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Bath councillors exposed

Nov 23rd, 2011
by Tim Newark.
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Finally, a response, on appeal, to my Freedom of Information request about Bath & North East Somerset (B&NES) councillors not paying their council tax. Shockingly, it has revealed that one Bath councillor has had to have legal action taken against him or her to recover the outstanding council tax. Who this is has not been disclosed.

Initially my FoI request was turned down by B&NES council, but I appealed and the Head of Audit, Risk and Information stated that the original refusal by the council ‘was applied incorrectly and the requested information should be provided to you.’ The information he passed on reveals that over the last two years a total of eight B&NES councillors have been sent reminder letters for late payment of their council tax—an amount totalling £3,429.55. Three of these councillors then had to be sent a second reminder letter—at taxpayers’ expense—for a total of £491. One of these then had to have legal action taken against them to recover the outstanding tax.

Bath TPA supporters protest outside B&NES Guildhall, with Tim Newark (centre) displaying his Freedom of Information request

We are all human and we all make mistakes, but councillors are elected by us to represent us and we are entitled to expect them to act with due responsibility when it comes to paying their council tax—the money that funds our local government. They should display leadership and lead by example—not delay or avoid paying their council tax. Can they not set up a direct debit payment?

Such information is only being revealed by FoI requests and yet elsewhere in the South-West there are signs that councils are trying to close down these avenues of legitimate enquiry. North Devon Council is introducing charges for material printed as part of FoI requests, as well as charging £25 per hour for public access to environmental information.

North Devon councillors say they are levying the charges to curb excessive requests made under the information laws, but their decision comes a month after the North Devon Journal used FoI requests to reveal that some of these councillors had made late payments of council tax. ‘They are obviously smarting from this exposure,’ says Bideford TPA supporter Graham Jones, ‘particularly as they were also claiming allowances at the same time.’

Tim Newark, Bath & South-West TaxPayers’ Alliance

Bath Action Day

Nov 7th, 2011
by Tim Newark.
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On Saturday, November 5th, Bath TPA supporters gathered to put a rocket under the position of B&NES’ Chief Executive. At a busy Farmers’ Market at Green Park Station, they collected a number of signatures calling for the next Bath council boss to take a pay cut of £50,000 from the current sum of £210,000 (including pension benefits) to £160,000.

Bath TPA supporters (left to right), Matt Showering, Ben Lodge and Tim Newark show the signatures for their petition collected at Bath’s Farmers’ Market.

Many locals, fed up with high wages being spent on senior council officials rather than frontline services, called for an even bigger pay cut.

Ben Lodge collects signature from Bath stallholder.

This demand has had broad support from across the political spectrum in Bath, including a recent letter in the Bath Chronicle from the local Green Party calling for the same council wage cut.

Matt Showering collects signature from Bath stallholder.

It was sparked by the incoming Chief Executive of Islington Borough Council, Lesley Seary, volunteering a pay cut of £50,000 to bring her wage down to £160,000. ‘We are committed to tackling inequality in all its forms,’ she said, ‘and putting money back in the pockets of our residents.’ If it’s good enough for her, why not the next Chief Executive in Bath?

Tim Newark, Bath & South-West grassroots coordinator, collects signature from Bath stallholder.

Vicky Newark collects signature from Bath stallholder.

Tim Newark, Bath & South-West TaxPayers’ Alliance

Bath’s wasted millions

Oct 5th, 2011
by Tim Newark.
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A slab of pavement, a chronically underused bike scheme and an electric van trundling around the streets of Bath delivering goods to just a handful of shops are just some of the questionable benefits derived from a taxpayer funded scheme costing millions of pounds.

My attention was first drawn to this waste of money when I saw Boris-Bike-style stands going up at four locations across the city of Bath. After the first week of this trial scheme, these bikes have proved to be a dismal failure.  Only 29 people have signed up to use the bikes, making a total of 36 trips. This is far less than the predicted 210 trips per week hoped for on the scheme’s website.

