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John and Scooter

Councillor on Medway Council: Some of the Issues

Apart from routine Council and Committee work and personal cases, there are (unsurprisingly!) a number of issues that face us, both local to Horsted and Medway-wide. It can be very difficult to deal with these satisfactorily as we can be (and often are) outvoted by the combined votes of the other political groups on Medway Council.

Although no-one can satisfy the wishes of all of the people all of the time (that well-worn cliché!), in Medway the Conservatives are by far the closest to the wishes of most of the people living in, working in, and visiting our towns. This is why I stand with them: I would never have done so otherwise, as anyone who knows me well will already have realised.

These are just some of the local issues we are handling:

• Rochester Airport
• Horsted Farm
• Street Cleansing
• Road Repairs
• Linked Service Centres (Care Homes)
• Choice in Education
• Parking, and Dumped Vehicles
• Travellers
• The Environment: Pollution
• The Environment: Recycling
• Electronic Government
• Political Changes

The threatened closure and full development of this greenfield site was where I came in... Here is some more detail on the story of this important local issue, including the latest news and some background such as the survey originally conducted on the Davis Estate, asking residents if they wanted the Airport closed or left open. The various interested organisations formed the Rochester Airport Group Executive ( R A G  E ) of which I was at that time the Secretary.
The latest news is that the Planning Inspector's Report has now arrived—two months before the target completion date. The outome is that the Inspector has recommended a compromise solution that would retain the flying, reduce the scale of industrial development, and no housing at all. Do have a look at this page to read the Inspector's summarised proposals.
Also feel free to visit Rochester Airport PLC's Website to discover what is going on at the Airport these days: you might well be surprised at the level of activity nowadays.

A similar problem to the Rochester Airport in some ways, in that it was apparently being (very quietly) prepared for housing development. The situation here is complicated by there being several parts to the farm land, originally with different landowners, and the protection from development on one part having been removed by the Labour and Liberal Democrat members of Medway Council back in 1999. Now, the whole site is being managed by Medway Council's countryside team, so perhaps the housing threat can be averted: we certainly intend to make sure this is so if at all possible, and are confident that we can.
It is clear that the site is not well suited to development, and we shall do whatever is necessary to ensure that it remains a green space, hopefully in its entirety. The latest news is that some fields are to be let for grazing purposes, and a grazing licence should be finalised shortly.
The Liberal Democrat group's attempt to gain some political capital from their petition to make the farm a country park didn't really achieve as much as they might like to think:

• The site was already designated as a country park in the emerging Medway Local Plan
• They got just 60 signatures and claim to be (and I quote from their latest FOCUS) "completely overwhelmed" by this. Compare this against the 441 that I and my colleagues in DERAC got within a week or so for the start of the Rochester Airport campaign. This later became well over 1,000 objections to the proposed development of the airport that we were able to lodge by the (again tight) deadline for the Local Plan.
• The country park issue will not be pursued (at least at this stage) as it would preclude access to funding under the local nature reserve scheme (called Wildspace) which is funded by Lottery money and administered by English Nature—something we are actively pursuing.

Both the general standard of cleanliness and such issues as car dumping and fly-tipping. The separate street cleaning contracts for the Rochester and Gillingham areas will run out in 2002 and will be replaced by a borough-wide contract that will be much tighter, all but eliminating the scope for performing poorly. Our pilot Projects Cubitt and Minnesota have seen the removal of hundreds of dumped and/or untaxed vehicles from all over the Medway Towns, and this kind of operation is set to become a regular occurrence. Similarly our Banish Rubbish initiative seeks to "name and shame" and even prosecute litter-droppers and suchlike—a difficult task to achieve, but it will one day produce real dividends.

The run-down of Medway's roads and footpaths in recent years, resulting in hundreds of potholes and even worse problems in places. This has already been addressed by a long-term programme of proper road repairs and resurfacing, which began just a few weeks after our first budget was announced and agreed in Council. Many roads and footpaths in Horsted have already been dealt with, and there will be more. I have created a regularly-updated record of this work, and this also includes non-Council works.
This programme of repairs has been pursued in order of need, mainly for technical reasons such as the locations where there are likely to be really serious problems if the work is not done. The new surfaces are very high quality, long lasting and quiet to drive on; and the surface type is chosen to match the exact need in each case.

Dealing with the vagaries of the Labour Government's Best Value scheme, stipulations the Government was intending to impose on us—which would have made the present Centres unviable—and a lot of misleading media coverage which has been promulgated by the Labour Group on Medway Council, has been the worst aspect of this whole sorry saga.

