Posts Tagged ‘Southwick’
Adur results 2008
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on May 2nd, 2008
The bottom line is that the Conservatives retained all their seats and with the postal votes counted it’s a reasonable turn-out and satisfying majorities in every ward.
Congratulations to the successful candidates and thanks to the electorate for not subjecting us to nuisance politics.
The numbers in Worthing are similarly reassuring with the Conservatives picking up one seat and the Lib Dems retaining their tally.
School closures tomorrow
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on April 23rd, 2008
The National Union of Teachers strike tomorrow will affect some West Sussex schools including some in Adur. Check out the list on the West Sussex County Council’s website: List of schools affected
A varied week
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on January 24th, 2008
What a wonderfully varied week this past one has been when it comes to local politics.
On Monday I attended a party committee which concerns itself with the organisation at a very local level of the party machine. The people who do all the work to support the three of us at that meeting who are elected by the general public (two District Councillors – Debbie Kennard and myself – and the County Councillor – Clive Williams).
Tuesday was a Council committee meeting of the Housing and Central Services committee. And an entirely frustrating rubber-stamping exercise it was. All of the decisions we had to make were no-brainers: Increase Council home rents because the government’s slapping us with a negative subsidy or (you’ll love this) burn our reserves and increase them by even more next year? I think you’ll agree there’s no choice.
And the same was true of all the other agenda items – we had a choice but it was a non-choice.
But the variance came into play tonight with two of Adur District’s and Worthing Borough’s joint committees meeting one after the other. At these meetings we discussed the budget for the shared services (the refuse and recycling collection service and the joint management structure) as well as a report on coastal erosion.
The first item was great news. The Councils have saved, already, £67,000 through being able to buy fewer vehicles because of shared efficiency and we effectively did not have to pay for the new bins because of savings due to economies of scale in the procurement process as well. We have also saved £32,000 in the nine months to the end of the financial year that the service has been running just because of the increased quantities of recycling that are now being collected!
But I cannot be all positive. There was something much more important that came out of this evening’s meetings. The first meeting was of the Joint Overview and Scrutiny Committee and the Worthing Liberal Democrat members did not have a single negative comment to make about the services or the savings. They did, momentarily, suggest that Worthing’s Council tax payers are being subsidised by Adur (which isn’t true), but they could not see anything wrong with the savings etc. being made.
It didn’t stop them making a fuss though. And when it came to voting on the recommendation before them, they decided to abstain even though they did not disagree with the recommendation and, as I say, could not find anything negative to say at all.
As a result of this experience I want to make a plea to the residents of Adur and Worthing who may be reading this: Please don’t vote Lib Dem in May – if they win seats the members elected will just be a nuisance and if they win one of the Councils they won’t do a better job because they cannot see anything being done that they would do differently!
Vote Conservative at the local elections in May 2008 and ensure that your Councils continue to run smoothly and efficiently despite the government’s obsession with attempting to run the country’s Councils remotely.
Marks & Spencer plans
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on January 20th, 2008
M&S’s architects had some displays in the lobby of the Holmbush centre on Friday evening and during the day Saturday to get the thoughts of local people on their plans to extend the existing building and to improve the internal layout.
As I am on the planning committee, and because I received a written invitation, I took a trip along there and I must say the plans look very interesting. We must wait, now, and see how the application that is finally submitted responds to the public’s comments.
My thoughts focussed on accessibility for pedestrians but it appears M&S have some draconian ideas about how to free up parking spaces currently used by employees of M&S. I shall be attempting to help M&S employees not to be forced into parking in surrounding areas or, worse, into using public transport which is woeful in Shoreham.
Project Decisions
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on December 5th, 2007
Last night the Policy and Strategy Committee of Adur District Council (ADC) had to make some tough funding decisions.
If you find your favourite project has been dropped or had its funding cut, write to the Prime Minister and copy in your local Councillor and explain that the burdens on Council Tax in the south of England imposed by central government are making life unreasonably difficult for Councils, for tax payers and for those who rely on assistance from the local Council.
The minutes of the meeting will show which projects did not make the cut and which projects have had their funding modified (reduced). In the meantime, you can see the choices we had to make in Annex 2 (the last page) of Agenda Item 5 of the meeting on 4 December 2007: Policy and Strategy reports and minutes
Benn to challenge Tim
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on September 25th, 2007
I don’t doubt Tim’s seat is safe: he’s been a brilliant MP to almost everyone who has contacted them and, when he disagrees, he tells you so and why.
But it is interesting that Emily Benn will stand against him at the next election (BBC).
Emily’s blog and Tim’s website
Maybe I’m age prejudiced, but I now know what I didn’t know at seventeen and, frankly, I wouldn’t want seventeen-year-old me to represent anyone. Won’t Emily feel the same in eleven years?
And won’t she be too young if we have a snap-election? Is Emily to dictate Mr Brown’s decision!?
Worthing Consultation
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on September 17th, 2007
Tonight there was a consultation held at the Shoreham Centre. I have loads to write, and there are people to mock, but it’ll have to wait. I left the house at 7.25am this morning, returned just now and I haven’t yet had dinner. Oh, and I’ll be leaving tomorrow at around 7.45am with a Council meeting in Worthing straight after work, so that will be nice.
