Were they just called in to police Richard Symonds? Must remember to ask my comrades at tonight’s constituency meeting.

Despite having been deputy mayor I have no idea what allowances are paid to the mayor and I mean I don’t even know what ball park they are in.  Maybe I am naive but before I took on the job I didn’t even know that the deputy mayor got anything.  It turned out to be about £1100 back then I think, though I may be wrong, and I assume it has risen at about the same sort of level as the other allowances.

I can’t remember it ever being mentioned.  There was always great debate in public about what level the other allowances should be.  I can’t even recall seeing any line in the financial documents. On reflaection, it seems a bit strange that whether some minor responsibility should get an allowance of £300 was argued about but something that is probably thousands was all organised out of sight.

I know the mayor has a budget which is supposed to cover the running of their office, the civic ball, food and drink for the mayor’s parlour and so on, but that is different (and come to think of it, I can’t remember that being debated either) and I assume separate. Mind you, even that is public money and of some interest so we can see if it is going up or being reduced in line with other budget cuts.

So what is the deal?  Is it a secret?  Is it just left off the published list because it isn’t mandatory to publish it? It isn’t something councillors are told to keep quiet about, because nobody told me not to mention it at the time.  It isn’t something I am worked up about I just can’t see why its all so obscure.  I would have thought it was of much more interest to the average council tax-payer than what the chair of general purposes gets.

Of course it is possible that I just can’t remember details from about ten years ago. Perhaps I never paid attention to that bit of the budget.  Can anybody shed some light or do I have to go through the pain of looking at the CBC website for budget documents?

West Sussex county council had a ‘revenue spending power’ in 2010-11 of £563.9million.  Next year it will be £560.2million and in 2011-12 it will be £549.4million – £14.5 million less than this year, a reduction of 2.5%

A pittance compared to those (predominantly Labour) councils facing cuts four or five times larger, but still…   Every year as leader of the county council Henry Smith complained that it didn’t get enough support from the government, and now he is in the government the support is even lower.

In fact it is even worse because those are just cash figures that do not take inflation into account.  Assuming inflation of 3% (and it could get higher than that) the spending power in 2012-13 would have had to be £598.2million just to be equivalent to this year, so the real reduction in 2012-13 is more like £48.8million, or 8.7%.

Somehow I can’t see how the removal of nearly£100million over two years will make West Sussex county council better.

Horsham council sees its spending power go from £16.6million this year to £15.8million next year and £14.5million the year after – £2.1million down just in cash terms.  How will they manage?  They won’t be able to afford any more £800k overspends on recycling schemes that’s for sure.

Crawley will have its spending power reduced from £17million this year to £15.6million and then £14million – a reduction of £3million or 17.6% before inflation is taken into account.

What is interesting is that Crawley’s ‘revenue spending power’ is £400k higher than Horsham this year but in two years will be half a million less than Horsham.  Is this a pre-emptive punishment for the voters of Crawley giving the Tories a good kicking in the local elections next year?

I know one thing.  I would not like to be a councillor this year, or next.  A Tory councillor would have to be making cuts in services without the luxury they have enjoyed in recent years of blaming it all on the government.  A Labour councillor could be faced with making cuts, setting an illegal budget or resigning. A Lib Dem councillor will just be looking for a new hobby to fill all that extra free time they will be getting soon.

Here’s the thing though.  Adding up the column on the spreadsheet for reductions, the total reduction in spending power across all councils is about £2.6billion next year and £1.7billion the year after.  A total of £4.3billion.

That figure is dwarfed by the tax which is avoided and evaded by individuals and companies every year.  Just the amount avoided by one single company, Vodafone, would have been enough to avoid any reduction at all in the formula grants for every council in the country for two years!

Philip Green’s tax situation is not exactly transparent, but best estimates are that just the income tax he has personally avoided would have covered the reductions for almost the whole of Greater London next year.

Even George Osborne’s own personal tax avoidance scheme could have covered Horsham’s shortfall easily.

This would be a good time to remember that this Saturday is ‘pay day’ and this is why protesters will be outside Vodafone shops and Philip Green’s shops like Top Shop across the country (nearest organised protest to Crawley is in Brighton).