As it happens, there was so much opposition to the Government's proposed changes, not only here in Medway but throughout the country, that several of the stipulations were either watered-down or taken out of the final version of the legislation. After that we were able to go against the Best Value Review's recommendation, especially as we had already provide the funding to offset the savings that the Review had anticipated.

This letter I wrote to Medway News clarifies the situation. Indeed, the Labour group's lies suddenly ceased once that letter was published: they simply couldn't oppose the truth when it could so easily be backed up.

Ensuring enough Grammar School places are available for those who qualify and choose to go this way, and supporting schools of excellence such as the Kent Music School, despite concerted opposition from other political groups on Medway Council.

There has also been opposition from the other political groups to continue funding for the Kent Music School. This is really daft! The comparatively small amount of money that went to Kent Music School has been voted to be dispersed (very thinly!) between the schools in the area. Each of those schools would therefore receive a couple of hundred pounds per year. How are they expected to provide a useful music education from that? Besides anything else, how can music students come together to rehearse and perform in an orchestra?

It is all so silly and negative; and in practice the thinly-dispersed money can hardly be much use, and will undoubtedly vanish into each school's general "pot" rather than going on music education.

This outcome appears to be one of several examples of what has been called "the politics of envy"—somewhat surprising as more than one of those voting against Medway Council's continued support of the Kent Music School have children who have benefited from that very school...

In the whole area of education, Ron is leading our group's work on the Youth and Education Overview and Scrutiny Committee as the Conservative spokesman as well as a lot of other work such as governorship of three schools, helping with numerous school placement appeals, and his own full-time employment as a specialist teacher for hearing-impaired children.

Since the de-criminalisation of formerly-illegal parking, it has been the Council's responsibility to deal with this big issue; and a ward-by-ward parking review programme was begun. Horsted is a low-priority ward (29^th in the list) so this shouldn't impact us directly for some time. Indeed, it is almost certain that the new ward boundaries will be established before then, though I suspect that as the reviews to date have been done within present boundaries the rest will have to be done the same way to avoid overlaps or omissions.
It is unfortunate that the other political groups have to date seen fit to opt for hugely-unpopular Pay and Display schemes, and by voting together have imposed these in the wards so far fully reviewed. This method is just a kind of tax by the back door, and will result in tradesmen and visitors having to pay for a permit. It might thus become difficult for Medway residents to have any work donw at home, as trades people will not wish to serve Medway homes. This is what has happened elsewhere when such schemes have been introduced.
Additionally, experience elsewhere and common sense both show that completed reviews in neighbouring wards can have a noticeable effect, as the various Pay and Display schemes appear and encourage motorists to park just outside those areas.
Because of all this, Medway Action on Parking was set up.

Apart from legitimate parking, there is the ongoing problem of dumped vehicles, often without tax. Last year's Operation Cubit and Operation Minnesota showed just what can be done when all the involved agencies work together to tackle this issue. These groundbreaking (and ground-freeing!) exercises achieved very good results.
The more recent Minnesota secured the removal of 148 vehicles of which many turned out to have been involved in criminal activities, and our operation caused severe disruption to those activities. Additionally 101 vehicles were reported to have no tax and DVLA action is being taken against their owners.
This operation is continuing in 2002, and the teams will strike without warning. At all times your ward Councillors are keeping their eyes peeled for abandoned vehicles, and have reported a number of them that we have spotted, as well as those advised to us (on which we check personally and gather any necessary extra details before reporting them).

The vexed question of illegal encampments of travellers continues to be a tricky one to solve. Now, there are undoubtedly some groups of travellers who are no trouble to anyone; however the ones we tend to get in Medway—and definitely those who turn up at Horsted Farm—do not fall into that category. We have received nothing but horror stories from our residents, some of which are really nasty. There are two reasons why we get so much of this here:

1. There are a few groups of travellers who work the Medway Towns. They have a kind of circuit within this area: as soon as they are moved on from location A they go on to location B, then next time they move to C and so on, all the way round their usual sites until they end up back at point A. It takes a certain amount of time to get them moved, and the prohibition for each site lasts only three months, so they can easily play this game indefinitely, going round the same circuit of sites within our Towns.
2. They remain here because they get so much work (and that means money) from our residents, for all kinds of ostensibly cheap jobs such as driveways. Their vans are signwritten nowadays, and look "legit", so it is very easy to be fooled into thinking these are proper local traders.
   Don't fall for this ploy!

The second matter is entirely in the hands of you, the residents: if people here didn't give the travellers any business, they wouldn't come to this area any more and would be compelled to go elsewhere. Perhaps this looks like dumping our problem on someone else; but the whole point of it is that people encourage the travellers when they pay them, and that is what needs to be tackled, along with the measures mentioned above. Neither will work very well without the other.