This is partly due to the complexity of the scheme itself.  One local found it a far from ‘pain-free process’ of registering for a bike pass at the Tourist Information Centre. It involves  paying a subscription up front of £9 for a daily card and £13 for a weekend card. ‘By comparison,’ said the local resident, ‘in London the daily access charge is £1, or £5 for seven days. I really do not think this level of charging is going to encourage Bathonians to make use of what is a fantastic facility.’

Fantastic or not, Bath is a very concentrated city that can be easily walked around—the ultimate in low pollution, high personal health transport. But that would be too cheap. The backers of this bike scheme have a much bigger vision in mind.

It is part of a bundle of measures pulled together under the umbrella of ‘Civitas Renaissance’. Alongside four other European cities, Bath is being used as an experiment for improving local transport and the urban environment. The total cost of this package of policies in Bath is expected to be €7 million, with €4 million of this coming from the European Commission’s Civitas initiative, that is, the European/British taxpayer.
It is funny how a taxpayer-funded project can sound so grand to begin with and then end up ending spending money on initiatives like a slab of pavement. But this is no ordinary slab of pavement—it is the St James Rampire demonstration area ‘designed to enhance the urban realm.’ In reality, it is wilderness of pavement that is ludicrously wide and dominates the street to an ugly and environmentally unfriendly degree. And yet Civitas claims this as a success, saying it has ‘Improved perceptions of personal safety and security against a 2010 baseline.’ Well, there you go!Civitas Renaissance,’ claims its website, ‘aims to demonstrate how the legacy of the Renaissance can be preserved and developed through a renaissance of innovative and sustainable clean urban transport solutions.’

Another scheme is ‘Freight Transhipment’, that is an electric van that takes goods pooled together from a warehouse on the edge of the city and then delivers them to businesses inside the city’s narrow streets. Not a bad idea actually, but again this has not been met with much enthusiasm. Only five retailers have signed up to the delivery scheme business, far less than the anticipated 30 businesses.

Far more futuristic is the ‘Personal Rapid Transit’ system that involves passengers zooming around Bath in a pod on a ‘guideway network’, similar to the system running at Heathrow Airport. ‘As the system is emissions free, it is an excellent alternative to the bus, train or car,’ says Civitas, but is such a system really appropriate to the historic streets of Bath? I think they would face an uphill battle with that one.

So far, Bath & North East Somerset council has presented this project as a victory for Bath residents, bringing in outside investment, even if it is just shifting taxpayers’ money around. But the reality is that B&NES is matching the incoming European grants with its own expenditure. So all this under-performing nonsense is costing the local taxpayer. B&NES budget for 2010/11 reveals that £381,000 of EU grant was matched by £388,000 of B&NES Local Transport Plan expenditure. In addition to this, comes at least £438,000 from central government funding spent in 2009/2010.

Some of this money is paying for the usual freebies enjoyed by bureaucrats as they are shuttled around Europe to see how our cash is being spent. In 2008, Bath and North East Somerset Council hosted a two-day Civitas transport workshop in which delegates from four other European cities visited Bath to hear the then Leader of the Council announce ‘we all welcome the opportunity provided by the Renaissance project to bring about much needed improvements in the quality of life for our citizens.’ As millions of our money is spent on questionable and disappointing schemes, we are still waiting to see any real improvement to our streets…

Tim Newark, Bath and South-West TaxPayers’ Alliance

Bristol’s Empty Park-and-Ride

Sep 1st, 2011
by Tim Newark.
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Park-and-Ride is the mantra for spending millions of taxpayers’ money on transport schemes that are supposed to be good for the environment, but what if no one uses them? In Bristol, the Stoke Gifford car park near Bristol Parkway station has been open for three months, cost £1.3 million of taxpayers’ money and has been used by precisely 139 motorists. ‘It’s gone off half-cock,’ said one councillor, ‘and made the council look stupid.’ Surely not?