Still sign the KWASH petition if you haven’t already.
Tories on Hospitals
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on August 20th, 2007
The local campaigns to save major hospitals have been going for quite a while now. KWASH, for example, which aims to save Worthing and Southlands Hospitals — and particularly Worthing’s A&E, Intensive Care and Maternity functions — has been running for over a year.
So some may ask why it has taken until now for David Cameron to call for the protection of these massive NHS assets: BBC News.
But I think he’s right.
If he’d mentioned it when the campaigns started the media and the public would be bored and cynical. By mentioning it now, when the decisions are nigh, he’s able to gain nationwide support, raise the profile of the pillaging Mr Brown’s government is undertaking, and actually run a risk of getting the great apathetic public to be motivated for once!
…
And how can I let this go without pointing out that this isn’t happening in Scotland or Wales. Oh no! This is happening in England where a significantly smaller amount of tax is spent per person. Upset by that? Join the CEP.
Worthing and Southlands Hospitals
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on July 27th, 2007
The PCT proposes that Worthing or Chichester’s hospital loses its Accident and Emergency and related facilities. It also proposes that Haywards Heath’s hospital be closed.
Our MP, rightly, asked the Parliamentary Undersecretary for Health Services whether she thought this was fair. Tim said:
Last week, the Worthing Herald reported that Worthing’s accident and emergency department had 1,258 admissions. That equates to 65,500 people visiting every year. Under reconfiguration proposals—not scare stories—the PCT proposes to close that accident and emergency department, and it expects people to join the car park that is the A27 and go to either Chichester or Brighton. How many of those people does the Minister believe are timewasters who do not actually need an accident and emergency department in the hospital of the largest town in Sussex?
They say ‘honourable’ but they cannot mean this response from Ann Keen (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Health Services), Department of Health):
The hon. Gentleman raises an important issue on accident and emergency services, but how could I possibly know who was attending the accident and emergency department without looking at the figures? I would expect the local management and the local PCT to do that, and I would expect the local MP to conduct a responsible consultation to ensure that patient care is delivered appropriately in accident and emergency department. That is why reconfiguration of the health service can be good for patients, as I am sure he would agree.
That was taken from They Work For You.
Support KWASH
Oh, and why on God’s green Earth would you vote Labour and live near here?
Adur Telephones, SEERA and Policy and Strategy
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on July 24th, 2007
First, a warning. Adur Council’s telephones stopped working at 4pm this evening. While this is rectified, it is my duty to give you the out of hours Duty Supervisor’s number: 07713 889 128.
Last night’s meeting
Second, at last night’s meeting some more things were said that I didn’t really cover in my post because I was a bit of a hurry. As I’ve said many times recently, one of the items under discussion was key to a merger of services with Worthing and the accompanying savings in salaries which we must find because of the Labour Government’s swingeing cuts to grants and increases in demands on local Councils.
Members of the public are so infrequently in attendance that it is necessary to mention them when they are. Last night former-Councillor Peter Berry was in attendance. He had some questions to ask about the merger and, I quote, said that the Councils were “creating a staff surplus by reorganising the workload”. This, apparently, was supposed to be a negative criticism of the Councils plans whereas, in fact, it was a ringing endorsement of our policy. As a service organisation (as all Councils are) salaries and staff costs are the vast majority of our funding need. So to create staff surpluses is to create savings. To say that we are doing that by reorganising the workload is to say that we are creating efficiencies.
Many people criticise the NHS and other government bodies for ‘having too many chiefs and not enough Indians’; how wonderful then, that I can report that our Council is doing exactly what that adage criticises: reducing the number of managers by sharing managers between the two authorities! It’s really gratifying and a genuine good news story.
SEERA
In my last post I criticised the now dying SEERA for claiming that SEEDA was an unelected quango and I celebrated our Prime Minister’s decision to erase Regional Assemblies.
But I was, not unusually, being naively optimistic. SEERA is, for its faults, at least partially democratic in that some of its membership is Councillors from across the Region. SEERA, because of that, was becoming a thorn in the side of the central government and was likely to refuse to accept the house-building proposals that Gordon Brown recently announced. This would have been [in a fake posh voice] damned inconvenient, what! So in an act of sheer arrogance he decided to give it to the South East England Development Agency instead and close the troublesome assembly which was more and more likely to try to embarass him.
Far from being a positive step for democracy in England it is yet another attack on the democratic will of the people in this area who overwhelmingly do not support the ruling party. As the Tories came to regret using Scotland as a test bed, Labour will hopefully regret pushing the English — and especially those of us in the south — around.
Tonight’s Policy and Strategy Committee…
… was great, what more need be said? Well, actually, it would be nice to have some members of the public at the next one!
If you don’t like your Council tax rises, if you wonder how that hair-brained plan came to fruition, if you watch Newsnight or Question Time (or both!), if you enjoy debate or if you care about your local community then come along. It is really entertaining (normally) and it gives a real insight into how and why decisions are made.
I’m not over-selling it. Really.
No, really.
