Barry Stamp's Political Diary

I was really pleased on Friday night to be asked to be the guest of honour at Adbaston Church on the occasion of the switch on of the new lights which illuminate the long path from the road to the Church and the Jubilee Rooms. These lights were purchased with a £2010 grant from my County Council’s Local Members Initiative Fund and so I was asked to do the honours and official switch them on. I really didn’t know what to expect when I arrived at the Church Gates but was amazed to see at least fifty people had turned up to witness the big turn on, despite the wet weather.

I remember well my first visit to Adbaston Parish Council about a month after I was elected to the County Council two years ago. No one had told me the path through the church yard to the Jubilee Rooms – where the Council meets - was unlit so I’d not bothered to take a torch. However I soon learned how dark and dangerous it was, so I had no hesitation in recommending the grant when I was approached by the Adbaston Community Group. This organisation does a wonderful job I arranging community activities and bring a really sense of Village life back into this small village. During the refreshments that followed the formal part of the evening I was pleased to be able to talk to the Community Group organisers about other projects they had in the pipeline and promised I would find some money from this years grant to help them purchase some new furniture and fitting for the inside of the hall.

Today I’ve been trying to arrange a visit for Liz Lynne to Stafford as part of her European election campaign. Mike Dixon, from Liz’s office telephoned me a few days ago to ask if I could make the arrangements, but try as I might I cannot find anywhere in Stafford that’s suitable. Liz wants to arrive in her “battle bus” with the rest of the Lib Dem Euro Candidates and after making a short speech to launch the campaign be available for press photos. Unfortunately the only really suitable place is the Market Square, but the Borough Council are refusing to allow the bus access as the town is closed to traffic between 10.00am and 4.00pm. It looks as though Liz will now have to give Stafford a miss.

The last Friday of each month is set aside for “Meet the Public” meeting at the Borough Council. These meetings start at 9.00am and residents of the Borough can, with prior arrangement, meet for ten minutes with the three group leaders (Judith Delgarno - Conservative, Jack Kemp - Labour, and myself) and David Rawlings - the Council's Chief Executive- to discuss any matters of the concern they might have. However today David was at another meeting in Birmingham so Malcolm Vickers one of the Council's Strategic Directors drew the short straw!

Over the past twelve months attendance at these meeting has been drooping off – although I have to say they have never been popular from the outset. Indeed I think the most that ever attended is three! Well this morning was therefore a bit of a shock as three people actually turned up. OK two were husband and wife, but after months with no-one at all it was nice to see so many faces. The contents of these meeting are always confidential, but needless to say the visitors did leave us with food for thought.

Tonight saw me wearing my County Councillor hat at yet another Annual Parish Meeting - namely Gnosall. This event is always well attended and tonight is no exception. As Gnosall is a large Village the Parish Council is big enough to run a number of sub-committees and the main part of the meeting was given over to the Chairmen of each giving their reports on the past years work. These ranged from very detailed to the more superficial and some even managed to extract some questions from the floor. Following these Ken Williamson - one of the Borough Councillors for the Village gave his report and I followed up with mine which I found quite difficult has most of the subjects I intended to raise had already been covered in earlier reports!

Jim Muir - the County Council Cabinet Leader for Cultural Services had also been invited and sat next to me during the evening. He had been invited to give an up-to-date report on the proposal to open a Library in the Village, but as soon as he got to his feet it was clear he didn't know anything about what was being proposed. He did speak for a few minutes of the general principles involved in Library provision within the County but did not tell us anything about Gnosall. Indeed when it came to question I had to step in a fill in some of the details. All in all this would have been a great opportunity for the County council to sell its vision for the Library service in Gnosall but sadly it was lost. However during the buffet that followed the meeting it became clear that the Parish Council and the village are still committed to the concept of getting a permanent library in Gnosall despite the quite negative messages that appearedrred to give

Today I’ve been at the Borough Council Offices for over four hours interviewing candidates for the long list which will in turn lead to the post of Head of Finance. The panel today was made up of nine people – five Councillors and four Council Officers. I’m always impressed with the way the Council runs its interviews. They are scrupulously fair, with every candidate being given the same questions and the same opportunities to impress the panel. Even so on this occasion we did not come to any positive conclusions so the shortlist interviews planned for next week have been put back to a future date.