Another busy day at Stoke Gifford

One of the reasons it’s not busy, apparently, is that it wasn’t promoted. ‘Nobody knows it is there,’ said the same councillor, presumably wanting more taxpayers’ money to advertise it. Another councillor blamed the fact that increased parking regulations had not been brought in at the same time in the surrounding area. That is, he wanted more double-yellow lines painted on residential streets so that local drivers would be forced to park there, paying £5 a day for parking that would have been otherwise free on their own streets. That doesn’t seem quite right either and is an additional needless cost to the taxpayer.

Of course, it doesn’t help that there is no bus service running from the car park. But that needs more taxpayers money too, some £250m of funding to link the car park into the Bus Rapid Transit route to take people into the city. In the meantime, South Gloucestershire Council’s own figures for 2009-2010 reveal that the amount of people using park-and-ride is on a downward trajectory, while overall patronage of city centre bus services is down as well.

It is always interesting to note on occasions like this how councils justified the enormous expense in the first place. At a South Gloucestershire Council meeting earlier this year, when one councillor expressed his own doubts, saying ‘I am not sure what the benefits of having a Park & Ride at Parkway Station is,’ he was slapped down by a council officer saying: ‘Parkway North Park & Ride contributes to continued economic growth in South Gloucestershire and specifically reducing traffic congestion.’ Well, the one place there is definitely no congestion is in the road leading to the Stoke Gifford Park-and-Ride!

Bath Council disappoints

Jul 28th, 2011
by Tim Newark.
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For a moment the spirit of the TPA seemed to be with Bath and North East Somerset Council as they discussed the possibility of dumping their ludicrously overpaid chief executive. A report to a meeting of the council’s restructuring implementation committee (big name, little results) asked them to consider reducing the number of senior council managers and saving £2 million. Part of this would have involved doing away with the position of chief executive—currently paid over £212,000—and having the role covered by three other senior managers. The idea being that some of the money frittered away in senior pay packets would go to frontline services.

Come Monday this week, however, at a meeting to which the public were excluded, the three-member B&NES committee, featuring one Lib-Dem, one Conservative and one Labour member, rejected the advice of the report and chose to keep their chief executive. Reading the 20-page document they were asked to consider, it seems very much that the proposed re-structuring is merely a game of musical chairs with executive posts simply being given different titles. I can’t see any precise reference whatsoever to saving taxpayers’ money through pruning the management structure.

As one disappointed Bath resident put it: ‘It sends the wrong signal out to employees losing their jobs and it also annoys people like me who have to pay the same council tax for fewer services yet see some guy get paid a stupid salary.’ Exactly!

Rubbish failures

Jul 4th, 2011
by Tim Newark.
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The fallout from the Conservatives’ failure to keep their election pledge of maintaining weekly rubbish collections can be seen plainly throughout the West Country. From November, in West Wiltshire, residents will see their rubbish collections shifted to fortnightly, with a 240 litre blue-lidded bin added to their existing black box and usual garbage bin. The rest of the county will soon after see the end of their weekly rubbish collections.

“By the end of 2014 we will start saving on landfill tax,” says enthusiastic Wiltshire Conservative Councillor Toby Sturgis. “We have invested £7.6m to get this far. If we hadn’t done this the penalties for not doing so would have been very painful.” But excuse me, aren’t these so-called penalties completely artificial taxes invented by the European Union to push their recycling agenda and are endorsed by a current British government who chooses to do nothing about them (despite using the issue of weekly bin collections to win votes)?

Still, as chairman of his local climate change board, Cllr Sturgis clearly has a mission that is at variance with his own party’s election manifesto pledge on rubbish collection. British taxpayers and voters are entitled to feel very hard done by on many levels.

