Suffolk County Council where democracy went to die

Suffolk County Council's Cabinet

On Tuesday at 11am in Endeavour House Ipswich the cabinet of Suffolk County Council met to quite evidently rubber stamp the decision they had already made on Suffolk Libraries. I did not attend the meeting but Wordblog has covered really well exactly what happened. I have however attended previous Cabinet meetings and they are truly depressing for anyone who believes in democracy. Almost every decision is unanimous and there is nothing that would pass for real debate. "Self-congratulatory" is the word almost everyone used of the proceedings.

I guarantee you that your local parish council, village hall management committee, school governing body, cricket club you name it would be a much better place to look for democracy than Suffolk County Council's cabinet.

There evidently is some discussion in reality but it takes place safely behind the scenes and a comment made at the meeting by one of the Cabinet members that they had discussed something "upstairs" belies the truth that the Cabinet is a "showpiece" not where the actual decisions are made. Like the party conferences of modern times no real debate, discussion or scrutiny happens in public at least.

In the case of the Suffolk County Council Cabinet it isn't even a successful showpiece.

I could go on and personally I put much of the blame on Labour's move to "cabinet" governance for local government which I think is wholly inappropriate. The absence of any opposition stifles any debate and is fundamentally undemocratic. If the Cabinet is a rubber stamp the County Council itself is frankly a complete irrelevance. Indeed it is unusual that a decision, even one as important as this one on libraries actually goes to the Council itself to be decided and allow the handful of opposition members to bravely try and apply some accountability and pretence of democracy.

I seriously thank them but they really must wonder why they bother sometimes.

The last time I attended a full Council meeting I actually heard Conservative members asking each other "what is it we are voting for". They had no idea and would by and large have voted for anything they were told to. If they were turkeys probably they would vote for Christmas but sheep would be a much better analogy. I described the proceedings as a "democratic car crash" but I now wonder why I used the word democratic. There is nothing democratic at all about the proceedings.

But in some ways maybe I am being to harsh on the County Council. After all it has next to no power anyway. Today's EADT proclaims "no tax increase County pledges" but the County Council didn't even make this decision. The government did. Stripped of even the ability to decide if taxes should be raised and to make basic decisions about the local area such as where schools should be open - another decision now made in Westminster - is it any wonder the proceedings lack any sense of democracy?

We may just as well disband the County Council and save some money. It doesn't even have the power to make meaningful local decisions (even if it wanted to).

Some real democracy in action outside Stradbroke Library

People sometimes suggest talking children to watch parliament or local council proceedings so they see what democracy "looks like". If I want to convince my children that democracy is dead I will take them to a few Suffolk County Council meetings!  I am not sure I will. They would probably try and grab the microphone and inject some real democracy into the proceedings!

Calls for Suffolk Cabinet to postpone library decision

Cllr Guy McGregor

Library supporters from North Suffolk have written to Cabinet member and local councillor Guy McGregor urging him to press the cabinet to postpone the final decision on a governance structure for Suffolk's libraries. It is clear the council favour the "industrial and provident society" (IPS) model the their best value evaluation suggests is the best option but information has come to light suggesting further investigation needs to be made before a final decision is taken.

Community groups taking part in the pilots are also worried about timescales as Ann Kerr, Chairman of Stradbroke Parish council states:

I have no political or ethical problems with an IPS to run the library service. However, the document itself outlines the amount of work that will need to be undertaken and the risks involved. I have serious doubts that, because of the reduced workforce, SCC officers will have the capacity to implement this scheme in the time proposed.

It is fair at this point to praise Suffolk County Council for not going down the path that Brent and others have and closing libraries. It is also right to point out that Suffolk have been willing to look at innovative ideas but it is really important that the right model is chosen.

Stradbroke resident Chris Edwards who has a background in charity governance at Director level has written to Cllr McGregor with a detailed set of questions about the proposal which I have reproduced in full on Wikisuffolk.

In short there are several proposed changes to the regulation of industrial and provident societies that may impact the proposal. Chris suggests that a structure that will allow conversion to a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) which is a new form of charity would be the best idea and points to changes in regulator for IPS.

Edwards says:

The first problem is that setting up as an IPS will not allow the charity to convert to a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) the new social business model which will come into being soon. This is because a public benefit IPS is an exempt charity, and this form of organisation is not currently empowered to convert to a CIO. CIO’s offer by far the best option for future long term potential for community growth and development over and above IPS’s.

Other concerns have been raised about the length of time the business rates "savings" would really be available for given that the Government seems set to make business rates be retained locally. The risk is that the tax "saving" will just the future reduce SCC's revenue so not  be a saving at all or at least not much of one.

