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Herne Bay, England, CT6
United Kingdom

Community website for all things Herne Bay (Kent, UK). Covers: The Downs, Herne Bay Museum, Herne Bay Historical Records Society, Herne Bay Pier Trust, Herne Bay in Bloom, East Cliff Neighbourhood Panel, No Night Flights, Manston Airport, Save Hillborough, Kitewood, WEA, Local Plan and much, much more...

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Filtering by Tag: Priorities

Council Priorities: where will the axe fall?

HBM

Now we can all play Predict-a-Cut™ - it's as easy as 1-2-3!

  1. Download a copy of the Council's priorities in handy spreadsheet format.
  2. Tinker with the little buttons on the column headings to sort and filter the list. 
  3. See which functions you think are most likely for the chop, and share your thoughts with the rest of the world using the comments below. 

Please note: statutory services must be carried out somehow, even if on a shoestring. Discretionary services can be cut altogether.

To get you started, here's a list of the Discretionary services and functions, sorted by budget... so sharpen your axe and get chopping!

Herne Bay Matters home page
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categories CCC, Democracy
tags Priorities

The Council's priorities. Theirs, not ours.

HBM

Here's the list in handy spreadsheet format, and here's the much less helpful PDF format file provided by our Council.

Well, here it is at last - the list that was compiled in secret and kept under wraps for as long as possible. It's curiously instructive to see just how misguided and skewed CCC's priorities seem to be:

  • The Marlowe Theatre (5) ranks above Coast Protection (23).
  • The Beaney Museum (7) ranks above Herne Bay Regeneration (49). 
  • Marketing and Communications (14) ranks above Homelessness (40).
  • The Roman Museum (21) ranks above running Elections (67) .
  • District Life magazine (34) ranks above Public Health (63).
  • ... and so it goes on. 

So, how did we end up with this nonsense? It would appear to be the result of a chain of errors and failings.

The first and most fundamental problem is the Council's lack of clear purpose. As business jargon and management-speak has infected many aspects of everyday life, it has become fashionable to have a "vision" or "mission statement". Put simply, this is having a clear and agreed answer to the question - what are we here for?  Our Council doesn't appear to have a clear understanding of its purpose.

The next problem arises when the Council tries to identify how to achieve its (unstated) purpose. The 10 Pledges that appeared in the 2011-2016 Corporate Plan are a mixture of "nice to have" and political expediency. They are not guided or unified by a clear purpose, nor do they take account of the Council's statutory obligations... which creates the next layer of problems.

A handful of officers and councillors used the 10 Pledges to assess the value of 70 varied Council functions, and then prioritise them.  Given our Council's instinct for secrecy, we will probably never know who was involved, or how they arrived at each score. We will never get an explanation as to why the Beaney scores 5/10 for Health and Wellbeing, but Food and Occupational Health only scores 1/10 for Health and Wellbeing. The lack of logic, and transparency, fatally undermines this system of scoring.

This fatal flaw in scoring is literally multiplied by the weighting factors applied to the 10 Pledges. Again, we don't know, and will never know, how or why these weightings were arrived at.

Finally, we have the folly of mixing statutory and discretionary functions in the priority list. If a function if statutory (i.e. the Council is legally obliged to do it), it is completely irrelevant how it fares in the Council's quirky scoring system - there's simply no point in including it.

If you download the spreadsheet of Priorities, you can filter out the statutory functions and see what's left. These are the (only) things that our Council can cut, and inevitably the big ticket items will be the most tempting.

Herne Bay Matters home page
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categories CCC, Democracy
tags Priorities

Council's priorities not secret, not confidential, just rubbish

HBM

The city council has finally published its league table of services as it lays the ground for further budget cuts and savings.

It has put the controversial Local Plan, in which more than 15,000 new homes are planned for the district, atop the pile, with the cost of running democracy second and development management third.

Culture in Canterbury also features highly with the Marlowe Theatre at five out of 70, the Beaney at seven and the Roman Museum at 21. Meanwhile, rubbish collections are ranked 28 and public toilets are 53.

The lowest scored services were elections, archives and the council's obligations under the Freedom of Information Act.

Executive members and senior officers drew up the table as the council prepares to lose 45% of its income by 2017.

It means certain services and staff will face the axe. Mr Carmichael will go into greater details with officers at the staff conference on November 14. In his letter to council workers, chief executive Colin Carmichael said:

"All this information is being used in our star chambers to think about whether we need to continue to deliver these services and, if we do, whether to do so at the current cost level."

The table was created by rating each service out of 10 against each of the council's 10 pledges on its corporate plan. These have titles such as economy, safety, homes, culture, health and well-being, and young people.

Questions may be asked about those ratings after the Marlowe Theatre received 4/10 for health and well-being and the mayor's office received 3/10 in every single category, including housing, safety and protecting the environment.

The Conservative controlled authority came under fire earlier in the year after it created the list but refused to let anyone see it.