Those people who go out protesting on Saturday are the real taxpayers’ alliance.  The Tories asked us to embrace the big society and take over failing public services and a growing number of people are deciding that the service they would most like to help is HMRC.

Meanwhile good luck to the local councils in trying to balance those books.

Maybe not as exciting as the goings on up in Rugby, but still something quite strange is going on.   There is no suggestion that this action of Goldsmiths was an official council decision, or discussed with the leaders of opposition parties, or even other memebrs of the Tory party.   Be interesting to hear the details when they eventually slip out.

As for the byelections, we have two in Crawley.

One is on the borough council, where one of the Tory councillors for Tilgate has decided to resign because he can’t fit in the council work, the day job and the family, and the other is on the county coucil where Henry Smith has finally stood down after being elected to parliament.

I guess Labour should have some chance in Tilgate.  The area always used to be Labour and since the Tories got in there they have had some fairly poor councillors, from what I have heard.  I think the Tories peaked locally a year or two ago, and have been shedding council seats across the country by the hundred so that combined with the poor performance of the Tilgate Tories must help us.

If history is any guide then Maidenbower is a dead cert for the Tories, which is a shame.  It is always a shame when a Tory wins aywhere, of course, but especially so here because of the candidate.  Given the past performance this is about as close to a guaranteed win as you can get in local elections and so a chance for them to get somebody new into local politics.

Instead they have selected somebody who is already a borough councillor.  Not only that, but he is the leader of the council, Bob Lanzer.  Now I quite like Bob, and while the Tilgate Tory whose name escapes me finds it hard to fit being a backbench councillor into his life alongside his day job, Bob seemed to have no trouble fitting in ward matters and being in the shadow executive alongside his job.  Going by the register of interests it looks like he has given up the day job now he is the leader, which would be understandable.

I don’t agree with the direction Bob wants to take the council but I have no doubt in his abilities to take it in those directions, but would county councillor just be a job too many?

As a rule, I don’t like having councillors on both the county and borough council anyway if it can be avoided.  With so few people willing to stand these days apparently it can’t be avoided, but I don’t think it is a good thing for all sorts of reasons that I have blathered on about before.  Usually when it happens the person represents the same area at both levels but in this case Bob would represent Pound Hill & Worth on one authority and Maidenbower on another – so two lots of constituents to deal with.

As leader of the council he will have all sorts of unavoidable meetings with auditors and the like, and visits to the represent Crawley at the LGA.  These things happen during the daytime and can be arranged around council meetings, but the county council does all its business during the day.  I can’t see there not being clashes and when that happens he is likely to prioritise the borough committments – there are enough Tories in county hall that they can afford to have a dozen absent and still win any vote going.

I’m sure Bob would be a good county councillor without the weight of responsibilites of being leader of the borough council, but as it stands I think this is an unwise move.  Unless he is expecting to not be leader of the borough at some point in the not-too-distant future…  perhaps he is anticipating a wipe-out in next year’s borough elections? 

Yesterday I was a little less impressed as we passed through, as we do every day on the way home from work.

This is, as the council keep reminding us a multi-million pound scheme, so who decided it would be a good idea to put a bus stop in a single-lane road, only a few metres after a roundabout?  A bus only has to stop for a few minutes and the traffic backs up to block the roundabout.  There is a wide expanse of pavement where the bus stop is – more than enough room to make it a proper lay-by bus stop.  The stop in the other direction has room for cars to park, but not the westbound side.

Very poor planning in my opinion.

It is going to look lovely tomorrow after the huge cat population have an overnight shredding spree.

I went down to Northgate straight from work today to join Geraint and a sizeable crowd of fellow members to knock on doors and deliver election addresses and had a very positive time.  Found a lot of Labour supporters we didn’t know about before and might have even picked up a new member – always a morale-boosting bonus when canvassing.

You get used to some people seeing a crowd wearing rosettes and stickers and crossing the road to avoid you or pretending to be out, but tonight we had somebody actually go out of his way to approach us in the street and ask for a leaflet.  Apparently his gran was thinking of voting Tory and he wanted some material to stage an intervention.

