The Chair to advise the Committee of any items on which members of the public have requested to speak and advise those members of the public present of the details of the Council’s public participation scheme.
For those members of the public who have submitted any questions or statements, please note, a three minute time limit applies to each speaker and you will be asked to speak before Councillors debate the issue.
Temporary measures during the Coronavirus Pandemic
Due to the Government guidance on measures to reduce the transmission of coronavirus (COVID-19), we will holding meetings in a virtual manner which will be live webcast on our website. Members of the public will still be able to register to speak and ask questions, which will then be read out by the Governance and Democracy Case Manager during Public Question Time and will either be answered by the Chair of the Committee, or the relevant Portfolio Holder, or be followed up with a written response.
Minutes:
Four members of the public submitted statements and questions which were read out on their behalf:
1) Mr David Orr
I am a resident in the Unparished Vivary Ward of Taunton (formerly Killams and Mountfield). Taunton Unparished wards have long suffered from a democratic deficit when compared to the parished wards: No rights to statutory consultation on any community matter; no share of planning gain; no say, basically.
Highways England proposed an A358 Expressway but with just one flawed Orange route and a huge new M5 junction proposed at Killams adjacent to homes. Our Unparished ward had to fight to be heard and used our own money to fund the campaign for a meaningful consultation with multiple routes.
We worked closely with the parish of Stoke St Mary and envied their statutory consultation rights, paid clerk, community recognition and purpose.
It took 3 years for this Council to be formed from Taunton Deane and West Somerset Councils. It is a major oversight that the issue of anomalous Unparished wards in Taunton was not addressed at the same time.
The Charter Trustees were then formed but with the principal purpose of saving the ceremonial role of Mayor. However, that role and those costs are borne only by the Unparished wards and 45% of Taunton’s population, which is neither ideal nor fair.
It is my view that the Charter Trustees should not behave as a Shadow Town Council given the limited geography and community tax base. When the coronavirus pandemic is over, the UK will be left with a wartime level of debt and effectively be in negative equity. Any “New Normal” cannot involve the costly and confusing two tiers of five councils for Somerset. The County Council unitary proposal has the merit that by removing one of the current confusing two tiers of Local Government, it creates space for a Town Council for Taunton for an area far wider than the Unparished wards. All wards in Taunton will then be equally represented.
I worked with the late Sir Chris Clarke OBE and former County Council Leader back in 2004 when he worked for the Ministry for Communities and Local Government. Our preferred unitary model in 2004 was to revert to the historic boundaries of the ancient County of Somerset (to include North Somerset and Bath & NE Somerset) and create two new unitary councils (from eight existing Councils). That is still my preferred option. In this initial survey by the County Council, I believe that each Taunton Unparished ward should make their own survey response, just as each parished ward will.
Any attempt at a single response would add to the impression that the Charter Trustees are a Shadow Town Council. It could also result in a majority vote whereby the Lib Dem in-built majority on the Charter Trustees could be seen as imposing a party political view without any serious or meaningful consultation with communities in each Unparished ward.
Should the Secretary of State start a formal consultation on options for the future of Local Government in Somerset then I would like the councillors for Unparished wards to plan to engage with their communities and give them the same consultation rights and voice as the parished wards.
That would involve the elected councillors for each Unparished ward being funded to conduct public meetings and conduct a meaningful consultation in each community before responding to the Government.
Reform is long overdue and must now happen.
2) Mr Chris Mann
The Crescent in Taunton reminds us of how much business has changed in the last 50 years since your two tier management structure was last changed. All those insurance companies moved away, using massive improvements in communication and technology to reduce costs. This is a difficult time to be considering local government reorganisation, but new home working will bring further opportunities which must be directed to reducing our unnecessarily expensive council tax which impacts severely on many who pay more council tax than income tax.
I know you have merged some services such as building control and housing standards so why not chief executives, managers and councillors like Cornwall, Bath and North East Somerset, North Somerset, Wiltshire, Dorset and 150 other unitary councils?
In the UK, most monopolies have a regulator who, while allowing business choices, will disallow or fine inappropriate expenditure, waste or poor customer service. If democracy is ever to be the regulator of council services, you councillors should act as directors for your shareholder citizens, reducing costs and resisting the explosion in management consultancy that brought us CSL, Southwest One and the Ignite so called ‘transformation’. IT led transformations may be fun, and a break from routine and great for your managers CV, but they are often compared to borrowing your watch to tell you the time.
