There’s an interesting Town Council Election in Whitehouse Ward this time. There are four candidates standing for three places. So in this election, it’s not a question of who’s going to win , it’s a question of which one out of the four isn’t going to be elected.
Three of the candidates are Conservatives – Eddie Dray, Robin Dray and Jack Lawmon. The other candidate is Kim Gandy, standing as “Rayleigh Resident For Cutting Council Tax”.
We have to say, if you are looking for a council to criticise for high levels of council tax, it probably isn’t Rayleigh Town Council. They don’t have an expensive cabinet system like Rochford District, they don’t pay out millions for pothole compensation like Essex County Council, and they charge the lowest amount of council tax of any of our local parish councils:
One odd fact about this election is that the four candidates live in four different houses in the same road – Eastwood Road.
A candidate for cutting council tax. Single issue politics- what an annoyance.
Single issue politics has a role to play – doubt if its the right issue for Rayleigh TC right now.
It will be very interesting to see any election leaflet with specific proposals as to where Rayleigh Town Council can save money. There are opportunities to attend all Council meetings as a member of the public and I am sure the accounts are available to view. So the challenge is to show us i.e Rayleigh Town Council where savings can be made. Remembering that there are some things that legally have to be done.
I would be very interested to hear more about your views on single issue politics Chris.
Admin
Your comments on Parish precepts perhaps ignore the fact that Rayleigh has by far the largest tax base, so it’s not really surprising that it can very slightly undercut other Parishes through being able to offset the baseload costs of the admin required of any Parish, essentially similar however large or small, rather more widely and easily. So let’s hear a cheer for Ashingdon, Great Wakering, Hawkwell and Rochford too amongst others.
As for your comments re Rochford District’s allegedly ‘expensive’ cabinet system, you have a surprisingly short memory about the savings achieved by cutting the number of committees, enabled by the cabinet system.
Getting side-tracked here a bit Colin , but here are three reasons to bring back committees:
1) Yes, It would save money, To quote the Daily Mail , for heaven’s sake. “The highest single increase over the past five years was at Rochford council in Essex, where allowances increased by 158 per cent – almost ten times the rate of inflation over the same period.”
Look at last years allowances – http://www.rochford.gov.uk/pdf/council_democracy_allowance_1011.pdf You would save money if you replaced all those “Executive Portfolio Holders” allowances with 4 chairmans allowances and 4 vice-chairs allowances. Then there’s the leaders allowance…. currently £ 21249.96
If you delve back into the minutes of the 1992 – when some chap called Black was leader – we managed perfectly well without a ‘cabinet’ and it was a lot cheaper, even allowing for inflation:
For being leader young Black got £591 + £472 = £1063
2) Committees better utilise ordinary councillors knowledge and allow proper public exchange of ideas.
3) Be more democratic.
Alison – sometimes single-issue politics is the best way – the Suffragettes is an example. Then there’s fox-hunting (not an issue I feel strongly about). The anti-hunting lobby persuaded Blair’s Labour Party to make a election pledge to ban hunting – and Labour fulfilled that.
Single-issue candidates are where it gets trickier – if you stand for an election and win on just one issue, what are you going to do on all those other issues that crop up?
I also get the feeling that single-issue pressure groups are becoming more shrill in recent times – I hope we are not going the American road of ‘culture wars’ on things like contraception and evolution.
Chris
When I initially began drafting this I was almost minded to compare LibDems with the disingenuous Hullbridge Green Party Members who are doing such a disservice by so misinforming their community regarding housing and the Core strategy. However, very commendably you do allow genuine debate and responses opposing claims that you make on your website. It appears the Hullbridge Greens cannot defend their statements, so they simply refuse to post critical comments on their site, and it may explain why there are so few comments there!
Regrettably, however, I must take issue with your earlier comment here re the costs of the Cabinet system relative to Committees, which included references to grossly unfair and shallow old Daily Mail comments regarding RDC.