Cllr Alex Perkins, the leader of the opposition Lib Dem group, believes the people of the district should have been allowed to rate the services they use. He said:

"If the council are going to determine funding according to a league table of priorities then they should be local residents' priorities. not council leader John Gilbey's. Why don't the council ask people to give their own scores and actually prioritise what local residents want for a change."

The league table is published in the agenda for the executive meeting at the Guildhall tonight (7th November).

HB Gazette 7th November 2013

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Herne Bay Matters home page
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categories CCC, Democracy
tags Priorities, Colin Carmichael, Alex Perkins, Budget

Council's priorities aren't secret - they're confidential!

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Definition of secret: not known or seen or not meant to be known or seen by others. Definition of confidential: intended to be kept secret.  [Oxford Dictionaries online] 

Who does Cllr Gilbey think he's kidding? 

Canterbury City Council is one of the most democratic local authorities in the country, claims leader John Gilbey. He hit out after the Kentish Gazette reported that the council had drawn up a league table of its 71 service areas and ranked them in order of importance but refused to reveal it.

Cllr Gilbey denies the council is guilty of secrecy. He told last Thursday's meeting of the ruling Conservative executive: 

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"Some of these documents are kept confidential for many reasons and are looked at very carefully.  I think this is one of the most democratic councils we have, I honestly believe that.  That is why I don't take kindly to people inventing stories."

Last week it emerged that the league table is a key document as the council prepares for the 2014/15 budget. It is facing a cut of 50% in income by 2017 and scored each service according to importance and against the pledges in its corporate plan.

The Marlowe Theatre was fifth in the table and refuse collection came 29th, but none of the other positions are known and some are almost certainly facing the axe.

The council claims it will make the league table public next month when the proposed budget for next year is published.  But Cllr Alex Perkins, leader of the council's opposition Lib  Dem group, is demanding it is released now.  He said:

"The Gazette is absolutely right and deserves praise for bringing the council's appalling secrecy to everyone's attention.  There is absolutely no reasonable justification for the current leader of the council to keep the council budget formation process confidential.  And the Gazette has certainly not invented any of this as John Gilbey has claimed. 
The current leader and a tiny handful of Conservative councillors keep jealous control of all the budget information declaring it 'confidential' and refusing to share it even with their own backbenchers, let alone opposition councillors or the public.  It's completely unacceptable - it's your money after all."

Kingsmead Field campaigner Sian Pettman said:

"There's a worrying disconnect between Cllr Gilbey's perception of democracy and that of many of the district's residents.  His authoritarian style of leadership is ill-suited to the 21st century."

University of Kent Emeritus Professor of moral philosophy Richard Norman added:

"If Cllr Gilbey thinks that this is one of the most democratic councils, he needs to be aware that there are a great many people in Canterbury who don't see it that way."

The council will begin its consultation on the budget in November and will look to approve it in February.

HB Gazette 17th October 2013

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categories CCC, Democracy
tags Priorities, Budget, John Gilbey, Alex Perkins, Sian Pettman, Richard Norman, Secret

Our Council's secret priorities

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Oh dear... the Council that represents us and works for us is refusing to tell us what they're doing. It's a kind of nanny-dictator state. 

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Canterbury City Council has produced a league table of its 71 service areas in order of importance, but is refusing to reveal how it has ranked them. The Gazette has learned that the Marlowe Theatre is fifth in the league table while bin collections - a service delivered to every home in the district is 29th.

Senior officers and councillors spent hours in meetings scoring the service areas according to the council's priorities and rated each one against its 10-pledge corporate plan.

Colin Carmichael, the chief executive of the Conservative-controlled council, says he is determined to keep the league table a secret until the next budget is published later in the year.

"This is the first time that we have actually taken a step back and asked questions about everything that we do. But I can't let people see it because we are only half through."

The league table was compiled as the council assesses the way it will run its services in future. lt is steeling itself for a 50% drop in income by 2017.

Members of the ruling executive injected their political priorities into the rankings which could be used to cut some council services completely as the drive to save money intensifies in the coming years.

Asked why the Marlowe scored so much higher than bin collections, Mr Carmichael said the theatre "ticked several boxes" on the corporate plan pledges.  He said:

"Refuse collection, for example, scores mid-range at 29th on the priority list as it scores highly against only two of the 10 pledges, but it is a top political priority and it is a statutory service. The Marlowe can be seen to fulfil more pledges. It is important economically for us as we didn't want that end of the city to lose out with the building of the Whitefriars shopping area."

Lib Dem group leader Alex Perkins is furious at the decision to keep the league table secret.

"Presumably, they'll only show people when they've made all their decisions.  Here we are yet again with the council taking decisions with public money on the basis of its own political agenda and refusing the public the right to know how it is ranking services. If that's not a sign of how the council is going to hell in a handcart, then I don't know what is.

HB Gazette 10th October 2013

Herne Bay Matters home page
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categories CCC, Democracy
tags Colin Carmichael, Alex Perkins, Our Council, Priorities


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