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The Bradworthy Wind Turbines
Councillor
Christie's Weblog
From your Torridge District Councillor Peter Christie
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14th October '07
Members of Torridge District Council have spent the last couple of months deciding about what level to set their allowances at – and at the last council meeting plumped for the basic sum of £4800 with ‘Special Responsibility Allowances’ varying between £11,100 for the ‘Leader’ to £333 for the vice-chair of the Licensing Committee. I had asked for comparative figures from other councils and the results made interesting reading. The national average Leader’s allowance was £16,356 compared to Torridge’s £15,900 whilst the average basic allowance for councillors was £5648 p.a. for an average of the 21.9 hours per week spent on council/political business. Put this way you are getting a local council that is relatively cheap. Against this, of course, has to be weighed the fact that Torridge does have one of the lowest per capita incomes in the whole of Britain. The new system has, needless to say, thrown up some anomalies. Under the last council there was a special allowance for the councillor in charge of Northam Burrows but this has now gone – and councillor Len Ford who was nominated to the post resigned in protest at the meeting with his potential (unpaid) successor being Andrew Eastman. However you view it clearly a council career is not an easy way to riches, indeed as was pointed out the sums are actually below the minimum wage level and, as I always say to would-be councillors, you never join the council to become popular!
Torridge’s Planning Committee meetings attract far more people than any other council occasions mainly because so many people have a lot of hopes resting on the decisions being mulled over by the councillors. Moves to introduce public participation to allow applicants and objectors to speak were due to come to fruition this month but for some inexplicable reason have been delayed. Councillor Len Ford denounced this as a ‘slipshod’ and ‘appalling’ decision which didn’t reflect very well on the professionalism of the council – a view somewhat surprisingly shared by the Chief Executive John van der Laarschot who promised to expedite the whole thing. I look forward to this public input but have to remind objectors that the system is still weighted in favour of applicants who, if their scheme is not granted permission have the right of appeal – a right that does not extend to those objecting. Unfortunately only national legislation can change this inherently unfair situation but I cannot see much likelihood of change in the near future.
At the same meeting when this was discussed we looked at a decision by the Licensing Committee to issue 6 new taxi licences. Some councillors queried this asking if the licences were going to new entrants to the trade or were they going to existing taxi firms? The difference may seem academic but councillors were exercised by ideas of competitiveness with dark hints of under the counter licence selling being bandied about. It was pointed out that when this originally came before the Licensing Committee the vote over the issue was 4-4 with the decision only going ahead on the casting vote of the chairman Andrew Boyd. Councillor Boyd pointed out that the government were trying to deregulate all such licences i.e. bring in a free-for-all but by issuing 6 new licences in addition to the existing 47 Torridge were wiping out the local waiting list and effectively defusing the argument that somehow there was a large unmet demand out there. His didn’t satisfy members and Tony Inch called for the decision to be ‘referred back’ to the committee for extra perusal but this didn’t get enough support and the decision was allowed to stand. Personally having seen the problems following the Thatcherite deregulation of bus licences I can only consider it a retrograde step to apply the same free market thinking to taxis.
I have mentioned before how the new equality laws will probably see the abandonment of prayers at the beginning of council meetings. Not everyone will be sorry to see them go but when they do we will miss some unintentionally humorous moments. At out last full meeting, for example, the clergyman stood up and began ‘As James says….’ Quite a few councillors present looked rather startled at this thinking that somehow the council’s Leader James Morrish was somehow being given the weight of theological blessing – but no, it was a reference to the book of the apostle James in the Bible!
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