Council Must Publish All Spending over £500

Rochford District Council in common with all councils, will have received a letter  from Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for the Department of Communities and Local Government, urging them to publish details of all spending over £500 in full and online.

In the letter Mr Pickles makes clear that transparency and openness should be the default setting for the way councils do business and calls on councils to speedily adopt this new approach. Councils are further encouraged to also publish information on salaries, job titles and allowances and expenses.

Hanningfield Resigns

From BBC Essex News : Charged expenses peer Lord Hanningfield quits council

Lord Hanningfield denies the charges over his expense claims Suspended Tory peer Lord Hanningfield, who is facing criminal charges over expenses claims, has resigned as leader of Essex County Council. Lord Hanningfield, who has also stepped down from the Tory frontbench in the House of Lords, will be charged under the Theft Act, it has been announced. He has denied the charges and said he would “vigorously” defend himself. He said to allow him to defend the charges he had resigned as leader of Essex County Council.

Essex County Council Job Cuts

Essex County Council has announced it is cutting up to 275 managerial posts.

The cuts will be met through retirement, normal staff turn-over, voluntary redundancy and not filling existing vacancies, the council said.

The council said reducing the layers of management would help bring “quicker and sharper decision-making and… lead to enhanced local services”.

It said frontline services would not be affected and it was working with public sector unions.

The proposed cuts represent 2.5% of the organisation’s core workforce of 10,900 employees or 16.5% of the council’s 1,648 line managers.

This work is licenced under a
Creative Commons Licence.

COUNCIL tax may have to rise to plug public sector pensions

Daily Mail, 1 August 2009

Bob Holloway, who runs the pension scheme for local government workers, has warned the gold-plated final salary schemes are no longer sustainable because people are ‘refusing to die’.

Local authorities are facing a £50 billion shortfall In their pension pots after recklessly investing taxpayers’ money In shares and hedge funds.

The respected Public Service Journal reported that officials are considering a number of ways to tackle the deficit, including raising council tax.

They are also looking at increasing employee contributions, raising the retirement age or cutting public services. Another proposal could see public servants’ pensions based on career-average earnings rather than final salaries.

Could Lib Dem MP have made allegations against Lord Hanningfield?

From the East Anglian Daily Times (EADT) here

ESSEX County Council leader Lord Hanningfield was yesterday reported to be under investigation after allegations that he may have wrongly claimed thousands of pounds in parliamentary expenses.

But the peer insisted he had done nothing improper and said a Liberal Democrat MP determined to blacken his name had made a groundless complaint to the police.

Mr Russell said he took Lord Hanningfield’s claims about a Lib Dem MP to be a reference to himself.

Essex has £6.5 Billion Shortfall on Infrastructure

From a paper submitted to the Cabinet of Rochford District Council.  The full paper, Strategic Countywide Economic and Housing Issues, can be downloaded here.

“Essex has traditionally taken a significant proportion of economic and housing growth without benefitting from the necessary infrastructure improvements to enable growth to take place in a truly planned and sustainable manner. The paper estimates that the cost of delivering the supporting infrastructure across Essex is some £7.6 billion, with an identified funding gap of £6.5 billion. If Essex is to continue to deliver the levels of development anticipated, then this gap needs to be closed and greater levels of infrastructure investment achieved.”

What were the recent elections like for you?

Did the County Council Elections prove to be the best place for important questions of policy to be answered by the existing political administration and its political challengers? Did you get the chance to even ask? Did any of the candidates ask them for you?

Faced with promises from David Cameron that Council Tax could be frozen did any of the other parties put them on the spot and extract a local commitment from the Conservatives running Essex County Council?

Well No !! 

And did anyone tell us the answer to this question “When will we get anything on improvements to cope with all the extra planned housing?”

Council Tax Freeze?

David Cameron says in a leaflet, specifically and personally addressed to you and popped through your door during these elections, that “We’ve got plans to help people through this recession – like a council tax freeze.”

See Leaflet here http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1063718/davidcameron.pdf

In this case the Conservative Party can take this action right now and before a General Election because it is in majority control of many local councils,  all County Councils and so they can put in a local council tax freeze just as David Cameron has personally promised you.

But will they do it?

The Future of Buses in South Essex

We saw this on the Rochford Lib Dems site and decided to run the story as well, which speaks for itself.

This work is licenced under a
Creative Commons Licence.

CCTV Camera at Nursery Corner

A CCTV camera erected at Nursery Corner in January was swiftly removed at the request of District Councillor John Mason.

It then took several weeks to find out what was going on and, by complete coincidence, this web site was brought down just as we were ready to publish.

Again the matter of the adequacy of our existng laws has been taken up with our MP but, as yet, there has been no reply.

Here is how the County Council explained.

Next Page »