Councillor Makes Desperate Smear Against the Post

We're used to JoCo denigrating the 'Post' as biased whenever it fails to quite toe the party line but Berridge Ward councillor Toby Neal has stepped in with a particularly amateurish attempt, presumably to curry favour with the boss -

As you can see, Neal claimed that the Post wouldn't print 'good news' stories about Nottingham, specifically that Nottingham is Europe's most energy self sufficient city.

Unfortunately for Cllr Neal, not long ago the 'Post' printed a story about exactly that, somewhat undermining his argument. However, Neal then went on to justify his outburst with a non-specific accusation about a 'piece today' and was justifiably ridiculed for this by 'Post' columnist Erik Petersen.

Local Government correspondent Delia Monk then challenged Neal's allegation and requested further clarification of his problem -

Neal later confirmed that it was this editorial that had got his thong in a twist.

While the editorial is somewhat negative it's bang on the money regarding local Labour's pathetically alarmist and downright dishonest 'No' campaign. As for the allegations of development failures, at least they didn't mention the Trinity Square carbuncle.

Certain Labour figures seem to equate Nottingham's fortunes with the Party's fortunes and imply that an attack on one is an attack on the other. This childish victim mentality, combined with an apparent 'right to rule' attitude is ridiculous for a council with such a huge Labour majority and has to stop.

A local newspaper should challenge those in power and should not simply be a cheerleader for the local authority as Neal and Collins seem to expect. The 'Post' does print positive articles about the Labour council's achievements. But it also writes about some of the fuck-ups. That's how it should be.

Dry yer eyes, Councillor Toby Neal.

That 'No' Campaign in Full #NottinghamMayor

Yes, it's voting day tomorrow folks and, in the interests of balance I thought I should present a short summary of the 'No' campaign's main points. So, in reverse order -

5. Some very clever people have told us that a mayor will cost about £500k. They told us this twice so that makes £1m in total. We will have to steal the food from old people's plates to be able to afford this.

4. Whenever JoCo and Graham Chapman represent the city in France one of them always makes a point of saying "Je suis le maire'. We think they've got away with it so far and actually having a real mayor would spoil the fun for next year.

3. A mayor is likely to be much more risk averse and we absolutely cannot take the risk of somebody like that being in charge. That's the gamble. Do you feel lucky, punk?

2. A mayor will NOT have any new powers so it's not worth having one. Except when we want to frighten you about ALL THE TERRIFYING POWER THE MAYOR WILL HAVE!!!!!

1. Voting for a mayor would just be a distraction from, erm something...LOOK! AN EAGLE!!

So there you have it. I think you can agree that I've covered their case in some detail. Don't let it ever be said that I'm not impartial.

More Housing Benefits Woe

Things have yet to get any better for Nottingham's Housing and Council Tax Benefit claimants. Latest figures for the third quarter (i.e. Oct - Dec 2011, click for the Excel file) show little to no improvement in speed of processing since I looked at their second quarter stats.

Nottingham remains the second worst in Great Britain for processing new claims, although the average time taken has decreased slightly from 60 days to 59. Way to go NCC.

Things aren't quite as bad for the average time taken to process changes in circumstances where NCC is only the 5th worst in the country with 33 days, a slight improvement on the previous quarter's 36.

This demonstrates an ongoing issue of worsening service when you haven't got the Audit Commission popping in every year and awarding you stars leading to nice headlines in the paper.

As mentioned before, NCC recently threw a pile of money at the problem and brought in a team of private agency staff at a time when it is supposedly committed to reducing temp and agency staff (see para 1.3 of this report). This won't show up until the first quarter of next year I'd guess as the agency staff are being hired for 12 weeks (i.e. a quarter) and I suspect it is being timed to ensure that the figures for the first quarter of the financial year show the maximum possible improvement in case Lisa Black is summoned to some inconvenient committee or other to explain why her service is so shit.

Scaremongering A - Go - Go

Good old Nottingham Labour Party.

According to them, not only would a mayor cost £1million, but s/he would inevitably be a racist too! Who knew? Cripes, think of what a terrible mistake we could have all made.

The leaflet has attracted the attention of a pro-mayoral candidate on LabourList and been subjected to a number of pithy put-downs of the '...and most of all, you've let yourself down...' variety. But also pointing out that the BNP don't get any votes in Nottingham. Obviously they don't, voting booths aren't equipped with crayons.