The local environment is under ever-increasing threat from pollution. Not only is the number of road vehicles increasing generally, the M2 widening and the "gateway" at Blue Bell Hill will inevitably worsen this situation.

This looks like a never-ending problem that will in time become so bad that it will be like Los Angeles in many parts of the country. Medway might not be one of the very worst places in this respect, but it certainly won't be any fun living around here in years to come.

The threat of a cement works appearing right on Medway's doorstep, as has been reported in the local media, will only make matters significantly worse, at least in part of the Medway area. Although the full Council majority vote went against the proposal to continue to fight the cement works, John was one of those who voted to continue the fight. The major problem with this is the anticipated cost of fighting on; but if the previous (Labour) administrations hadn't frittered away most of the Council's substantial reserves on just about nothing this would not have been an issue.

John has for decades been a strong environmentalist and has been urging all and sundry to push for non-polluting road vehicles. The only way to combat the largest source of air-borne pollution—fossil-fuelled road vehicles—is to force the manufacturers to switch to something more modern than the nineteenth-century technology they are foisting onto a far-too receptive market. It would need millions of drivers to refuse to update their vehicles except for non-polluting models to force the vehicle makers to realise that the only way they can survive is to move forward instead of the technological stagnation we see in that industry.

For the record, John has never had—and never will have—any polluting vehicle on principle, and usually walks instead, even though this means more than an hour's trek to either of the main Council venues for meetings, and the same for the homeward journey.

Both Ron and John have been keen recyclers for a long time, and John operates a genuine "paperless office" at home. The only printed output from John is for those who do not have an electronic form of written communication (such as electronic mail) and the only incoming paper is that which cannot be stopped, often despite efforts to eliminate it: for example, one of the two local "freebie" newspapers has stopped being delivered, but the other continues to be what John calls "a waste of forestry".

In an attempt to bring more of our residents back on board with recycling, we are trying hard to come up with a re-launched recycling strategy that will not only be considerably better than what we have now, but also one that people will find easy to understand and handle and will not be changed for many years.

Withn the Council arena, John has been spearheading the campaign to eliminate the vast quantities of paper sent out to Councillors for those who choose to have this material in electronic form only. Although there have been encouraging noises, it is proving very difficult to have this (optional) change implemented. In the meantime, John has already been the first Medway Councillor to have the ward Electoral Register in electronic form (after pushing for this to be made possible), and will almost certainly be the first to take a portable computer into Council meetings instead of paper: the (brand new) computer has already been ordered—reserving one of the first to be produced—and should appear some time in the next month or two.

The ability to conduct business with the Council by purely electronic means is something that is coming in a big way. It is not intended to do away with personal contact or other methods, but rather to add extra choices. This is to be welcomed and—once we are further down the road—nearly everyone will be able to see the benefits, even if they are techno=phobes or committed Luddites!

Quite apart from the direct benefits to us users of Council services, there are also substantial monetary savings to be made, thus releasing more money for running actual services rather than being lost in the bureaucracy.

Both Ron and John are long-term users of electronic communications media, and John has been spearheading the drive to provide documentation electronically to those who prefer it, using Council/Committee paperwork as a way to lead by example in this area. John has notched up a number of achievements in this respect, and has now been proposed as the Conservative Group's IT Champion.

We have also experienced significant changes in how things will be run:

• Reform of Political Management : the enforced change to a "Cabinet-style" new form of local government, which launched on 1^st October 2001.
• Boundary Review : the periodic review of ward boundaries; and the expected large reduction in the number of Councillors after the local elections in 2003, down from 80 to (almost certainly) 55. The proposed new ward to supersede Horsted ward has provisionally been named Rochester South and Horsted.
• Planning Green Paper : the whole planning system is being overhauled and drastic changes are on the way. Some will be good, some will be not so good, and others have not been made clear enough for us to know if they will be of any benefit.

There has been such a long period of neglect and decay that it will not be an overnight transformation, but over time we should see real recovery, as has already begun on a number of fronts. Later this year we should all see a number of further improvements where contracts come up for renewal, and we can ensure that much tighter standards are built into future contracts.

Despite a disappointing result in the year 2001 General Election (I'd have preferred to have at least one of our three Conservative candidates in Parliament to represent the real views of our residents on the issues that are being either neglected or handled badly by central government) we still plan to achieve great things, as long as the opposition groups don't keep ganging up to defeat them by outvoting us.

One thing is absolutely certain: we really must have an overall majority in Medway Council after the next local elections here in 2003. It is the only way to be sure we can achieve full recovery and all those other worthwhile goals we have been striving to achieve.

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