To nights meeting of Stafford Borough Council dragged on and on and finally finished at about 10.45pm. Not bad going considering it started at 7.00pm!! Once again the meeting got bogged down on planning applications. Something really has to be done to get the system changed so fewer of these applications get sent up to full Council. Interestingly enough it looks as this might happen, as the Leader of the Council – Judith Delgarno put down a motion at the start of the meeting asking the Resources Scrutiny Committee to look at the whole question of how the Development Control Committee look at planning application. It certainly too early to prejudge the outcome of the Resources Scrutiny Committee’s finding but I’m looking forward, as a member of that committee, in coming up with a better way of working than currently exists.

This evening was one of those where I really needed to be in four places at the same time. As tomorrow night is a full meeting of Stafford Borough Council tonight was a Liberal Democrat Group meeting. Also in the diary was the annual parish meetings at Haughton, Bradley, and Adbaston all of which I should really have attended. It always difficult in this situation to know what to do for the best, but after a great deal of heart searching I decided to go to the group meeting and then on to Haughton Parish Council. I made this choice because firstly, as Lib Dem Group Leader, I needed to know the views of my Council colleagues on the forthcoming closure of RAF Stafford just in case it came up at the Council meeting. The meeting also gave us the chance to look at the Cabinet recommendations which had been published the Council Digest a couple of days ago, including the proposed demolition of the houses in South Walls. Having looked at this proposal, along with the dozen or so others that were in the Digest we decided to call in three for further scrutiny – South Walls; Changes to Housing Management Staffing; and a proposal to purchase a sports ground in Silkmore Lane. This will no doubt upset the controlling Tory Group, but at the end of the day the exercise is pretty futile as the Conservatives have such a large majority that nothing is ever rejected!

Having left the Council offices at 9.00pm I then went to Haughton Village Hall and joined the Parish Council Meeting which had started straight after the Annual Parish Meeting. I was told that I’d not missed much at the first meeting as only three members of the public had attended and one of those was the husband of one of the guest speakers! It really is a pity that not many people turned up at this meeting as it is an idea opportunity for then to ask questions of their Councillors. It was suggested that because no one had attended there must not be any problems in the Village but when one considers the number that turned up at a recent Village Crime meeting I cannot imagine this to be the case!

This afternoon I meet one of my constituents in the middle of Cannock Chase to look at a problem! The resident in question was with his disabled wife who uses a wheelchair. Their problem was that the County Council have been carrying out forestry work ear to the Marquis Drive Visitors Centre and that this work has affected the paths that are designated as a wheelchair route. Unfortunately the weather was wonderful today so the muddy paths that I’d heard about on the telephone were just not there. However it was clear that quite a lot of damage had been done to the paths and that they were almost impassable in places to wheelchair users. As the County Council prides itself in access for the disabled I hope getting these paths reinstated will not be a problem, but in any case I’ll be taking this matter up with the County Ranger Service in the next couple of days.

While I was there I had an interesting exchange of views with a cyclist who I found taking photographs of my car. When I asked what he was doing I was confronted with a stream of abuse which translated seemed to mean I was parked in a conservation area and had no right being there. Just for good measure he was going to report me. I don’t think it helped when I said I was a County Councillor and I was inspecting the quality of the work, because he leap on his bike and yelled at me, as he peddled away, that I shouldn’t think I was above the law and he would sort me out! What was clear however was that there were no signs saying whether or not I was in a conservation are or if traffic was allowed along the road I was on!

