Calm down Eric. It's only a bin

Is Eric Pickles scared of bins?

I only ask because his latest rant - about the terror of waste receptacles - seems even more bizarre than usual.

He goes so far as to describe having to exist within sight of a bin as making 'lives hell'. Come off it Eric. To be forced to live in an abusive relationship with no hope of escape might be described as a living hell. To be suffering with a painful medical condition with no hope of cure might be described as a living hell. To occasionally catch sight of your neighbours bins is most definitely not.

Mr Pickles wants councils to ensure that every home has somewhere to hide rubbish bins and bags. Most properties do, of course, but that isn't good enough for the local government minister. He wants councils to rip up their existing planning policies and insist that developers take his new phobia into account. I don't know about the cost of the changes to buildings, but the cost of changing a council's planning guidelines runs into many tens of thousands.

Here in Cornwall, we rely on the good sense of our residents over how to store their rubbish. Apart from some residents of the old Penwith, we don't use wheelie bins and are happy to allow people to buy bins, use seagull-proof sacks or just use black bags. We do ask that they don't put their rubbish out until the morning of collection to avoid problems with animals ripping sacks apart. Generally, this system seems to works pretty well without government interference.

Perhaps Mr Pickles should take a holiday instead of seeking to meddle yet again in the lives of hard pressed residents and impose even more burdens on local councils. If he does want a break he would be welcome to bring Mrs Pickles down to Cornwall to see that we don't need telling how to get the basics right.

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Eric Pickles wants to allow parking on double yellow lines

The latest cunning wheeze from Local Government minister Eric Pickles is that drivers should be allowed to park for up to 15 minutes on double yellow lines. He thinks that this is the answer to helping high street retailers out of the current economic woes.

It is important to encourage visitors into town centres, but yellow lines are in place for a reason.  Allowing motorists a ‘grace period’ to park for a short period of time would cause danger and inconvenience to pedestrians and other road users, making it harder for people to cross the road and increasing congestion as motorists look for places to park.

 

The Council is continuously reviewing all parking restrictions and, if we feel that yellow lines can safely be removed, we will do so. We shouldn't have more regulation in place than is necessary.

There are many reasons why trade has fallen in many high streets over recent years, but we believe one of the ways to improve the vitality of town centres is to encourage people to stay for longer. In a number of towns, the Council, in conjunction with local Members, has introduced a lower two-hour parking charge to encourage longer stays. Most towns have free, on street limited waiting for those shorter stays – however road layouts make this impractical in certain towns.

 

The introduction of a grace period would be impractical to enforce as we would need to employ many more civil enforcement officers to ensure drivers did not treat any changes to restrictions as a licence to park all day.

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Eric Pickles valiant fight (to give the Chancellor exactly what he wanted all along)

Local Government Minister Eric Pickles has been explaining how he fought long and hard to restrict cuts to local government grants to 10%. Which is, of course, the number that the Chancellor had in mind all along. I'm guess that when Mr Pickles bought his house he probably came back really proud that he paid exactly the amount it was advertised for.

A 10% cut in government grant for the year 2015/16 was what Cornwall Council had been expecting and planning for. That's not to say it is anything other than bad news. We wish Mr Pickles had fought harder to limit the cuts to local services. The 10% cut means about £20 million more in savings. And that is in addition to the £19 million or so that we had already planned for based on the last round of cuts he handed down.

Cornwall Council's budget is made up of a number of elements. Chief among these are the government grant, council tax, fees and charges, business rates and the New Homes Bonus (linked to the number of new houses built the previous year.) So if the level of grant falls then we have to balance cuts to overall spending with increases in council tax and higher fees and charges.

Wherever possible, we will continue to try to make savings in back office functions - ie not the frontline services that people rely on most. But, to be honest, while there are still some savings that could be made, these are pretty small beer compared with those that have been made over the last 4 years. The whole unitary process - the joining up of seven councils into one - saved more than £160 million and we cannot rely on administrative savings to cope with the newest demands.

Local councils have to produce a balanced budget each year. And we have to plan for the medium and long term, rather than just the coming year. So using up all our reserves hoping that 'something comes along' is just not possible or wise.

So there will need to be cuts to services. But we are determined that we should protect the services for the most vulnerable and those that people most rely on.