It's not the first time Nottingham Labour have resorted to dirty tricks. Remember their astroturfing escapades at the last local election? I'm sure they're very 'Proud' of themselves.

Btw, there is another debate about whether we should have a mayor on Monday 30 April at 6pm. It's organised by the 'Post' and is being held at the Playhouse. Might see you there.

More Mayoral Mayhem

Well, 'mayhem's a bit strong maybe but basically, JoCo's been out being a bit of a dick on Twitter again so I simply have to take the piss. As you've no doubt guessed already he's getting increasingly desperate about the possibility of a mayor nicking all his power so he's been doing a sort of 'why vote no for a mayor' series of tweets. We'll take them apart one by one but first, can I warn you that the phrase '£1m Extra Tory Mayor' gets a repeated look-in...

Here we go then, #1

See? Now then, is Cllr Collins comparing like-with-like here? Of course he isn't. His '£1m' cost for a mayor is a total for of the imagined 4 year cost of the mayor's wages, plus referendum costs, election costs (which in fact will be lower because those costs will be shared with the police commissioner election but that's another story). On the other hand the £80m which the government has cut from the budget is for one year. I agree with Collins that one of those costs is very bad and unjustifiable.

#2

Ok, cost is an issue but Collins as leader of the Council gets about £45k, much of which will be lost if a mayor is elected because the post of Leader will be much diminished (you see how this is going?). Futhermore, it's not yet clear how mayors' salaries will be decided so this is all conjecture.

#3

I've touched on this before but clearly, JoCo has to pretend he doesn't read my blog. To summarise, under the current system, the leader of the Council has huge powers already and as far as the legislation says so far, a mayor won't really get anything extra apart from the ability to appoint assistants. So councillors are largely merely cannon fodder as it is, a mayor won't change that. The difference is we get the chance to vote for a mayor, the vast majority of the city has no possibility of any say in who gets to be the leader of the council.

If JoCo really believes this to be the big issue, he could issue a cast iron promise to return power to councillors by re-establishing the committee system if the referendum results in a 'no' vote. He won't do that though because hius agenda is solely based on his own self-interest.

#4

Oh. Em. Gee. He really said that out loud folks. Can I re-refer you to the link above re power of leader vs mayor but there's too many scandals to link to. Let's just say that Collins' problem is that the 'one person' would no longer be him.

#5

Well, it doesn't really does it? Any mayor is likely to be Labour and you'd worry if their manifesto was radically different to Labour councillors. Of course, if a Leader with much reduced power and influence was to make trouble out of personal spite then that might cause difficulties but I can't see anyone being so immature, can you?

#6

Not the strongest of arguments is it? It's failed elsewhere so the whole concept is screwed. If it had failed in the majority of places he may have had a point. It's worth pointing out that the failure of the mayor in Stoke was partly due to wholesale political meltdown in the city. It was within a hair's breadth of becoming the first BNP council. A lot of that was due to the failure of Labour politicians who lost the confidence of the electorate due to complacency.

#7

Ah yes Doncaster, the ultimate Labour political basket case. People voted for the English Democrats chump due to wholesale disaffection with years of corrupt Labour regimes. Is JoCo concerned about a similar situation in Nottingham?

#8

If they stand and the people see one of them as the best option then that could happen. People vote for 'joke' candidates when they are totally disillusioned with the mainstream ones (how do you think Boris got half his votes?) As it happens, the monkey in Hartlepool got re-elected and his administration does at least appear to be functional.

#8. No, sorry 9

Diff'rent strokes etc. It's a different kind of election. And why keep a leader who can't count?

#10

This is, of course, a particular problem for a politician with no discernible personality whatsoever so you can understand JoCo's hostility. But of course, any leadership election has an element of personality to it. You might as well argue against the tides.

Oh, as you can see, I've left a reply in this one. 'Mayor for Nottingham' is run by Stephen Barker, former PR chief at NCC. Looks like things weren't very happy in the hen-house after all.

#11

Yeah, he's supposedly running and if the people of Salford decide that the best person to run their city is an ex-con with a record of violence and no political experience then that's the world you have to deal with and their mainstream politicians need to ask themselves a lot of difficult questions. Who knows, he might decide to run as a ward councillor next time. Is Collins suggesting he should be banned from doing that?

#12

Actually, he might have a point on this one. Another way of looking at it is that it's such a good idea that both Collins and Price oppose it!

So there you go. That's the best our current Leader of our Council, the man who already holds mayor equivalent powers (not that he likes to broadcast that at the moment) can do.