The news that the whole town has been waiting for has finally broken! RAF Stafford is to lose it’s strike command personnel despite the valiant fight that’s been fought by the Council and the local community. I was told the news by a reporter from one of the local papers in an 8.15am phone call. Without been given anytime to consider the news I was asked for a comment. I told her that as far as I, and the rest of the Lib Dem Group on the Council was concerned, the whole public consultation exercise had been a sham and that the Government had all along intended to shut the camp. My own worry is that this closure is just the first step in the camp closing completely! At one of the briefing meetings I went to some months ago a representative of the RAF made it quite clear that some of the other RAF units bases at Beaconside were only waiting for the outcome of this review before starting on one of there own! At the moment just over 400 service personnel will be moving out, but even this will mean many millions of pounds lost from the local economy. What the Council now has to face is how to replace these jobs, but we must ensure we are not rushed into making bad decisions which we, and the residents of Stafford, will later regret.

This afternoon I visited a couple who live in an upstairs flat in Royds Close in Haughton. The flat is currently having new windows fitted as part of the modernisation programme. The couple asked me call to look at the windows and how they were expected to escape if there was a fire. Quite rightly the Council were providing two fire escape windows, but these had been placed at the front of the flat and overlooked a sheer drop to the ground below. As the couple pointed out wouldn’t it have been better to put them at the back of the flat which meant they could have escaped onto the walkway outside their home. This does seem to make sense, but I think the Council will tell me that this walkway could easily get blocked by flames – hence the reason for putting the escape windows where they are. However this could all be a fruitless exercise as they windows seen extremely difficult to open correctly. The catches certainly need quite a bit of force to get them to work and I’m sure many of the elderly residents in Royds Close will never manage them! I’ve promised the couple I’ll take up the matter with the Council but I think I’ll be beating my head against a brick wall. If they can’t move the windows for a technical reason lack of money will be the downfall!

Tonight Liberal Democrat members from the Stone Constituency were entertained by John Russell – Mayor of Stafford – in Mayor’s Parlour in the Civic Offices. John, who is the Liberal Democrat Councillor for Barlaston is just coming to the end of his year in office. In the past twelve months he has been an excellent ambassador not only for the Borough but also for the Liberal Democrat Party.

In fact John was not going to be Mayor until forty-eight hours before the last election, when it became clear that our nominated person – Frank James – was likely to loose his seat. As the Mayor is sworn into office just a couple of days after the election it was necessary to have a fall back position so as Group Leader I’d asked John if he would step into the role if needed. Luckily for Stafford and for the Lib Dems he agreed. Considering the lack of notice he’s done a great job.

Tonight’ even was also great. John gave us all a talk on the history of the Mayorality and them there was time for a bite to eat and an informal chat. Needless to say local issues were never far from the centre of any conversation!

I did have an interesting visit this morning when I took my father to collect his and my mothers concessionary fare passes from Rising Brook Church Centre. These passes are provided by the Borough Council to all residents of the Borough aged 60 or above and provide half price bus travel for the holders. In the rural areas, and for those residents aged 70 or above who live in the town, these passes can be exchanged for bus tokens which many residents prefer.

I’d never been to one of these distribution events before and it certainly was an eye opener. It was obvious there were plenty of people there as soon as we arrived as the street outside the church was packed with cars. Inside the queue snaked around the church hall and almost reached the door. It reminded me of the queue for a Russian supermarket. As it was raining hard everyone was dressed in some sort of coat and many wore hats and scarves which added to the scene of desolation. The queue shuffled forward towards a row of tables from which the passes and tokens were being doled out. It took my father just over 15 minutes of shuffling to reach the table. As he’s 85 I was quite concerned, but when you looked round the room he looked one of the more able! The church had tried to add a bit of comfort, by providing chairs around the walls of the hall, but the queue was no where near them and if anyone had sat down they would have needed to get up again almost at once so they could move one step nearer the tables. One good thing was that the church has also provided free cups of tea and coffee and this was going down well with the wet and dripping crowd!

I came away wondering what the Council was doing. Surely in this day and age we shouldn’t be making the elderly queue for their free handouts. I am going to raise this issue with the Council. Perhaps we could distribute tokens via the rent collection system for our tenants or use the network of local post offices or paypoint shops, or if this is not possible use some form of ticketing system similar to that used in many government benefit and tax offices. At least then the elderly residents could sit down while they are waiting to be served!

