Posts from — January 2007

I’m going through one of my frustrating times where bureaucracy and Home Office guidelines are getting in the way of helping a community!

Fazeley and Mile Oak, near Tamworth, is very pleasant in the main. I had a good walk around there today, talked to quite a lot of local people and generally had a good look around. The sun was shining and, as I say, it was very pleasant. That’s in the most part.

Unfortunately there are a couple of ‘hot spots’ where drinking, verbal abuse and pointless vandalism by younger members of the community is a real problem. The stupidity illustrated in the pictures may seem quite minor but linked with the late night yobbish behaviour it is causing real problems for normal law abiding citizens.

And that’s where my frustration comes in. For some time now, because of residents’ concerns, I’ve been talking to the Licensing Authority and police about granting a prohibition order against drinking alcohol in public in specific parts of the Fazeley and Mile Oak area.

However, I’ve been told consistently by both agencies that it can’t be done because there have been so few complaints about alcohol related issues. Furthermore the police have been assuring me for months that the number of general complaints about anti-social behaviour have gone down significantly. That’s puzzled me because local councillors and local people are telling me that anti-social behaviour, drug issues and general problems concerning alcohol have got worse not better.

The reason for that has now become apparent. Today I made a point of talking to people close to where the mindless vandalism in the picture occurred and I learned that far from things getting better, it really is getting worse. I learned that residents no longer bother reporting incidents to the police; firstly because they believe nothing will be done and, worse still, because some are fearful of reprisals if they do complain!

Now that’s not on. I’m actually very shocked. Fazeley and Mile Oak aren’t perfect but, that said, there are many much worse places in Staffordshire. Government guidelines, however, won’t allow Licensing Authorities to ban public drinking unless there are significant complaints from the public. What the guidelines don’t allow for are the circumstances described above. So I say ignore the guidelines, accept the reality of the situation and do something about it.

Next week I’m due to have lunch with a couple of senior police officers from Trent Valley Division to catch up on something completely different. I think the course of our conversations will have changed as of today. Action does need to be taken to protect law abiding local people, be it by alcohol prohibition orders, police enforcement or both. Something is going to be done!

I’ll write again on this after my meeting with them.

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About six years ago, when I was a parish councillor in Shenstone, I had an almighty row with Lichfield District Council (years before I was elected to the District or County) about some money which I felt should be spent in the parish.

Flying in the face of public opinion, and against the wishes of the district council and parish council, a government planning inspector decided in the late 90s to grant planning permission for additional office development by Wall island where Esporta is now.

On the plus side he also decided that any development should attract something called a Section 106 developer contribution. In simple terms it’s a payment which goes to the Planning Authority (Lichfield District Council) to mitigate effects of building development. The money can be spent on community projects.

And that’s where the row started. I had a real problem that the money was going to be spent across the district area rather than any of it in Shenstone. Why? As far as I could see, Shenstone was taking the planning ‘hit’ therefore Shenstone should get the money….. simple! Well, simple to me.

At the time the District Council didn’t want to know; I was new to the parish council and the District didn’t know me from ‘Adam’.

Well, the long and short of it is that I ended up in a pretty serious battle with LDC. To be fair, although rather nervous about going to war (and it was almost war) with the district council, my parish colleagues backed my stance with funding for some legal advice. After several months of very heated negotiations, where I found myself and the parish council embroiled in legal arguments, the District Council finally gave in to pressure and agreed that a significant part of the funding would go to Shenstone Parish.

And that’s where we are now. The building work at Wall island, which I’m not keen on, has started and the 106 money has been paid over to the District Council. So now it’s down to the parish council to start consulting on what local project it should be spent on. A rather nice windfall of £30,000. Jean Coton, the parish council chairman, is pictured with me; she is determined to make sure local people get a real input on how to spend the money.

If you live in the Shenstone area keep an eye out on the parish council website for ways of expressing your views on what the money should be spent on.

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We’ve had so much tidying to do in the garden over the last couple of months that it has been way beyond the capacity of our brown recycling bins and home composting. So just before Christmas we put a dozen or so black bags full of cut branches, bits of bushes and general garden stuff in the garage.

I thought it was my imagination but each time I’ve been in there recently I couldn’t help thinking that bits had moved with leaves all over the floor. I put it down to the gale force winds blowing under the garage doors.

That was until the other evening when I was sitting in my office, which has a door leading into the garage, and heard an amazingly noisy scratching at the bottom of the door. On opening the door I was surprised to see the garden bags all over the place, literally, but nothing else.

