 The council’s current bizarre ‘New Strategic Direction’ (which seems to combine ‘selling off of the family silver’ with dumping some of it in a skip) does not seem to think  this way. Far from intending to deliver ‘the best’ for the people of Suffolk,  the NSD  does not intend to deliver anything at all!

 Care homes, libraries, bus services and school crossing patrols:  all of these are not just ‘optional extras’ to be dispensed with and disposed of  by those who do not use them (and seemingly fail to remember they do not own them).  Yet there is such a thing as society in Suffolk, and all these services are ones that make you proud that it still exists.

Suffolk County Council is cynically using the cuts in central government grants to justify what it plans to do, but central actions (whatever we think of them) do not in any sense explain what is being done here in Suffolk.  The Coalition government is not going to win any popularity contests while trying to recoup the eye-watering deficit bequeathed by Gordon Brown and the last thirteen years.   However it should not be expected to carry the can for the ‘scorched earth’ decisions being made – without reference to the public or even a business plan – by those who have created the ‘New Strategic Direction’.

But the CEO and the Tory administration at Suffolk County Council are not the only people to blame for this mess. There’s also the sheer apathy of all too many of the people of Suffolk to factor in!    

In late October/November last year I  – together with many other colleagues – trudged around a large area of Suffolk Coastal delivering 23,000 copies of an emergency leaflet which tried to alert the people of Suffolk to what lay ahead. 

The administration accused us of ‘scaremongering’ – yet our direst predictions were less terrible than the truth.

We did our best and gained a huge amount of support from those prepared to listen – but it was not enough. Far too few people took notice. Some hoped it wouldn’t  really happen under a Tory watch, others hoped to regain popularity for the Labour party by standing on the sidelines and letting our society crumble, others  just hoped that the problem would go away if they shut their eyes and buried their heads in the sand.   

So, once again I urge you to put aside party-political differences and take action!  After months of refusing to listen to the people it represents, Suffolk County Council has finally  put up an e-petition site. Register on it and add your name  to an existing petition or  start a new one. Or best – do both!

http://petitions.web-labs.co.uk/suffolkcc/public/

You can sign any petition – the only qualification is that you need to live, work or study in Suffolk (for example, I have signed all the Library petitions as I believe in an integrated service for the county) but current petitions that particularly affect you are :

Save our School Crossing Patrols – the St Mary’s School Woodbridge lollipop man is going to be cut along with the other 97 lollipop posts across Suffolk, to save a sum of money that equates to to less that 80% of the Chief Executive’s annual salary!

Save Woodbridge Library: it will not be closed –  but it is still in danger of ‘divestment’.

Save Woodbridge Buses  Cuts – confirmed yesterday – to SCC subsidised services will leave Woodbridge without any evening, sunday or bank holiday bus services, plus cut easy links to other towns and villages. This will cause huge problems to those who can’t, don’t, or can’t afford to drive 

Save the Explore Card  Up till now young people have had this card to help with travel costs to post-16 education, to work and to find work, and for socialising. Explore cards were available free to students 16-19, and have enabled them to pay only half adult fares on buses and on many off-peak rail journeys. Additionally, the SCC post-16 transport policy relies on the fact that all post-16 students can have an Explore card to help with fares – and a very good thing too!. The proposed abolition of the card would mean there will be more cars on the road because many more young people will be driven or drive to school, college, employment etc. It will put more, less confident cyclists on busier roads. It will lead to less take-up of FE education because of difficulties of access. It will harm young people’s chances of going for job interviews and training. The proposed abolition is a retrograde step that threatens the very education and employment opportunities that our young people need in order to help us out of our current economic crisis. It also makes a mockery of our ‘Greenest county’ aspirations 

(NB: A word of warning sometimes the e-petition links work poorly. If so , go to the site and navigate from there! And if it doesn’t work, keep trying until it does.)