I came away from today’s meeting with the Borough Council’s Chief Executive David Rawlings with no more information about the future of the houses in South Walls than I had before I went! In fact I not sure the time was well spent! Its clear he knows more than he is prepared to say. Chris Baron and David Seary the two ward Councillors certainly asked the right questions but kept getting the standard answer “I’ll need prior notification of that to give you an answer”. This either means David is not on top of his job or he needs time to decide how to give the answers! As I’m always impressed with the way David masters every subject that is before the Council it doesn’t take a mastermind to work out which of the options to choose!

Chris and David asked questions that I’m sure are on the mind of most of the tenants. They included “What would the compensation package will be?”, “Will the tenants be forced to take accommodation that is small than they currently have?”, and “What was the time scale for purchasing the houses back that have already been sold?”.

After 45 minutes I was more convinced than ever that the proposal was nothing to do with giving the tenants better homes, but was just a cynical way of getting the land back so it could be sold. What is becoming clear is that this Tory run Council puts the well being of local residents low down on its list of priorities. At the top is the need to make as much money as possible.

Tonight I made a call on a young couple who live in a ground Council floor flat. They have for sometime been trying to get a move. The area they live in is not too bad, but their neighbours are a bit on the noisy side. I most circumstances this would not have been enough to warrant a move, but in this instance personal circumstances does mean they need a quieter environment.

Over the last few months I have been pressing the Council to get them move and did have some success a few weeks ago when they finally agreed this was possible. The only thing standing in the way was the lack of suitable accommodation. However this has now been sorted out and the couple are thrilled with the new flat that has been offered to them. However there is one problem – hence my visit to see them. The flat is in a poor state and needs decorating throughout before they can move in. The Council does help new tenants with a grant of nearly £200 towards decorating costs, but because this couple is transferring between two properties the grant is cut to a mere £30. I was able to tell them that as long as their existing flat is in good decorating order and the incoming tenant will not need to do any work the Council will look to increasing the £30 grant they have been offered on their new home. However it does worry me that I, as a Councillor, had to get involved before they agreed to this increase. I do wonder how many other young couples in the same situation have been left struggling to find the money need to decorate their new home?

Well today certainly started with a bang. I called into the Borough Council Offices to be met with the news that Dave Pinnock – one of the Council’s Strategic Directors was about to phone me and as I was in the building could I pop in and have a word. Dave told me that the Cabinet Member for Housing was putting forward a plan to demolish 29 houses in South Walls and that as we spoke the news was being broken to the householders. It appears that they were being given a letter to say that their homes did not meet the Governments Homes Standard and that it was unlikely they could be brought up to standard by the 2010 deadline. For this reason the Council felt they had no alternative by to re-house the tenants and demolish the houses. The council would also offer to buy the three homes that had been sold to private individuals so they would not be left isolated when the other houses were removed. This is all very well but when you consider that within days of taking control of the Council last May the Tories were pressing to sell off all the Council owned houses because “most would not meet the Governments target by 2010” alarm bells began to ring. Surely the great rush to demolish these houses has nothing to do with the fact they back onto the Council owned Riverside Recreation Centre which needs replacing. Ever since the Tories took control rumours have circulated that they want to sell the present site and build a new smaller centre else where. Of course if they do that they do stand to make a profit on the deal – money which they desperately need to balance the books!

The one thing I must say about the whole sorry story is that residents will come off worse. Although the scheme has still to be official approved by Cabinet and will then have to go through the scrutiny process the large majority the Conservatives have on the Council will ensure it goes ahead. There are still dozens of questions left unanswered!

It might be Easter Monday but it’s certainly not a rest day for the local press. I was asked to meet a photographer from the Stafford Post in Gnosall at 11.00am so the paper could get a picture to illustrate the story about the poor footpaths. I must say I’m not sure you can make a brilliant image from me and a length of tarmac, but the young lady seemed to know what she was doing and took a handful of shoots. Trying to look intelligently at a crack in newly laid tarmac is not easy at the best of times, but on a Bank Holiday it’s even more difficult. However I do hope the effort was worth it and the increased pressure will have some positive results with the County Council’s Highways Department. Unfortunately all the staff who cover the Gnosall area are now on leave for a week so nothing will happen till then!