Can’t be mice for that much mess? Could be a rat!! Wouldn’t be a cat. Just as I was turning the light off, all became clear as I saw the little prickly chap you can see me holding in the picture. He’d obviously got in there when one of the doors had been left open before or after putting a car away.

Anyway, we have a bit of an expert near by when it comes to hedgehogs and I’d got no idea whether to just put him outside or if this was their time for hibernation. Enter Mary Jones who lives in Shenstone and runs an incredible hedgehog rescue centre, supposedly in her spare time. That said, the number she is looking after, either injured or just cold, hungry and in difficulty is amazing and looks more like a full time job at this time of year.

She’s doing great work for the little creatures who have just been voted England and Wales’ most iconic reminder of our environment. Millbrook, as we’ve named him, was very very hungry but apart from that seemed quite well. Mary has taken him home to the rescue centre and he’ll be bottle fed until he gains enough weight before settling down until the spring in his hedgehog hotel room.

It’s a wonderful thing that’s being done and costs a surprising amount of money, particularly as the numbers of spiky residents are growing in number as people learn about what Mary does in Shenstone.

If you find a hedgehog that needs help and can get him or her to Shenstone then contact here and we’ll put you in touch with Mary. By the way, it really is a great cause which is becoming very expensive to maintain…..if you wanted to donate a few pounds to help Mary with her growing number of winter residents let me know.

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It is called Job Evaluation and it has caused massive unrest within the workforce of Staffordshire County Council. In 1997 Tony Blair’s government agreed with unions to implement equality of pay for similar jobs within public sector organisations.

Now, on the face of it that seems ok, and fair. In reality it has been difficult for most Authorities that have done it so far. In Staffordshire County Council, of course, it’s been even worse than that, a real nightmare. It’s true that re-assessing the jobs of the tens of thousands of employees at SCC is not easy but for a myriad of reasons it’s been badly handled by the Labour Party at the County. The extremes have been astonishing. Some people seeing salaries reduced by as much as £17k and many thousands more seeing big salary increases. The really really expensive bit for the tax payer would have been six years back pay for those whose salaries would go up and three years salary protection for those whose would go down. All in all, a mess.

So, for the time being, it’s been scrapped and everyone starts the process again. I understand (I’m trying to confirm but facts are not easy to come by on JE) the cost to the tax payer to date in trying to do this has been well over £3million. But even though that’s a disgrace, that’s not the worst of it.

To fund the pay deal that has just been scrapped was going to cost us all in Staffordshire a staggering £33million. I hope we are wrong but rumour has it that the next go at this by the Labour administration at the County could cost a whopping £60million. I’ve no idea where that amount would come from.

I say again, job evaluation has been difficult across the public sector but Labour in Staffordshire have really made a shambles of it big time. I’m sure I’ll be writing about their next go at it in due course!

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Attended an interesting meeting with the police last night.

I can honestly see why Staffordshire Police are so highly regarded nowadays. That said I still can’t agree with senior officers’ disappointment about their merger with the West Midlands Police being scrapped.

They seem absolutely certain that everything is in place to work in cross boundary partnerships which will tackle what they call public protection and category one, ie terrorism and organised crime. If this has been achieved to the extent they say, why was huge amounts of public money wasted on the mergers.

Figures for Trent Valley Policing Division, which basically covers Lichfield, Tamworth and Burton, show that overall crime figures are down but, worryingly, Common Assaults are up by 11%, Domestic Burglary is up by 23% although there’s an improvement in crime detection to 32.37%.

I’m bemused how overall crime can be down with such big increases in assaults and house break ins. I’ll try to find out when I meet with officers from the police command team in a couple of weeks. Several other things also worry me……

Central government are forcing more and more of Staffordshire Police resources to go into anti-terrorism activities meaning less for local policing in rural villages around Lichfield, Tamworth and Burton. Of course I agree anti-terrorism work is vital but, as our County is probably less of a target than most major cities, surely central government and not Staffordshire tax payers should bare the brunt. Linked to that it seems that funding for 31 Police Community Support Officers has now been withdrawn by the Home Office. What is not noticed by most people is the way the government will fund initiatives, such as more police or more PCSOs, for a couple of years and then expect council tax payers to pick up the ongoing costs.

It’s difficult. Staffordshire Police are hardly likely to turn down a couple of years of funding for more officers. The problem is at the end of Home Office funding all the extra officers have to be lost or alternatively the tax payer has to pick up the ongoing cost of them locally. It’s clever of the Government because they can initially claim all these extra police on the streets and a couple of years later transfer all the cost to local people!

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