Well, this was unexpected

In the meantime, changes to rubbish collection and charges levied at some recycling centres are seeing dramatic rises in fly-tipping across the South-West. A report from Somerset Waste Board said there was a clear increase in district councils dealing with an ‘unprecedented number of cases’. Local government seems toothless in its ability to deal with fly-tippers—prosecuting only four people over a year in which over 6000 incidents were reported to Somerset councils. This leaves an enormous bill for taxpayers as councils have to clear up the increasing mess.

Costly changes to Stonehenge

Jun 27th, 2011
by Tim Newark.
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English Heritage seems determined to spend millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on not altogether necessary changes to the site around Stonehenge in Wiltshire.

The saga began last summer when the Coalition government cancelled a proposed £25m scheme to replace the current visitor centre and shift it one and a half miles away from the stones, as well as diverting the nearby A344. This was all for aesthetic reasons so as to present the Neolithic stones in a more pleasing environment away from horrid cars and pesky tourists.

At the time, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said the scheme had been devised when the previous government was going on a ‘pre-election spending spree’ and the English Heritage proposal did not ‘represent good value for money’.

stonehenge

Five months later, however, the scheme was back on when English Heritage received a £10m grant towards the new visitor centre and closure of the A344. Now, it is happy to see taxpayers’ money spent on a costly public inquiry into diverting the road away from the site so as to ‘restore the dignity’ of the stones.

Chief Druid Arthur Pendragon, however, smells a rat, believing the costly shifting of visitor centre and road will actually reduce public access to the prehistoric monument and give English Heritage a monopoly over visiting it.

‘We will not shrink from our responsibilities,’ he says, ‘to ensure that future generations can enjoy the environs of Stonehenge and the World Heritage site without being excluded for fiscal reasons.’

Still, maybe we should be grateful for small mercies, as English Heritage had earlier asked for £500m so they could place the section of road that runs nearest the stones to be hidden away in a tunnel. Even the previous free spending government thought this was going too far and binned the extravagant scheme in 2007.

Bristol’s costly shed

Jun 20th, 2011
by Tim Newark.
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Always good to have a new museum in a city, but last week’s opening of Bristol’s harbourside M Shed raises a few interesting questions about the public and private funding of culture. Two years late and £8 million over budget, the M Shed inhabits the site of the former Industrial Museum and is devoted to the history of the city. In total, the museum cost £27m to build, receiving £11m from the Heritage Lottery fund, £1.5m from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and further funding from Bristol City Council. Some of the ‘unforeseen costs’ included removing contaminated waste from the site, redesigning the building’s foundations and concrete framework — indeed, it would have been cheaper to build it from scratch elsewhere.

Two years late and £8m over budget

M Shed is in line with a trend for museums today that show fewer actual exhibits and more multi-media displays. City council partnerships director Stephen Wray criticises the long-established Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery for not having enough information on the city, but surely that is something that could have been addressed for a fraction of the cost of the M Shed? ‘It is driven by stories,’ says Wray of the new space, ‘not artifacts.’ But as visitors listen to accounts of slavery, I do wonder if that couldn’t have been equally well communciated by a TV documentary or radio show. Do we really need a new multi-million pound warehouse to house a few screens and sound systems?

In contrast, the Holburne Museum in Bath has recently re-opened and is thronged with record crowds. Its new extension suffered only minor delays and was funded mainly by private donors, trusts and charitable foundations, with less than half its total cost of £13.8 million coming from the taxpayer. The extension has doubled the gallery space and is filled, amazingly for a museum today, with real historical objects rather than an array of screens and headphones. I know where I’d rather spend a rainy weekend.

Bath taxpayers ignored

May 9th, 2011
by Tim Newark.
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One rule for the council, one for ordinary taxpayers—or so it seems in Bath. Just under a year ago, without any public consultation, Bath & North East Somerset Council began work moving the central carriageway along Wellsway in preparation for installing bus lanes to and from the city centre. It was only when the work began that an eagle-eyed resident, IT-worker Ian Oxford, noted that this would have an adverse impact on local parking spaces.