The Lichfield Garrick Theatre was the venue for Wednesday afternoons meeting the West Midlands Local Government Association. This is a gathering of representatives of all the Borough, District, County, and Unitary Council’s in the West Midlands area.

The event was billed as the Association Plenary and was designed to review it’s work over the last twelve months. Part of the afternoon was set aside for workshops to look at four key areas which local councils will have to face in the near future. I’d already opted to go to the one entitled “Citizens and Customers”. Apart from the title I’d no idea what is was going to be about but as I believe Council’s are all about serving their citizens I thought it sounded more interesting that “Procurement”, “Waste Management”, and “Leisure”.

It turned out to a session on using modern technology to provide a seamless service to all residents. The case study was about the experience of the Council’s in Warwickshire who are working together with the aim of providing a single point of contact for all services provided by the district and county councils and possible the police. This project has been made possible by a grant of £2Million from Central Government. Although in its early stages it does look exciting and if successful will mean a single telephone call to one person at a central call centre is all anyone will have to make to talk about, book, or pay for a Council service, regardless of which or how many council’s are involved with providing the service in question.

All we need to do now is get the same sort of system up and running in Staffordshire, although I have to say I think this is some way off.

Tuesday night, and I'm back again in the Civic Offices, this time attending a meeting of the Council’s Planning and Regeneration Scrutiny Committee. These days scrutiny at the Borough Council is almost none existent. But surprise, surprise, this meeting was different.

The meeting started with three presentations about some proposed changes in planning guidance from Central Government. Paul Windmill – the Councils Forward Planning Manager - and Alex Yendole – the Senior Planning Officer in Paul’s Team gave a quick, but detailed presentation of the changes and what might mean in practice. The debates, which followed, were equally as quick as I think most Councillors are sick and fed-up with the raft of changes that they are constantly being asked to face. Indeed had it not have been a few speeches from a couple of Councillors who I’m sure likes the sound of their own voice these three items would have be over in seconds!

A more interesting, but again short debate took place on the performance of the Planning Department as whether or not it was capable of reaching it’s targets in relation to the speed it processes planning application. For the fifth quarter running they have failed to hit the target for the number of application processed within 8 weeks. Indeed they are worse now than they were twelve months ago. Chris Hindle – the Council’s Head of Planning and Engineering, gave a spirited explanation of why this had happened and what was being done to improve the situation. It appears the failure is rooted in the new planning IT system which is taking time to bed in coupled to the fact that more planning applications are now being received. To make things better he has set each planning officer targets and is monitoring the situation carefully! I asked if he really thought the Department had the capacity to improve and I think the answer was yes. He, and Doug Davies – the Cabinet member, didn’t like it to much when I compared the planning department to a slave galley. I pointed out it was easy to get the slaves to row, but it didn’t matter how hard you beat them they would never go faster than their top speed!

Delays in planning are a major problem for local people. I’m not sure we’ve heard the last of this because I’m sure the slaves are almost flat out now! My great concern is that in trying to reach the targets the quality of the decisions are going to fall as planning officers take short cuts!

This afternoon I attended a meeting organised by the Borough Council, which was arranged to give Councillors the opportunity to meet with representatives of Arriva, the major bus company operating in Stafford. So as to keep the meeting to a manageable size only four Councillors were invited – one from each of the political groups on the Council and the Council Leader. Arriva was represented by two senior managers Kevin Belfield and Bob Emery both of whom knew the area and the bus services like the back of their hand.

Top of the agenda was the apparent lack of communication between the bus company and the travelling public, which my three councillor colleague’s thought could be improved if they knew more about what was going on. Indeed it soon became clear that this was the underlying complaint. I suppose as both a Borough and County Councillor I’m in a privileged position as I am kept informed of any changes to bus services that affect my area by the County Council.