Altogether a fun evening. I do feel a bit bad about one thing though.  I know the Lib Dem candidate, Darren Wise.  In fact I would go so far as to call him a friend – I sat with him at the recording of Question Time earlier in the year and it was his wheelchair that got us to the front of the queue and into the front row, so I feel a little guilty campaigning against him – although, to be fair, I was campaigning for Geraint rather than against him.  I would be more than happy to see Darren come a close second, but not too close eh?  I think we have had more than enough nail-biting results in Crawley in recent years.

I really can’t see what the problem is.  Ironically the register of interests is one of the least interesting documents around, certainly my own entry in it was extremely uninteresting.  Anybody who looks through it will soon decide it is dull and tedious, but make it ‘secret’ and it looks like there is something to hide.  OK it is not secret – you can make an appointment to view it.  For those of us with jobs and a life it might as well be secret because it is hugely inconvenient to go and view it. It reminds me of the bit in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where the council say the demolition plans had been on public display.

The reason given for not making the register of interests more easily available is that “it could be used by criminal and malicious elements”.  Well guess what?   It still can.  A criminal would just have to lie.

The irony is that the person giving all the quotes to the Crawley News to defend the decision is Duncan Crow.  As he is a county councillor as well, all his information is presumably available online at the WSCC website. That seems to have slipped Labour leader Brenda Smith’s mind when she says “I believe in openness and transparency and would have no problem having my declarations of interests on the web”.  They already are as she is also a county councillor.

Crow says that “It’s not about trying to hide anything”.  While that may be true the council is acting like it has something to hide and if you do that then some people will decide that is the case, especially with all the recent publications of information about MPs.  I would have thought it was the councillors’ own interest to make such information as public as possible. Apart from anything else, there must be at least a third of the borough council who are also county councillors so their details are already out there.

The killer quote is “I would question why people have an interest in seeing this information online. What would be the motivation for viewing it?”  After all the focus on greater transparency in public life that the MP expenses scandal stirred up they still don’t get it do they?

I really cannot see any sensible objection to having the council’s register of interests online at all.  In fact, if anybody wants to send me a copy of the contents I will happily publish them online myself!   Really. But only the complete set – not just cherry-picking whatever juicy bits there may be.   And the same goes for Horsham council too.  Either they do not publish their register of interests or they have it tucked away in such an obscure corner of their website that I can’t find it.

I do wonder about one thing though.  If Councillor Crow is so firmly of the opinion that publishing members’ interests online is a bad thing and potentially dangerous, has he made any attempt to stop the county publishing its register?  I don’t know when the county decided to start putting it online, but if he was already a member at that time, did he vote against it?

For an example of how boring the register of interest is look at Duncan Crow’s own entry in the county council register.   It is even more boring than my entry was when I was a councillor – at least I had a job to list on it.  Or is that the sort of malicious comment they are talking about?

I mentioned a surprise in the first paragraph.  The surprise was that two members of the council have declared on the register that they are freemasons.   I really thought that nobody under 60 would bother joining that bunch of weirdos.  The well-known local agitator referred to above has often voiced his opinions about masons in the council and I thought it was too far-fetched.  Call me cynical, but why would anybody do that?

Do they think to themselves: I would like to do something charitable, shall I make out a standing order to Oxfam?  Volunteer at a local charity?  Or shall I join a quasi-religious, semi-secret society, bound by arcane rituals, and with a reputation for casting a malign corrupting influence over the legal system, the police, and other public bodies?  Surely it is not the first choice for anybody who’s only motivation is good works, and yet that is the only aspect that masons ever mention.

I believe you have to be invited to join.  Is the initial approach one where a mason takes you to one side and asks if you want to be involved in a charitable organisation with no personal benefit whatsoever like some sort of  up-market chugger?  Doesn’t seem likely does it?  I will remain deeply suspicious of the organisation. Apart from anything else you apparently have to profess a belief in a supreme being which is odd enough in itself.

What are these suggested measures?

Pursue economic development objectives… blah blah…  university… blah blah

Fine. But that is just carrying on with what is already being done isn’t it?  Nothing of interest here. Move on.

Ensure council building projects are completed on time.

