The Ice Bucket Challenge (BH weekend, part 2)

With two days of decent weather, Monday was going to be the quietest of the three day weekend, as the rain had to come at some point. I’m not sure the rain was supposed to arrive quite like this:

My old school friend Matt nominated me for the Ice Bucket Challenge, so I couldn’t refuse. There having been recent internal discussions, edicts issued and general disquiet about councillors’ dress code (I’m not quite sure why!), I decided to present myself as I would do to meet any resident of Blenheim Park…

One of the advantages of doing the challenge is having the ability to nominate three others. Having known Cllr Ian Gilbert (Lab, Victoria) for many years and his love of a challenge I thought it would be cruel to not allow him the same experience!

It’s all for a good cause, it appears to have started in the USA with ALS (although the Motor Neurone Disease Association is probably best in the UK), MacMillan seem to have adopted it in the UK. Both great causes, so to stop any disputes, I’ve made a small donation to both charities.

Bank Holiday weekend part 1

Good opportunity to do some things around Southend this weekend – and put off writing my next newsletter – so on Saturday morning (rather too early for my liking) I joined the Prittle Brook litter pickers for a couple of hours of a clean up along the brook. They meet twice a month – Saturday and Wednesday – to do the length of the brook from Elmsleigh Drive all the way to Prittlewell Chase. We collected quite a lot of rubbish (as usual!)

Saturday afternoon was the time to wish I had listened that little bit harder in my geography lessons or at least taken an OS map with me, as we walked from my house (Southchurch) into Barling/Little Wakering and then decided that it was a good idea to follow the Google Maps footpath. Well I would like to apologise to the farmer for traipsing across his field when the footpath ran out, wipe the sweat from my brow that the golf ball that came flying past my head didn’t connect and thank the two gentleman who were about to tee-off for directing me on a safe path to get back to Southend across the golf course.

Then yesterday it was time to go down to the pier and have a cup of tea and cake at the cafe in the Royal Pavilion – a wonderful building at the end of the pier, hosting all kinds of functions – there was a private table set up for yesterday evening where I can only assume, by the look of the happy couple that had just stepped off the train, a proposal was about to take place. I do hope she said yes!

At the very end of the pier there were the officials for a barge race, so a nice view of some boats too:

The real BoJo Bike experience – rain

I’m currently sitting on a C2C train, after a cycle ride in the rain.

I’ve definitely decided that I’m going to be a ‘fair weather rider’, given that at present I’m wringing my shirt out and being looked at rather strangely.

Towel anyone?

‘Kidnap fear as girl flees from man’ (Echo, P1 today). Call for calm and action

I can understand – and sympathise – with residents of Blenheim Park today who will be shocked, angry, but mainly worried and scared by the headlines in today’s Southend Echo.

It appears that on Friday morning that a man might have been attempting to abduct an 11 year old girl on Bridgewater Drive. Police made house-to-house enquiries which whilst I am sure (in fact I know, being a former Policeman myself) is a necessary part of the investigation, does understandably cause concerns for residents of the area.

Residents can be reassured that I am on the case – this morning I have already contacted the senior Police Officer responsible for Southend, as well as the Corporate Director and Head of Children’s Services as the Council to ensure that there is a co-ordinated response between them, and asking that whatever resources are available can be put to good use to reassure residents in this area – as well as finding the man ASAP so he can assist police with their investigation.

Having been responsible for children’s welfare, and sat on the Local Safeguarding Children’s Board (the multi-agency group that meets to ensure there are joined up efforts and operations between all the different agencies in Southend), for over two years when I was the Cabinet Member for Children & Learning, I ask for residents to put this into perspective. This is VERY RARE and in my tenure I never heard of a case like this in Southend. So whilst parents should be careful and help protect their children, I would be saddened to see an overreaction – it is nice and hot and children need to be allowed out to play!

Residents with any concerns should contact me at cllrcourtenay@southend.gov.uk. Any information that may assist the police should be reported to them on 101. Of course, any new incident or where parents/carers are worried that anyone is acting suspiciously should be reported to the police on the emergency number 999.