How we do this needs to be a conversation with the public of Cornwall and all 123 Cornwall Councillors. The new cabinet are going to be producing a first draft, but this will then be open for suggestions to come from all quarters. I have asked officers to arrange a series of public meetings across Cornwall to discuss the proposals and listen to ideas. I have also arranged for meetings with all the political groups on the council. I don't want any idea to go unheard.

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Pickles the hypocrite?

Eric Pickles has published his own list of 50 ways he believes that councils can save money.

Number 20 is:

Cancel away days in posh hotels and glitzy award ceremonies

But what's this? A tweet lands in my inbox making a curious announcement:

C'llr Awards @CllrAwards

Confirmed: Rt Hon Secretary of State Eric Pickles keynote speaker @LGiU Cllr Awards Ceremony in Feb 2013!

And Mr Pickles also made an appearance at the (very posh and swanky) Hilton St George's Park for the recent County Councils Network conference.

Surely there can't be two Eric Pickles? Or is he being a tad hypocritical?

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Pickles brands Cornwall Tory policy 'obscene'

Eric Pickles, the Conservative Secretary of State for Local Government, has branded the Cornwall Tory policy on council tax benefit 'disgusting' and 'obscene' and he said that the councillors promoting it are 'unambitious'.

I don't always agree with Mr Pickles, but in this case he is right.

According to today's Western Morning News, Mr Pickles was asked about plans by some councils to end the granting of full council tax relief to some of the poorest families. He said:

"That struck me as being obscene,"

"I thought it was a singularly unambitious scheme, just taxing people who are in receipt of council tax benefit rather than helping them get into work, dealing with mistakes and fraud."

He added: "Their job is not to tax the poor. It's to help the poor. That's why I'm so angry with these plutocratic leaders who are not prepared to get alongside the poor. Who are happy for people to stay on benefit."

This isn't just a case of bashing Conservatives. Both South Hams and West Devon councils are Conservative controlled, but neither is planning on cutting the rate of council tax benefit next year.

Correction: The original version of this post referred to the council policy rather than the Conservative policy. Although agreed by the Tory-led cabinet, in this case the final decision rests with the full council.

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Wanted: People with tape measures and notebooks. Apply to Eric Pickles

It seems that Eric Pickles wants to recruit an army of snoopers armed with tape measures and notepads in his latest central initiative to make local government more open and accountable.

According to Conservative Home:

Councils will have to publish soon as it is produced the number of off-street parking places and the revenue raised from them; the number of on-street parking places and the revenue they raise; as well as the revenue from parking fines and the number of free parking spaces available in line with the Portas Review of the High Street recommendations.

The trouble is that in rural areas (and probably in urban too), there is no simple database of all parking spaces in or around our town centres. Most councils will have the data on the capacity of their car parks (but some are very informal and not marked), but what about on-street parking spaces?

In Cornwall, our streets aren't divided into bays - merely a hatched line to indicate the area that people may park. Does Mr Pickles want councils to recruit busybodies to go around measuring and counting the potential car parking spaces? I can certainly think of better ways to spend local taxpayers' money.

Mr Pickles is right in so far as councils should be open and transparent about the money they raise from parking. Here in Cornwall the council makes the second highest profit in the country outside London (and the seventh if you include the capital). The amount raised - more than £8m - would have been even more if it weren't for the multiple failures to hit their budget by the parking department (clue: don't treat car parks as a cash cow. Motorists can only afford so much).

But whilst openness and transparency is to be applauded, I'm not sure that yet another central diktat like this is going to make anyone much the wiser and it's going to be pretty burdensome to produce.

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Pickles gives approval to stadium plans - and so he should

The news that Secretary of State Eric Pickles has given his approval to the outline planning permission for the stadium is to be welcomed - even by those of us very unsure about the project as a whole.

Whatever the merits or problems of the stadium as a concept or on the basis of its location, it is right that this should be a decision taken in Cornwall and, so long as the decision is taken in a legally sound manner, it shouldn't be for the man in Whitehall to interfere.

Early in the New Year we are expecting the publication of the long-awaited and much delayed consultants' report on the business case for the stadium a well as moves towards a detaild planning application.

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