When he queried the unauthorised work at the time, he was told only a handful of spaces would go, but he persisted and just recently got a reply from the councillor in charge of transport saying, in truth, it would mean the loss of 59 parking spaces. In the meantime, the council was forced to apologise to local residents on the lack of consultation and halted all work on the bus lanes.

‘Residents who build without planning permission are expected by the council to reverse unauthorised change,’ said Oxford, ‘and the council should be following the standards that it expects of others.’

That is bad enough but more importantly it reflects the continuing prejudice of B&NES Council against car owners. Why are bus lanes more important than local residents’ parking spaces? Especially as two new proposed housing developments in the area are going to encroach even further on the few parking spaces remaining. It reveals an appalling lack of coordinated thought among Bath councillors and bad value for local taxpayers who need to drive to and from work.

‘I have lived there for 18 years,’ said an angry Mr Oxford, ‘and suddenly my parking has just been swept away without any formal discussion.’

Tim Newark, Bath & South-West TaxPayers’ Alliance

Bath’s road to nowhere

Apr 18th, 2011
by Tim Newark.
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A local resident tells me about the continuing agony of Bath’s £16 million Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) route, dubbed a ‘pointless road to nowhere.’ In an era of cuts, Bath and North East Somerset council were asked by the Department for Transport (DfT) to revisit their overall plans for the Bath Transport Package (BTP).

‘Unbelievably B&NES chose to keep the expensive and pointless BRT route in their overall BTP,’ says Mark Price of local protest group Response2Route. ‘Basically they completely ignored what the DfT asked them to do and they are still proposing a scheme which will waste millions of taxpayers money on a BRT road to nowhere. Quite why they are determined to keep the worst element of the BTP in place is a mystery but that’s what they are doing—and by doing it they risk losing all of the funding for the overarching BTP.’

'Enhancing the local environment'

Maybe this is not so surprising as this is the same council that spent £1million on a 700-yard bus lane. ‘This was a complicated project involving the conservation of wildlife and archaeological issues,’ is how a council official described the strip of tarmac.

Response2Route have sent a detailed analysis of the BRT to the DfT. For all the millions it will cost the taxpayer and for all the disruption to local residents and businesses, the council estimates that the new route will save just two minutes on a bus trip from Newbridge to Bath City centre. Still, put against a million pounds on a 700-yard bus lane, maybe it’s bargain in the world of B&NES?

If built, the BRT route will join the recently opened ‘bridge to nowhere’ that cost £1.6 million and was called by a former Bath councillor ‘an absolute waste of money’.

Tim Newark, Bath & South-West TaxPayers’ Alliance

Pointless consultations

Feb 28th, 2011
by Tim Newark.
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Councils love spending taxpayers’ money on consultations as it gives the appearance of local democracy in action. But having spent tens of thousands of our pounds listening to us, it seems they then feel no obligation to abide by what we tell them.

In Bath, the council spent £40,000 conducting a Visitor Accommodation Study in which local businessmen and hoteliers were asked their opinion on how best to advance the tourist business in the city.  Its conclusion was that a measured expansion of accommodation over the next decade was the best approach, adding 256-376 rooms by 2016. This was approved by those businessmen involved in the consultation, but now it appears their views have been ignored as the council races ahead to approve planning consent for the building of two massive new hotels in the city centre that will bring in at least 600 rooms within the next couple of years—twice the council’s own recommendation.

Needless to say, the private hotel sector in Bath is up in arms, claiming a 40 per cent increase in hotel room stock just at a time when they are struggling to survive in a recession. ‘All within a few hundred yards of each other and all without parking,’ notes a local guest house owner. ‘This has been a clear lesson to us that “our leaders” are not listening, even to their own independent studies that they use our money to pay for.’ Quite so.

Tim Newark, Bath & South West TaxPayers’ Alliance

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