‘Chris Black’s allowance rises 492% (£6375 v £1076) for less responsibility, over 9.3% p.a. compound for 20 years!’, could potentially be the equally unkind headline response to your comment if anyone were ever minded to consider such.
You must know full well that all Councils’ Member Allowances across the country have risen greatly in real terms (way above inflation since 1992 of c. +162%). The rise is noticeable even in just the ten years since 2002 (when I was first elected as a Member of RDC), following the requirement by the Blair/Brown Labour governments that such allowances be set by independent advisory committees. Their quite laudable stated aim was to make a wider spectrum of society financially enabled to become Councillors. The figures you scurrilously quoted from the Daily Mail were highly selective and reflected, as you equally well know, only a period of catch-up which RDC was required to accept. The Daily Mail chose to sensationalise and grossly misrepresent the situation without recognising that RDC retained, and STILL RETAINS to the best of my knowledge, one of the LOWEST COST Member Allowance structures of councils in Essex and probably compares quite well even nationally.
Thus basic allowances rose such that, working from your own current allowance for example, even as only Leader of the Opposition now rather than Leader of the Council, it has risen to £6375 (basic Member Allowance £4250 + 50% as Leader of the Opposition). A Member acting as Chairman of a Committee would now receive a similar amount, and a Member acting as a Vice Chairman of a Committee would receive £4675 (£4250 + 10%). Thus each Committee would cost £2550 (£2125 + £425) in extra Member Allowances alone, even before the considerable further costs of the many Meetings for each Committee in additional Officer administration costs and travel expenses claimable by all its Members, plus the inherent slowness of Committee decision making.
I count savings from TEN regular Committees that were either disbanded as no longer required or are now chaired by our RDC Leader as part of his duties following the introduction of the Cabinet system. I somewhat doubt that you or many others could or would wish to give up their day job and take a pay cut to undertake the present role of Leader, assuming they possessed the far greater abilities now required than in 1992. Due to the extra demands imposed by Central Government in those intervening years, it moved much closer to a full time task even before the Cabinet system was introduced. Whatever the system we would still need a Leader of RDC, so no savings possible there.
That is certainly not to imply you personally may lack those Leader abilities, but to a degree I consider you have displayed a lack of judgement in a critical comment apparently made for the sake of a rather cheap and unwarranted shot at political point scoring in the heat of an election period.
As for democracy, the Review Committee remains and is chaired by Cllr Mrs Lumley, an opposition LibDem, and Executive decisions can also be called in to Full Council for full debate or questions by your so called ‘ordinary’ Members to provide their insights. Where local knowledge is especially useful is in Development Committee where, almost uniquely among UK local authorities, ALL 39 RDC Members are members of that committee subject to their undertaking mandatory training.
Colin,
The issue of the cabinet – and the particular way it operates in Rochford, isn’t going to go away, believe me.
Your calculations regarding myself are also quite a bit wrong.
Back in 1992, I received £1063.80 for effectively being council leader. Now I get £2124.96 for being opposition group leader – a 100% increase over 20 years, not 492%.
Back in 1992 I also received £706.80 as a basic councillors allowance – that basic figure for all councillors has gone up over 20 years to £4250.04.
Rochford doesn’t pay out the biggest allowances in England, but it certainly doesn’t pay out the lowest. If you compare us with Canterbury – with a much bigger population, a cathedral and a university – we pay our leader thousands of pounds more per year.
But anyway we have strayed a long way from the original post – which was the level of Council Tax set by Rayleigh Town Council. Which I’m not complaining about.
Chris
Why then did you introduce the scurrilous Daily Mail quote if you did not wish to have your own total allowances compared as well as those for all other Members which it related to?
I’m happy to have my total allowances compared – but sorry Colin, you didn’t do it correctly for 1992.
Nearly a week and no takers on the offer to show the Town Council how it could save money. Have been re elected so will raise any genuine ways that money can be saved.