As the discussion went on it became clear that Arriva was doing everything it could to keep the County Council informed of it’s service changes and indeed gave them more notice than was needed by law. As far as the County Council was concerned it was filtering out all the unnecessary information and passing the rest on to its Councillors as soon as it possible could. At least this does work. However Doug Davis the Borough Council’s Cabinet Member for Regeneration suggested that all information, not just the filtered version, should be copied to Borough Councillors as well. I’m not sure how practical this is because as far as I’m aware this would means reams of paper most of which is of no relevance to anyone!

However it was agreed to see if communications channels could be improved so that everyone could feel involved!

Perhaps what was more interesting were these three facts. Firstly, the number of passengers travelling on buses in the Stafford area is on the rise. Secondly, Arriva provide 3.5Million passenger journeys per year in and out of Stafford, and thirdly the Borough Council could provide subsidised bus services if they wanted to! So in the coming months if the Leader of the Council or any of her Cabinet Colleagues moan about poor bus services in Stafford the answer lies in their own hands – they are quite entitled to provide them!

Saturday morning saw Liberal Democrat members from the Stafford Constituency out in force in the Market Square collecting signatures for their “Axe The Tax” petition.

I always enjoy being out on the streets meeting people and Saturday was no exception. The reception we got was overwhelming with very few people unwilling to sign the petition. What is clear is that most people are dissatisfied with the Council Tax and nearly everyone I spoke to was in favour of a local income tax. This really is a winner for the Liberal Democrats. Labour are completely sunk if they continue with the Council Tax in its current form, although it does seem that rumblings from Government does sound as if they are thinking of making a change. On the other hand the Conservatives have nothing to offer as an alternative so it must be win, win, win for the Lib Dem’s!

A spin off from our presence in the Market Square was that we picked up a number of issues, which need to be followed up. I personally answered questions on the future of the Riverside Centre, the problems facing the elderly now the Conservative run council have scrapped the bus tokens, and what could be done to improve employment opportunities in the town especially if the RAF was to close. Over the next few days I’ll find more details and report back to these, and the other people, who stopped to chat.

While I was in the “Square” I was dragged across to a stand being run by the Rotary Club and the Stroke Association to have my blood pressure taken. While I was there the photographer from the Express and Star arrived and now it looks as if my picture will appear in the paper in the next few days. I know politicians will do anything for publicity but that was total unplanned!

All in all it was a good couple of hours, which helped to raise the profile of the Liberal Democrats with the residents of Stafford Borough and also added another few signatures to the rapidly growing petition against this unfair tax!

Thursday was another full day of Council business. This time I was taking part in a County Council joint working party commissioned to look at access to hospitals. As part of the day we visited five hospitals throughout the County – North Staffs University Hospital in Newcastle, The Haywood Hospital in Burslem, The Queens Hospital in Burton-on-Trent, Cannock Hospital – in Cannock, and the District Hospital in Stafford.

What we did discover during this marathon session (which ran from 9.00am till 4.45pm) was that four hospitals had major parking problems – The Haywood being the exception although its small size, location, and limited facilities probably accounted for this fact. The four seemed to have inadequate car parks, which left patients and staff frustrated. Only Cannock and Stafford, which are part of the same Health Care Trust have any plans which are aimed to tackle these problems, while the other two seem intent on making matters worse by planning building projects that are likely to take away car parking spaces rather than by adding to them.

In the next few weeks I will be visiting Stafford Hospital again to look in more depth at the problem and to talk to talk to staff and patient representatives. The working party are also planning to receive presentations from senior members of staff from each of the hospital to how they perceive their problems and to discuss any plans they have as to how these can be improved. I believe it is imperative that the County Council, as the Highways Authority work with these hospitals to ensure patients and staff have easy access to the facilities. This does not necessary mean building more roads or covering more areas of green with tarmac car parks but rather at looking at alternative and perhaps more imaginative schemes such as park-and-ride, better public transport, and car-sharing schemes.