17 June (Part 1) - Corporate boredom
Even the most exciting of council meetings have their boring bits and at some
of the more obscure ones the bore quotient can reach 100%. If I see
‘Finance and Corporate Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee’ on the
council’s calendar it’s not much of an incentive to head for the Civic Centre.
My colleague Nicholas Dowling has a special interest in the money side of
council affairs and isn’t so easily put off. He had read the Agenda to last
Thursday’s meeting in advance and decided that it would be difficult to stretch the
meeting out for longer than ten minutes and he lives close by so he became Bexley
council’s almost solitary observer. This is his report…
I thought I’d wander up and see what was afoot at the
Finance and Corporate Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee and as usual
I was not part of a big crowd; there was one other member of the public present and I
think he was a guest of the Labour councillors.
Noting that there was one Agenda item to be nodded through I was not expecting a
lengthy affair; and I was not wrong. Starting at 7:15 p.m. chairman Philip Read
sped through proceedings in four minutes flat - and that included a nice jibe from
councillor Stefano Borella enquiring why such a paltry meeting had to be held anyway.
It transpired the reason was councillor Read’s failure to notice that the item on the
Arrangements for Undertaking the Committee’s Business had not been put to the vote at the
previous two minute meeting held on 22nd May 2013. This is precisely the sort of incompetence
expected of a Bexley councillor trousering a £7,689.92 special allowance on
top of his councillor’s pay!
With this faux pas dealt with we moved rapidly on to the
Business Rates Retention Scrutiny sub-group meeting which started at 7:21pm. It
was left to the doddering councillor Colin Tandy to nominate the rogue
councillor Peter Craske as chairman of this august body – it appears that the
dastardly councillor must serve more purdah before his sins are fully
forgotten but his cronies want to sling him another allowance to make up for
last year’s fall in councillor income.
His chairmanship was far from exemplary and the meeting was definitely one
of the most amateurish affairs I have attended; more akin to a brainstorming
session without too many brains being engaged. There was little or no structure to the meeting,
the Agenda points were addressed at whim by all and sundry and frankly nobody had a great deal to
say of pertinence to the matter in hand.
Peter
Craske launching into a clearly unprepared and off the cuff introduction
to this sub-group was almost immediately interrupted by his sponsor councillor
Colin Tandy and Peter allowed Colin to launch into a lengthy
ramble regarding his interpretation of the Finance Department’s background paper
on business rates retention. Suffice to say he managed to regurgitate it quite well,
although I am not sure how he believed he was enlightening his peers who had all clearly
read it for themselves.
We then had John Peters, the Deputy Director of Finance and Mike Ellsmore the
Director of Finance and Resources expand on things a little by pointing out that
there was no new money on offer and that ratable values were not going to be set
by local authorities; the gist of the deal being that for every £1 achieved
above a set base business rate of monies already collected, 30 pence would accrue to
the council’s coffers. On the other hand, we were reminded that there is a potential
£140 million black hole owing to outstanding appeals to the business rates dating back
to 2005. Fortunately it turns out that the two incinerators that Bexley council
permitted are jackpot business rate ticket items as are large retail units – the
proffered example being Tesco on the Civic Centre site. So now we start to see
the method in their planning madness!
Bexley, we were informed, had achieved a paltry 6% business rate growth in ten
years with the main reason for this being put down to poor or inadequate
transport links into and out of the Borough. Still nothing succeeds like failure
in local government and Will Tuckley can be rightly proud that his vastly
expensive leadership over much of that time has resulted in Bexley being able to go cap in
hand to central government and qualify for a £13·8 million
top-up for being unable to raise its assessed need from local
business rates. Funny how none of the Conservative councillors chose to dwell on the reason
for this windfall. I wonder if our glorious leader Teresa O’Neill will highlight this
‘success’ in her next Pravda report to the council?
So
did anybody have any ideas to raise extra business rates? No, not really.
However, councillor Nigel Betts did want his hairdresser to actually pay some
business rates as this astute businessman was using all sorts of reliefs to
mitigate any liability. How dare he? Warming to his theme Nigel’s next thrust
was to target businesses that operate from residential addresses.
Never let it be said that Tories want to encourage small business and
kindle the spark of entrepreneurial spirit. No helping hand from Nigel as he
wants you to pay tax and, yes, much more tax.
You could see the look of horror on Mike Ellsmore’s face at this suggestion. No doubt
he was thinking about how difficult it would be to define, let alone track and
trace these home outfits, and concentrating a lot of effort on these low value
businesses. They are bound to be small operations if they are based
in a shed, garage or spare room. It cannot be cost effective. Luckily
his colleague John Peters came to the rescue with a very plausible point that if
you charge business rates you cannot then charge council tax and you would also
lose any new homes bonus as well if that had previously applied. There was a
collective sigh of relief from the other Conservatives as they realised that they
could legitimately ignore this vote losing suggestion from one of their own!
Following on from the earlier point about poor transport links in Bexley, Labour
councillor Seán Newman saw a great opportunity to suggest, with a beaming smile,
that it would be splendid idea to promote a bridge over the Thames as
this would undoubtedly enhance ratable business values and provide more business
rates to the council. The red faced chairman, councillor Peter Craske turned a
deeper shade of beetroot and was for some reason rather dismissive of this point.
Councillor Newman then came up with the best idea of the meeting by suggesting that
council officers could get back to them with regeneration ideas and costings in order
that they could better understand the effects of improved transport links on
business rates and ratable values. This seemed to make Mike Ellsmore cringe
as he claimed it was a fairly futile exercise to try and guess the economic
effects of redevelopment. However, the idea did seem to have some
cross party support. I guess we will have to just wait and see if anything comes
of Sean’s brainwave. I mean who would have the audacity to try and use real
evidence to make a decision here in Bexley? Next they’ll be demanding accurate
forecasts and real targets? Crikey, where will it all end?
Mike Ellsmore then masterfully steered the sub-group towards
looking at reliefs on the business rates and no doubt this is the kind of tinkering
that will keep councillors and their officers suitably happy. I suspect that it won’t
generate a great deal of extra revenue but if maintaining the status quo and their own
salaries and perks is a primary motivation, it was a job well done.
Luckily the ruddy chairman, councillor Peter Craske wanted to democratise
business rates - which I must confess had me rather bemused. Still, this blue
sky thinking was later explained to all and sundry as a quid pro quo to local
businesses in that if you could get them to pay more business rates then you
could offer them more development and services. Obviously it was not
explained or considered how you would regenerate down at heel areas with this
cart before the proverbial donkey approach but then why let a little matter of
detail get in the way of the only suggestion you can come up with?
Peter Craske having heard enough of his group for one night glanced at the clock and
went into splendidly vague mode. He wasn’t sure if they would need a further
three or four meetings to finalise a report; nor could he say what it would be
about, but rest assured he was going to go away and work on something and
get back to them all at a point, yet to be determined, in the future. The
meeting was closed by 8 p.m., a staggering 39 minutes of very poor meeting.
I was far from impressed but not really surprised as I my expectations are
always low. The whole sorry affair was a complete waste of time and will produce absolutely nothing
of merit. They really do need to do better!
There, I told you it would be boring didn’t I? Not even Nicholas can spice it up.