Archive for March, 2009
Another Council U turn
Does the Conservative right hand at Harrogate Borough Council know what its left hand is doing? Last week we learned that in February the Conservative group voted against membership of the leisure discount scheme that they introduced only in January. The same Council leader who a few weeks ago was urging all members of the Council to take advantage of this offer suddenly turned against it and bizarrely tried to blame political opponents for his own administration’s poor decision.
Today another swift U-turn has been performed. On Friday, the Cabinet Member for Planning and Transportation explained in the Harrogate Advertiser that he was conducting a consultation on the introduction of yet more pay and display parking in Harrogate town centre. Local people will be aware that pay and display parking has been greatly extended in the five years of Conservative control at Harrogate Borough Council and that the Council’s parking income has increased by 64% during that period, compared to an inflation rate of 21%.
Now, only five days later, the same Cabinet Member has changed his mind and announced that Harrogate is to have no additional pay and display parking in the town centre.
Of course I’m delighted that they have seen sense on both issues, but I’m beginning to wonder when this Council will get a grip and stop wasting public money on consultations and schemes that they have not thought through properly.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Councillors’ leisure discount scheme
News reaches me that the Conservative Leader of Harrogate Borough Council – who you may remember back in January was urging councillors to take advantage of the discount scheme that his administration had brought in – is now asserting that the Conservative group has withdrawn from membership of the scheme whilst the Liberal Democrats have not.
This comes as a surprise to Lib Dem councillors, who did not know that they had been signed up for the scheme without first being consulted. The information sent to them by the Council when the scheme was launched clearly stated that to become a member, they would have to have an induction session with a member of the Leisure Centre staff and, of course, agree to pay a monthly fee, to be deducted from their pay. I find it hard to believe that councillors have had a gym induction session without noticing.
Nowhere in any of the information about the scheme did it suggest that membership was automatic. Could this possibly be an attempt by the Conservative group to extricate themselves from an embarassing policy decision?
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )New Council homes?
There can be no doubt that one of the most acute problems facing this area is the acute shortage of affordable homes. No other single issue comes anywhere near this in the frequency with which it is raised in Phil Willis’s constituency surgeries or in his postbag.
Numbers of the Council’s housing waiting list have increased steadily since the Conservatives took control of the Council in 2003, as this graph so clearly shows, so that by 2008 the numbers were virtually double those in 1997.
It should therefore be extremely welcome news for homeless families that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has recently announced that the Government is planning to allow councils once again to build homes, to keep all the rent from them and to retain the whole capital sum should the homes be sold in the future. Grants are to be available to local authorities in the same way that they currently are to housing asssociations. This frees local authorities to provide the affordable homes that are so urgently needed.
Will Harrogate Borough Council respond positively? They have recently been praised for their speedy reallocation of vacant homes, their timely repairs service and their effective collection of rents. It would be good to see that they also aim to provide homes for at least some of the thousands of local people who at the moment live in overcrowded, unsuitable or unfit dwellings.
Further welcome news from the Department of Communities and Local Government is that they are offering additional subsidies to local authorities who reduce their rent increases in line with new guidance from the Department. Authorities have been asked to bid for these new subsidies by the end of April.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Silent phone calls
Silent phone calls cause worry and distress and are the second greatest cause of complaints to Ofcom – over 1000 such complaints are made every month.
Most silent calls are not malicious in intent, but a result of automated dialling from call centres for marketing. When there are insufficient staff to deal with automatically dialled numbers, this can result in a silent call.
Because of the anxiety that they cause, Ofcom introduced guidelines requiring call centres using automatic diallers to play an information message to prevent silent calls, but often this does not happen. Ofcom takes action against companies who do not meet the guidelines – Barclaycard and Abbey National were among the companies tackled by Ofcom about this last year.
If you receive a silent call, Of com have the following advice:
- Try to identify the caller by dialling 1471
- Complain to Ofcom – report the name and number so that they can take action
- Register for the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) – it is illegal for a company to call someone registered for marketing purposes.
Further advice is available from Ofcom.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )
Claire Kelley's Diary 