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Mayor's Message - Bye the Bye

23 September 2010

Perhaps I spoke too soon. In my last ‘Bye the Bye’ I paid a compliment to Councillors for coming up to the mark and considering the in year budget cuts in a mature and reasonable fashion. Clearly, nobody relishes making these difficult decisions, but all Councillors (I thought) understood the need to balance the books in the Town Hall.

The earlier Overview and Scrutiny meeting was conducted without the usual party political point scoring and I hoped this more grown up state of affairs might be a taste of things to come.

Sadly, I was wrong. At last week’s Full Council meeting the Lib Dems Councillors voted against these necessary savings, without putting forward an amendment of their own.

In these difficult times we cannot afford this sort of posture politics. The cuts are absolutely necessary if we are to balance our books this year, in advance of much bigger savings to be made in 2011/2012. In any case, these cuts follow the reduction to Torbay’s ‘Area Based Grant’, which is a consequence of the Coalition Government’s policy of reducing the public sector borrowing requirement.

The Lib Dems are clearly a part of this Government with one of their Party leading the way as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. You would have thought they would understand the need to show responsibility at this difficult time.

Of course, the local Lib Dems do not have a very good track record of prudent housekeeping. I remember inheriting a projected overspend of nearly £2 million for 2005/06 when I was elected Mayor in the autumn of 2005. Their plans for spending in 2006/07 had a multi-million pound hole in them and my first budget was a very necessary exercise in austerity.

You would have thought they would have learned their lesson.

Of course we all want to protect services to the most vulnerable, including children and adults in need of extra support. For precisely this reason I did not simply ‘passport’ the cut in Area Based Grant, which would have taken nearly £1 million out of children’s services. Instead, I asked our officers to share the pain across all areas of activity and, by effective vacancy management and other measures, we should be able to maintain frontline services.

I am proud of our recent track record of balanced budgets, lower Council tax rises year after year and lower Council tax bills compared with neighbouring areas.

Let’s not throw this all away.

Back to Brixham – last Saturday’s billboards for the Herald Express proclaimed ‘Battle for Old Market House lost’. I would have thought it was the other way round: the battle was won. I was delighted Councillors supported the earlier Cabinet decision to agree a new long lease which will ensure substantial investment and a sustainable future for this wonderful old building by Brixham Harbour.

These are the facts. The major part of this building is already held by the proposed developer under the terms of existing leases, which are protected by the relevant Landlord and Tenant Act. Rent is paid (and will continue to be paid) into the Brixham Harbour Account of Torbay Council. We cannot just ‘turf out’ the developer for years to come and even then without following an expensive legal process.

The deal we have agreed is for a £180,000 premium (which will also go into the Harbour Account) and a rent of £10,000 per annum for the remainder of the lease, to be increased in line with inflation.

In exchange for this new long lease, the developer will invest substantial sums in the building to create a more upmarket restaurant/bar with outside seating area and terrace.

Surely we should be welcoming exactly this type of investment?

People talk about the need for regeneration, jobs and prosperity. But too often when somebody comes along we respond by saying ‘you must not do that, not here!’

It is no wonder we entered this recession with the highest unemployment and weakest economy in the South West region. Despite the advantage of a stunning natural environment, we gained the reputation of being a place which liked to say ‘no’.

The current regime in the Town Hall is very different and through the Mayoral Vision and other projects welcomes investment.

The alternative proposals from the ‘BHI Shadow Trust’ are flawed. They gloss over the legal/lease issues and are simply naïve to imagine the Brixham Harbour Account could withstand the loss of this income.

Many of their suggestions regarding future use might be better accommodated in the Brixham Town Hall. I would be more than happy to see this find old building, at the gateway to the town, transferred to either the Town Council or a Community Group.

Back to the bins. Nearly everything which could be said on this subject has been said (or written in the letters still appearing in the Herald).

But there has never been a subject where the response out on the streets seems to me to be at such variance with the ‘Mr (or Mrs) Angry’ comments we are all now familiar with.

Just between ourselves, I was more terrified of facing the music at last week’s Caravan Consultation than going for my 1 mile cold winter swim. But the response could hardly have been warmer. There were more positive comments than negative (honest!) and the general consensus seemed to be ‘what is all this fuss about?’

Most folk seem to understand we must do more to encourage recycling and appreciate the opportunity to recycle glass, textiles, food waste, etc. Some find the various boxes impractical, whereas others seem to be quite content.

Doubtless over time, we shall all get used to it, just like our neighbours in Teignbridge. There are 2.2 million households in the UK where exactly the same system is in operation.

I accept (and have apologised for) the poor initial implementation of this project: after a shaky start, Tor2 have now come up with a recovery plan and I get the impression things are improving.

It is inexcusable when residents have no waste collection and I fear it will be a long time before I dare show my face in certain streets and blocks of flats. I accept communications have not been as clear as they might have been. There have been issues processing requests for assistance and then passing on the information to the crews.

Tor2 have been somewhat optimistic in thinking this new system can operate in all neighbourhoods, equally well.

Clearly there are issues in streets where houses open onto the pavement, for example. Tor2 promised they would be flexible and now they must be as good as their word (and the terms of their contract).

However, it is enormously encouraging so many residents have been prepared to ‘give it a go’. By reducing the amount of waste which goes to landfill and achieving a much higher price for the various items we can now properly recycle, we will be £1 million better off each year. If we had carried on is before, we would have risked incurring fines of many millions more.

In a nutshell, we simply have to make this system work. I am encouraged by the experience of Bridgend in Wales.

May Gurney (our partners in Tor2) introduced exactly this system there. In a matter of months recycling rates have gone from below 20% to 57% - the highest in Wales, apparently.

If they can do it, so can we!

Nick Bye

Mayor of Torbay

Mayor's Message - Bye the Bye

23 September 2010

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