Anybody really want to argue that stripping this idiot's powers and giving them to someone we actually get to vote for is a bad idea?

Leader v Mayor; What Can the Leader Do?

There are a number of issues to think about when deciding whether we should have an elected mayor in Nottingham, some of which I wrote about here. I want to look in a bit more detail at how much power the leader of the council has at the moment, compared to how much a mayor might have.

Nottingham City Council currently operates a 'strong leader and cabinet' model for its executive arrangements. This is a modification of the original form of 'cabinet' arrangements introduced in 2007, designed to give councils a stronger and more visible leadership, apparently.

As a result of these changes, as well as NCC's amended constitution, in particular the part dealing with responsibilities and functions from which I quote below, the leader has the following powers -

"The Leader of the Council may determine to exercise any of the ‘executive’ functions of the Council personally, or may arrange for the exercise of any of the Council’s ‘executive’ functions by:
 
i) the Executive; or
 
ii) by another Executive Councillor; or
 
iii) by a committee of the Executive; or
 
iv) an officer of the Council." (p8)

'Executive functions' means the lion's share of day to day council decision making. Some decision making is reserved for full council or specific committees, the rest comes under executive functions. As you can see, the leader can decide to take any of these on her/himself, or delegate them.

"The term of office of the Leader starts on the day of his/her election as Leader and ends on the day of the next post election annual meeting (under whole elections) unless..." (p26)

Essentially the leader remains in office for the whole term of the council unless a majority of the council pass a resolution to remove him or he resigns. Previously the leader was elected each year.

"The Leader determines the size of the cabinet (Executive Board) and appoints between 2 and 9 members of the Council to be the Executive Board in addition to himself/herself, allocates any areas of responsibility (portfolios) to them, and may remove them from the Executive Board at any time. The Leader determines the responsibility for the discharge of the executive functions of the Council." (p26)

As you can see, should the leader decide not to take on all executive functions, s/he has absolute carte blanche over who does. If you are appointed as a portfolio holder you gotta stay in the good books or you're out.

"(ii) Who can take Key Decisions?

Nottingham City Council has decided (and included within the provisions of this Constitution) that Key Decisions may be taken by the Leader of the Council, Executive Board and the Executive Board Commissioning Sub Committee." (p108)

'Key Decisions' are the big executive decisions which have financial implications greater than £1m or significantly affect two or more wards. Previously they could only be taken by the Executive Board which at least ensured some collective decision making. Now, the leader can simply decide to take them her/himself. There appears to be no rhyme or reason behind which ones s/he can decide to take and JoCo has so far taken five key decisions himself, as you can see here and here.

So, as you can see, if they wanted, the leader of the council could do pretty much everything themselves other than approve the budget (which they would have been responsible for drawing up) and the more controversial planning decisions. All this power for someone who was only elected by 26% of the electorate in St Anns.

As yet, information as to what powers an elected mayor would have is thin on the ground. What little we have seems to be contained in a new Schedule A1 being added to the Local Government Act 2000 (see part 2) -

"Mayor and cabinet executives

(1)This paragraph applies in relation to executive arrangements by a local authority which provide for a mayor and cabinet executive.

(2)Subject to section 9C(5), the executive arrangements must include provision which enables the elected mayor to determine the number of councillors who may be appointed to the executive under section 9C(2)(b).

(3)The executive arrangements must include provision which requires the elected mayor to appoint one of the members of the executive to be the elected mayor’s deputy (referred to in this paragraph as the deputy mayor).

(4)Subject to sub-paragraph (5), the person who is appointed deputy mayor, unless the person resigns as deputy mayor or ceases to be a member of the authority, is to hold office until the end of the term of office of the elected mayor.

(5)The elected mayor may, if the elected mayor thinks fit, remove the deputy mayor from office.

(6)Where a vacancy occurs in the office of deputy mayor, the elected mayor must appoint another person to be deputy mayor.

(7)If for any reason the elected mayor is unable to act or the office of elected mayor is vacant, the deputy mayor must act in the elected mayor’s place.

(8)If for any reason—

(a)the elected mayor is unable to act or the office of elected mayor is vacant, and
(b)the deputy mayor is unable to act or the office of deputy mayor is vacant,
the executive must act in the elected mayor’s place or must arrange for a member of the executive to act in the elected mayor’s place."