Suppose so.  Some workers involved might prefer it if the work lasted longer if there was nothing else on the horizon for them, but you can’t really argue with this, except its another thing you should do anyway if you can.

Mortgage rescue scheme

Sounds good. They saw a government scheme, decided it could benefit residents so they signed up to it. Nothing wrong there. Shame they don’t do that with all government schemes that would benefit residents, like the free swimming scheme.

Free car parking to encourage shoppers

Fascinating. No -really.  It leads to an extremely topical analogy.  We are supposed to be encouraging greener behaviours and less car-dependency.  As we saw when petrol prices were recently 35% higher than they are now price is about the only thing that affects our behaviour.

The council are weighing up green policies on one side and economic effects on the other and deciding that the economy wins.  Sounds very much like the decision on Heathrow’s third runway but on a much smaller scale doesn’t it?  The Tories are happy to talk about green issues in opposition, but where they are in power they find a responsibility to the economy.  bear that in mind.  Should they win a general election they may have to stop plans for Heathrow because they have said they would so uncategorically, but they will decide that that they have to expand somewhere else instead. Stanstead? Gatwick?

Free parking means something else though.  Less revenue. How much would it cost?  Back to the free swimming, the council said they didn’t want to take part because there was a risk of it costing £40k or something like that.  So how much are they willing to incur in a guaranteed cost rather than a mere risk?   Remember that even if free parking schemes attract some more shoppers to the benefit of the town’s economy, there are many more who would have been parking here anyway whose parking charges have been taken out of the council’s coffers.

Reduce the time taken to decide planning decisions

Suppose so.  A difficult one though.  As I found out, one sure way to do that is to delegate as much as possible to officers but that is anathema to many councillors and so difficult to achieve. You can also speed it all up by being less diligent.

Help for local shopping parades (e.g. web sites)

Yes. A good website for Somerfield in Bewbush is really going to persuade me to go there instead of to the Broadfield one (which is going to become a Morrisons in April!)   Local shops could get a bit more business by being better promoted, although probably more through getting listed on the various directories than through their own web sites.  Sometimes the biggest benefit from a web site is through the effect that there is something to appear on Google search results.

Not sure that any benefits will be in relation to the costs.

The one thing most obviously missing from this list is the thing that local parade shopkeepers have been asking for since long before the economy started playing up: cheaper rents.  In fact they were not even asking for cheaper rents – just smaller increases.  Given a choice, I am sure most independent shops would prefer to not have their rent increased by 50% or 100% than to have some Internet consultancy.  I haven’t carried out any sort of research; that is just a guess.

Claire Denman says “it’s important we, as a council, do everything within our powers to minimise the effects of the recession”.  Everything?   So how about rents in shopping parades?

So far 85% of councils have signed up for the scheme, but 100% of West Sussex’s councils have backed out.  Whatever reasons they give are not reasons – they are excuses.  The decision about whether to join in with this scheme is a political one, with the decision coming first and justifications sought afterwards.

The two main excuses reasons given are that there will be a small cost to the council and that over 60s from neighbouring districts that have opted out will pile in across the border to take advantage.  The second point disappears if the neighbouring districts are also taking part – so not a problem for most of the East Sussex districts except where they are adjacent to West Sussex or Kent, but that has not put them off.

As for the cost justification, in Crawley it has been worked out to be something like £40,000 I think.  This week the council has been crowing about saving £400,000 by changing the management at the leisure centre.  They could have settled for a saving of £360,000 instead.

In Horsham there is an additional aspect that does not really apply to Crawley, where there is a brand new swimming pool, and that is that joining the free swimming scheme gives access to a one-off capital grant for modernising swimming facilities.  The grant is based on the size of the over-60 population and depends on the council having modernisation plans. The total pot of grant money is something like £60 million over three years.  Even if Horsham has a lower than average over-60 population (which I doubt) it could easily more than make up for any notional loss in revenue in the form of a share of the capital funds.

It all depends on attitude.  If you really want to do it you will look for, and find, a way to do it.  If you don’t want to do it you will use that energy searching for excuses not to do it and that, unfortunately, is the attitude taken by the West Sussex councils.