Old Volvo garage development, London Road – 13/01137/OUTM

I’ve been on record about this planning application before (13/01137/OUTM) stating that I don’t want to stifle development, but that I am disappointed, how large a development and not in keeping with the local area, the plans are for this site (939 – 953 London Road).

Hence I am delighted that the developers have listened and decided to withdraw their planning application today.

I do hope the applicants will take time to sit down with council officers to work out a way forward as the site is in well in need of redevelopment, just not overdevelopment!

My phone or email is always there for developers who want to chat as well as residents who have concerns about development applications!

Free rounders in Blenheim Park!

 

 

The BoJo Bike experience

Today I decided I needed a new experience,  so having worked in London for two and a half years (and having got the Central Line for the last four months of that) I decided to take my life into my hands (if some of the stories you read are to be believed) and hire a Boris Bike (sorry Ken & Barclays’ Shareholders!).

I got off the train and raced down the exit,  as excited as a schoolboy with a new toy (or to make myself not decide the Central Line was the better option – I’ll let you decide). After reading through the two pages of instructions and 37, I kid you not(!), pages of terms and conditions, on the touch screen display,  I gave up and clicked okay,  shoved my credit card in and pressed Yes.

My ticket was duly printed and I got on a bike of my choice. Lovely granny basket on the front (which I made full use of, for my packed lunch). And off I pedalled.

The bike was the easiest thing in the world to ride – only three gears and even a little bell to ding at random times to keep yourself amused (as a regular London pedestrian I know they aren’t for reacting to).

After a minor detour I got to work, a little warm but rather smug with myself for having completed my main objective of the day, before 9am, of still being alive.

After a hard day’s work I found a different docking station much close to my work on the map. My two colleagues bid me a fond farewell, telling me it had been a short and sweet 4 months and that it was nice having known me.

My lack of knowledge of London really came to the fore as, after pedalling for a good mile and a bit, I though ‘Erm, where am I? I needed to head South somewhere!’. Sadly having only walked/tubed/occasionally driven I knew the one way streets, but not as a cyclist, so I had struggled to work out in my head where to go.

Anyway, after a sign instructing me to ‘switch my headlights in the tunnel’ (erm didn’t know there were any tunnels between work and Fenchurch Street), having to cross a pedestrian only bit (dismounting,  of course), roadworks and NO blasting of horns at me I found my way back to Fenchurch Street, just in time to miss the fast train home (some things never change!).

Overall a great experience,  healthy and pretty safe – all motorists bar one were very considerate. Mainly other bike users and pedestrians to watch out for.

Will do it again tomorrow? Yes,  as long as it isn’t raining.

Definitely will get a helmet if I do long term riding though.

It is a shame that Southend is not big enough to have its own (Woodley’s Wheels?) scheme that would be viable, although it hick there is a small scheme at Southend Victoria.

And, the question everyone will ask? Did I ride through any red lights? Well, as my mum reads this blog (and wasn’t told about this death defying bike experience until it was over!), I think I’ll finish there…

James on his Boris Bike

Proposed Post Office changes (Eastwood Boulevard). Let me know your thoughts…

I have today been sent the following: Post Office consultation.

A summary of the proposal is that it is to redesign the Post Office on Eastwood Boulevard into a ‘Local Post Office’ rather than a ‘Main Post Office’ branch.

This means that some, but to be fair very few, services would not be available there any longer (such as buying travel insurance or premium bonds), but opening times would be extended by an hour and half each week day and Saturday (8-6 and 8-1).

The branch would probably be closed for three days in August/September to allow for the refurbishment to take place.

Overall I think the proposals will be good for Blenheim’s residents, but do you have concerns? Do you want me to raise them on your behalf?

Let me know your views, by email: Cllrcourtenay@Southend.gov.uk or why not come to my surgery on 5th July at the West Area Housing Office on Mendip Road between 10:30 and 12noon, my 38th consecutive monthly surgery!

A week is a long time in politics! The new ‘Listening Administration’ is in office (!)