That doesn't look like a whole lot more power than the leader has to me but of course, the story isn't finished yet. There will be further regulations and much will be decided locally in councils' constitutions as at present.

What is new is planned regulations for the mayor to be able to appoint an assistant. I'm not sure if that will mean just one or several but it is grist to the mill for 'no' campaigners citing increased cost of a mayoral system. It doesn't appear that there is any requirement that the assistant would have to be a councillor.

The key thing as I see it is that we currently have an individual with powers similar to those planned for a mayor already so any criticisms of a mayor having 'too much power' don't really stand up. And if we must have a single individual with that much power in the City I would very much like the opportunity to vote for them.

One final footnote. As I read the Localism Act provisions relating to all this, if the referendum results in a 'no' vote the council then has the power to change back to a committee system should it want to. The County Council has already decided to do this. They can do so because they are not being required to hold a referendum as to whether to have a mayor which puts such possibilities on hold. Going back to a committee system would result in a lot less power for the leader and councillors who are currently members of the cabinet. Funny that JoCo hasn't made any noises about that as a possibility...

Call Me 'April Fool' Says Cllr Collins

Yes you all knew what it was didn't you? Best I could do I'm afraid.

With apologies to Grayson Perry and, well the whole trans community probably...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In what will be seen as a brave move, the NCC leader has announced that she now plans to live as a woman and wants colleagues and the public to call her Joan from now on.

In a statement Cllr Collins said -

"In all honesty I have been struggling with my gender identity for years. I think this has been apparent to many people as I have clearly been prone to lapsing into outrageously over the top macho decision making for some time and I think I may have been overcompensating."

The Conservative opposition wished him well but expressed cynicism at the timing of JoanCo's announcement.

"It seems a bit of a coincidence that we have the mayor referendum coming up and Cllr Collins suddenly starts flouncing about in a dress. I do wonder if he's just trying to draw attention away from the issue and he'll be back to his old self on May 4th. In fact I wouldn't be that surprised if things are as they were by tomorrow afternoon" said a spokesTory.

NCC Forced to Sign Freedom of Information Undertaking

Last year the Information Commissioner announced that he was going to monitor NCC's Freedom of Information performance due to concerns that things were a bit shit.

Now it has been announced that, following confirmation that it was indeed very shit, the council has had to sign an 'undertaking' in order to avoid formal enforcement action. The undertaking includes acknowledgement that only 40% of requests were responded to on time within the monitoring period.

An undertaking is the lowest level of action the ICO can take, below issuing a practice direction or court action. It's hardly onerous either, broadly all NCC is promising to do is to do what the law requires it to do anyway. Imagine if the only sanction for shoplifting is promising not to do it again eh?

There are some further promises on training of staff etc and NCC is required to provide monthly performance updates for 6 months ending in June. It remains to be seen whether this demonstrates any improvement but, considering JoCo's obsession with secrecy and resultant constant denigrating of FoI I suspect it won't.

In further FoI news, two further decision notices have been issued against NCC by the Information Commissioner. You can find them here and here. These concern requests for information regarding similarities between NCC publicity and Labour's election campaign for 2007 which was reported on by the District Auditor. Two council officers used gmail accounts for official business and the Commissioner was not satisfied that these had been checked properly.

What makes these decisions pretty extraordinary is the following -

• the officers are named. They of course include Stephen Barker but also Jamie O'Malley. Harold Tinworth is also mentioned
• it's pretty rare for the ICO to refuse to accept claims of not holding information
• the Commissioner requires NCC to check the above accounts if possible, requiring them to ask Barker to let them search his gmail account even though he has now left. That said, he was still employed at the time of the original request

Barker isn't very happy and has interrupted his busy schedule campaigning for an elected mayor from his secret island in Albania to say it's all very 'boring'. He also appears to imply that former councillor Tony Sutton may have been involved with the removal of certain documents from his office. Goodness!

Some Mayor Issues

The debate about having an elected mayor in Nottingham is really starting to stir, both in real life and on the internets. As I wrote the other day the council's poster pushing a 'no' vote was a bit naughty and I thought I'd try and draw together some of the stuff that's appearing about the place.

It turns out that Ministers also noticed NCC's poster, as reported here in the Post. As you can see this article has grown quite a tail of comments of, how can we put this, varying quality. NCC's defence is that the government is openly supporting mayors and they are just putting an opposite view. They sort of have a point, although the issue here is that the code of practice says that council publicity needs to be neutral. If there's an equivalent code for central publicity then NCC needs to argue the toss with the government.