All of us who have been engaged in this process have found it harder than we thought and if Cabinet decided today that extra time was needed to make the right decision I think this would be something we could all get behind and support. It would be a shame to rush the decision and make a costly mistake and I hope Cabinet can be brave and postpone the decision.

Waveney in the balance as Andrew Draper finally resigns

Former Cllr Andrew Draper

Disgraced Worlingham councillor Andrew Draper finally resigned today following his conviction in August for drink driving and assaulting a police officer. He is said to have shouted "don't you know I'm a Councillor?" as he was arrested.

He quickly resigned from the Cabinet and eventually from the Conservative party but despite a Standards Committee case refused to resign as a councillor until today.

His resignation means there will be a by-election which will determine the political control of the council which is on a knife-edge.

Some will reflect on the lack of leadership shown by Waveney leader Colin Law who seemed content to see Draper remain and his vote prop up his Tory administration. Colin Law welcomed his departure today saying:

Colin Law
Waveney Leader

Andrew Draper has reached the conclusion that it is no longer appropriate for him to remain as a Councillor. It was always a decision for him alone to make and I both accept, and agree, that this is the right thing for him to do.

But Law seemed less sure back in August when he said:

He is a good councillor and has been well received in his ward.“I stand by him as a councillor and naturally, going forward, we will have to see how it pans out.”

Interestingly the other Worlingham councillor is Suffolk CC's Leader Mark Bee and it will be interesting to see what he has to say on this issue. He seems to have been remarkably quiet so far about it.

Whilst Andrew Draper clearly behaved extremely badly in what could well have been an a moment of madness he could simply have immediately resigned and could even have then rebuilt a political career at a later point. This was a massive misjudgement by Draper and in allowing it by Law and it will be interesting to see if the Conservatives end up loosing control of Waveney over this.

Julian Swainson, Waveney Labour
Leader

Waveney's Labour Leader Julian Swainson now has an opportunity to take control of the Council that many thought he should have been leader of in May and under circumstances nobody could have predicted. Maybe this is a dose of political karma?

Free School Madness continues in Suffolk

Jeremy Rowe, Head of Sir John Leman High

Suffolk has across the board an excess of school places. It is a mainly rural county where small towns tend to have a single secondary school if that. And secondary schools are small here, edge over a 1000 children and people think it is getting big. Into the more average territory of 1500 to so and it is "too big". After all large numbers of people in Suffolk live in places smaller than this in overall population!

But for reasons that seems to lack any rational explanation Suffolk seems to be getting more than its fair share of "free schools". It is almost as if the Government is unable like my children to understand the difference between "want" and "need".

By and large schools are good in Suffolk and we certainly do not have much of the problems with challenged secondary schools in the way many cities do. In fact outside of the more urban areas practically all of our secondary schools are judged by Ofsted as Outstanding or Good with Outstanding Features.

In fact the main issues around secondary education are small size making it more difficult to provide a broad curriculum and harder to run effective sixth forms.

This isn't an area where you would imagine a huge need for new schools but yet we have so far seen several free schools approved. Mainly so far former middle schools kept in my view largely due to local sentiment rather than need.

From comments made (and subsequently deleted) from Facebook by Wendy Canham one of the proposers of the Ixworth and Stanton Free School it is clear some of this sentiment is based on completely inaccurate information such as the idea below that children do not start studying science until 11:

Last week another new free school was approved in the small town of Beccles. In this case the old middle school building is to be given to the new Beccles Free School which is part of a chain of free schools run by the Seckford Foudnation who run an independent school in Woodbridge when it is needed by the local high school to accommodate the middle school children. This prompted the Head of Sir John Leman High School, Jeremy Rowe to say to the TES:

"So where do I put my new intake of students? I have nowhere to put them without that building, which was promised to me two years ago. I may as well drop them off at the Department for Education and let them deal with it."

But as the TES article and an interesting discussion on the Local Schools Network points out this could be the least of his worries. In a small town such as Beccles with only 9000 people the viability of two high schools must be in serious doubt. Sir John Leman High School which was judged "good with outstanding features" in its last Ofsted inspection could close altogether over time.

To me it seems hugely questionable to use public money to build a new school to compete against an already good existing school. A real case of confusing "want" and "need". I thought the country didn't have any money? And if it does there are huge areas of the country that actually need both more school places full stop and more good school places. Would the money not be better spent there or is the reason we are attracting so much money for free schools in Suffolk something to do with the number of Conservative MPs we have...