I won’t attempt to write as eloquently as my former colleague and Leader of the Council Nigel Holdcroft does in his blog about some of the strange goings in the last seven days (and before, given the proclamation given by the leaders of the Independent, Labour and Liberal Democrat Groups that they were forming the new Administration in a press conference two days before there was a vote to decide who the new Leader of the Council was).

I sincerely hope, for the good of Southend, that Ron Woodley is half as good as he has declared himself to be, although I do suspect he will score roughly the same in that regard as he did attempting to be a worthy adversary to the best Leader of the Council I have experienced in my 31 years in Southend, although I must admit to those of the 1980s and early 1990s I was somewhat less involved/interested than I am now! Still, I am never too proud to be proved wrong… and I was one of the first to shake his hand and wish him the best on Thursday 5th June when he became Leader.

A couple of thoughts come to mind:

“The Conservatives never listened/We will form a listening Administration “and “The Conservatives made all of the decisions” etc.

Well, taking these in reverse order:

For the past 14 years the Conservative Administration did make most of the final decisions. There is one simple reason for this and that is because we had more seats than ALL of the other Groups put together in the Council Chamber. Southend Conservatives have, on occasion, had a tendency to be slightly embarrassed for running the Council. I never have been, for the only reason we were was because that is what the people of Southend voted for. The Conservative Administration did make tough decisions, in difficult times.

Led by Nigel we made savings of £68m on an on-going annual basis, this is (helpfully, as I don’t think many of us can comprehend such a large number – even most Euromillions winners don’t get THAT much!) put into context as the equivalent of over doubling Council Tax overnight, or somewhere between £1,000 and £3,000 a year per household (depending on what Council Tax band you are in). That is a lot of money in anyone’s books!

Why did we, the Conservatives, have to make such decisions on our own? Well one of the main reasons was the opposition didn’t suggest anything else for starters! I only recall one time in recent history ANY alternatives were put forward for ANY part of the budget. This was in 2012, when they (Independents, Labour & Lib Dems) wanted to increase Council Tax further, to increase spending to provide about one roll of black sacks per household PER YEAR (that you’d have to collect) and spending the average annual wage to keep the pier walkway (no trains mind you) open on a cold Tuesday afternoon in February. Not exactly offering a robust alternative budget for an organisation that spends getting on for half a billion pounds a year…

 

“The Conservatives never listened/We will form a listening Administration”. This does seem to be a bit rich when there hasn’t been a Cabinet meeting yet, no consultation with all members of the council, in fact hardly a formal council meeting at all yet, but we’ve seen announcements from the new Listening Administration that the Library Review is scrapped, they are all saved…. Shoebury sea wall is to be stopped (and millions of Central Government funding is either to be lost or put at serious risk – nice one!) and wait for it…. the decision on Care Homes is to be reviewed/reversed – after all the new Leader of the Council put together a business plan that didn’t add up and provided a whole two beds for Southend Council to use whilst flogging the rest to the NHS/private sector at prices they wouldn’t pay, costing hundreds of thousands of pounds a year. Still all of that can be changed when

This all sounds great – and boy does it make a good headline. You’d think all of these decisions were taken by us Tories in a smoke-filled room in a Private Members’ Club where the only woman allowed was Mrs T (and even then only as an honorary member) from what you hear/read. Actually things couldn’t be further from the truth.

The decision on the Libraries came through as a recommendation from a cross-party working party (it is worth remembering that most committees of the Council are made up with ‘proportionality’ where each Group gets their ‘fair share’ of seats – so Lib Dems, Labour and Independents sat on this working party), after massive consultation with public and councillors alike (including scrutiny processes where opposition councillors views and opinions are taken into account). Cabinet rubber stamped this cross-party Working Party decision (amending only the Kent Elms/Leigh Library situation, where we were given praise by the opposition for splitting the ‘Hub’ status across both libraries to ensure there would remain paid members of staff present at both).