Anyway, back to first principles. This is NCC's main info page on the mayoral referendum where they put their objections in more detail along with, to be fair, the government's case. Let's have a look at some of the points raised.

1) The mayor will allegedly cost £1m over 5 years. According to someone who was at the full council meeting yesterday this is something of a mantra for JoCo now, something his Twitter feed appears to confirm

The thing is, even presuming that the figures are correct, it includes the costs of two elections and I think you're onto a difficult road if your best argument is that democracy is just too expensive.

2) Mayor set budgets could only be overturned by a 75% majority of full council whereas currently a simple majority can reject a budget. I'm sorry but in what way is this relevant to Nottingham? Labour councillors NEVER rebel and there's no sign that large Labour majorities are going away any time soon. Yes, it's a theoretical consideration for the future but some may argue that such an important measure as the budget set by a democratically elected mayor should require more than a majority to reject it. Whatever, this won't be an issue unless Nottingham's political situation is turned properly upside down and I really can't see that happening in the remotely near future.

3) The government has not announced exactly what powers mayors will have. I actually think this is a very good point and I think that if the government really does want a yes vote it is a big mistake not to have clarified exactly what we are voting for/against. This is one of the main issues that is making me feeling very uneasy about voting yes in the referendum and it makes me feel that the issue is being pushed forward without enough time for local debate.

4) Change of governance imposed from above is against the principles of localism. This is a bit cheap. After all, it is a referendum that we all get to vote in rather than it being decided behind closed doors. You don't get more 'localism' than that.

So that's what NCC wants us to know. Now for some very interesting views from a surprising source. Stephen Barker, former right hand spin-doctor and fixer for JoCo, has come out in favour of an elected mayor for Nottingham. He says he always has been pro but I'd never have guessed considering JoCo's outright hostility. I might be reading too much into this but maybe there is some bitterness following his departure?

His next post on the matter hardly dispels such a suspicion as he somewhat tartly, but entirely accurately, points out exactly how few people you have to win over in order to wield enormous local power as the leader of the council. Surely that's not a dig at his old boss? But of course this is the chief argument in favour of an elected mayor; we already have an individual who has a huge amount of power so surely it would be better if we actually got to vote for them.

Barker goes on to say that 'anyone' could run but I think it's pretty certain that, if we get an elected mayor, s/he will be Labour. I really don't think there's any chance that the other major parties stand a chance and, much that I'd love to see the Church of the Militant Elvis Party swept to power I wouldn't want to put any money on that happening. So why doesn't Collins get foursquare behind the proposal and go for the Labour nomination?

Because, of course, he can't be certain that he'd get it. The problem is known as 'Chris Leslie Syndrome' following the Nottingham East nomination going to him rather than Collins for the 2010 general Election. Apparently, JoCo isn't super popular with the unions and that swung it against him. I'd bet actual money that he is terrified of such a thing happening again so his only way of clinging to power is to ensure that we don't have a mayor at all. Hence NCC's 'official position' that mayors are bad 'mkay?

Lastly, let's have a look at the experience of elected mayors elsewhere. London you know about and has been mostly functional I suppose. Hartlepool famously elected its football team's monkey mascot running as a joke but who has ended up being quite well respected. Indeed he was elected for a second term. Stoke initially elected a respected Independent who was then defeated by the Labour candidate at the next election. Stoke has since voted against continuing with a mayor in the most recent referendum. Doncaster elected the 'English Democrat' candidate who was promptly humiliated as an ignorant buffoon in an interview with radio presenter Toby Foster. In Leicester the decision to have an elected mayor was taken by the council rather than via a referendum and the eventual winner, former Leicester MP Sir Peter Soulsby quickly went on to abolish the Chief Executive post and sort himself a socking great pay rise, neither of which anyone appeared to foresee.

Right, I'm thinking the only conclusion we can really draw from that lot is that looking at others' experience probably won't help us predict what might happen if we end up with a mayor in Nottingham, other than that there'd be everything to play for.

Personally I am still undecided as to how I intend to vote in the referendum. Of course that doesn't stop me from taking the piss out of JoCo's clearly self-interest driven position although I have to say that I would be prepared to bet a small sum of money on a 'No' vote prevailing in the end. As I said above, there has been little discussion or concrete information on the issue and I suspect that in such conditions the public is likely to go into 'better the devil you know' mode. Sadly, I'd also be prepared to bet money on there being a less than 30% turnout.