However the Council’s processes allow for a vote on this decision at Full Council, which took place on 12 December 2013. The vote was quite simple – you could not like the decision and send it back to Cabinet (asking us to think again) or accept the decision. Cllr Woodley (now Leader of the Council), Longley (Deputy Leader and portfolio holder that covers the Library Service) both voted to accept the decision. I cannot be the only person to find this a little strange.

The sea wall. It is never going to be popular to build a wall along the seafront – but that is where the sea is going to pour over and flood. Not a lot you can do about that! There were various options presented to us, none of which the majority of people wanted. I remember debating this issue for hours on end, with the Director keeping his cool somehow going over and over all the proposals so I understood it. I also remember breaking down the consultation responses and taking a lot more account of those people that live in the area liable to flood, than those people who lived the other side of town – or still further afield. Again there was cross-party consultation and the decision was not railroaded through…

I can only think of two councillors in their 30s (me and Cllr Gilbert) and we are likely to be around for a long time (I hope)… If the floods risk ever actually happens – and it is likely to be a long time in the future I’m sure, then I do not want to sitting in my care home chair reading the local paper and thinking ‘I could have done something to stop that, rather than having jumped on a popular bandwagon back in the 2010s’. I just hope the other retired councillor sitting next to me will be able to think the same thing.

Care Homes – this also went through every form of pre-decision process the Council has, with another cross-party Working Party set up to oversee every step of the process. Strange how this Working Party included the now portfolio holder for Adult Social Care, Cllr David Norman. Will be interesting to see how David’s views may change/be changed for him. David has been someone I have always had the upmost respect for, sticking to his principles. I do hope this won’t change.

All of these decisions of the Council seem to have been stopped and/or reversed without any democratic process being followed, without member consultation, undoing the decisions of their Groups previously and I suspect without any officer advice to do so. How are they to be paid for? Who knows? Who cares? Certainly not the new Listening Administration. They just want the headlines.

Those rotten Tories, doing all that consultation, research and costing things out before making the tough decisions they were elected to make, who’d want them eh?

Blenheim Park election result

A mixed result for the Conservatives in Blenheim Park, with the share of the vote remaining roughly the same at 27%, but the Lib Dem vote fell dramatically and UKIP climbing from 16% to 32% when compared to 2012 (the last local elections).

The result in full:

Floyd WATERWORTH	UKIP	851	31.7%
Helen BOYD	Conservative	728	27.1%
Duncan RUSSELL	Liberal Democrat	529	19.7%
Dean TROTTER	Labour	383	14.3%
Julian ESPOSITO	Green	194	7.2%

Spoilt ballots: 15

Total Votes: 2,700

Turnout: 33.7%

Obviously I am disappointed for Helen Boyd, who I think would have made a great councillor. I congratulate Floyd, and whilst our political ideologies may be similar or different (I honestly do not know what UKIP want to do for Blenheim/Southend, which I find worrying given I’m probably more involved than 99% of the town in politics!) I respect the choice of Blenheim residents and will do my best to work with him to get the best for Blenheim and the town.

It will certainly be interesting be a three party ward – with one Conservative, Lib Dem and UKIP councillor respectively.

This time next year will certainly be an interesting fight in Blenheim. I look forward to comparing my record of achievement locally against the overwhelming national force.

 

From a Southend perspective it was a bad night for the Conservatives and I saw some hardworking colleagues including fellow Cabinet member Tony Cox lose their seats, at least in part, due to the national swing.

However I think on certain issues the people of Southend have spoken, particularly with some Independent Party victories in the East. Some of this is, of course, the ‘none of the above’ vote and the UKIP/Independent pact, but others about the tough decisions we have made. We must listen to the town and think hard about the way we move forward, whilst still doing what is right, not necessarily popular, and delivering sound financial management in what is still, and sadly will continue to be, a very tough time for local authorities across the country.

Who will form the next Administration in Southend will be decided over the next few days, with a full council meeting to vote for a new Leader of the Council on 5th June. The make-up of the council makes some for some very difficult sums, for groups to get to the crucial 26 votes required to have a majority. Whatever happens we are certainly in for interesting times at the Civic Centre.