The final proof of the need for a unitary Somerset council was your council’s recent spending of £20m (£500 per household) on refurbishment of an unnecessary 1970s office and an unnecessary new IT system with unplanned redundancies, at the same time as a BBC Panorama programme on social care for the sick and disabled showed that Somerset County Council were desperate for more funding. In 2014, your council announced you would move into County Hall to reduce waste and duplication. This income misallocation would not have happened under a single unitary council.
One Somerset could save between £19 and £27m a year. If councillors had voted for a unitary Somerset at Express Park in 2007, your citizens could have been saved £250m plus £90m by not approving Southwest One and the Ignite transformation.
I am impressed with the One Somerset consultation and hope it could be implemented using the knowledge and common sense of your existing staff. I trust that this time you will be able to support this quite normal reform.
3) Ms Catherine Herbert
I strongly object to the trustees considering the idea of a unitary authority without actually asking the residents of the Unparished area what their views are.
For some time now many councillors from the Unparished area have made a big issue about how important the voice of the Unparished area is and how this has not been allowed to be heard. You have all promised that you will remedy this by putting in place the review that will allow wards to become parishes or become part of a town council, but nothing seems to be moving forward with this.
The idea of a unitary and if it is good or bad is not what I am really concerned about here, I (and many others if they realised) object to your small group giving an opinion on my behalf with zero consultation.
If we had a parish council then the details of this idea would be presented and discussed openly and residents would have opportunity to give their thoughts, undoubtedly there would be a variety of opinions and the council would then have to come to a consensus, but at least people would have had an opportunity to contribute and be heard. The charter trustees are an almost invisible group that 99% of the residents of the Unparished area know absolutely nothing about and do not know that you are spending their money and giving opinions on their behalf.
The Charter Trustees do not have the authority to act as a town council, it says this clearly on the webpage about you, so you do not have any authority to give an opinion on behalf of the Unparished areas residents.
I believe that you need to hold a consultation with the Unparished area and it will be a failing of democracy if this does not happen.
I look forward to be consulted about this and indeed other matters very soon.
4) Mr Roger House
The choice of higher level Council is the most important item on tonight’s agenda, but for a Unitary Council, Unparished Taunton must be changed hopefully to form a new Town Council.
My concern is that the 2007 Local Authority Act setting up Unitary councils as used by Dorset last year has clauses designed for a strong Unitary Council Base, by creating minimal assets for new parishes; legally these rules may not be able to be varied to create a strong Taunton Council.
In Dorset’s case Weymouth (47,000 population) was the only Unparished area, in July 2019 newspaper stories told of the hope of retaining some car park income rumoured to be £3 million. But at the end of the year I attended at Dorchester a Shadow Unitary Cabinet meeting, despite a last ditch request by the Chair of Weymouth and Portland Council, all the car park income was retained by the big Council.
I have passed the committee a copy of the January 2019 Functions and Assets Report for the new Weymouth Town Council with rules and proposals defining the new arrangements like:
If bodies fail to co-operate and agree on asset and financial transfers, the Minister for Local Government will intervene to limit transfers to a town council”.
One of the four key principals states there should be no financial detriment to the Unitary Council. All assets required for the delivery of council services and those capable of generating income are transferred to the unitary authority.
As a special case only beach income was left with the Town Council, then set up with annual expenditure of £3.3 million and local tax of £184 for a band home.
A decade earlier in a Wiltshire reorganisation, the county town of Salisbury City Council was formed owning its massive market and event square, income generating car parks and even a Crematorium, those days appear gone.
Can the Council and Charter Trustees seek legal advice to confirm if the Dorset rules and terms apply for Taunton, so there can be no income from car parks or re-acquisition of iconic Taunton buildings like the Municipal Buildings, Market House, or the old Produce Market on Firepool, to mitigate high town centre costs that we will inherit?
The Mayor thanked all those members of the public that had submitted statements and asked questions. She stated that as a Group, the Charter Trustees had requested of SWT Officers to look into the formation of a Town/Parish Council. It was stated that the proposed savings figures provided by Mr Mann could be verified with further information. The Mayor understood that the County Council were undertaking a separate public consultation on their proposals at the current time, whereas this meeting was to discuss responding to the Town and Parish Survey as a collective Charter Trustee body.
After a request from the Mayor to clarify whether the Charter Trustees could respond to the consultation as a collective, the Clerk confirmed that the Charter Trustees had been added to the consultee list by the County Council, so they had accepted and invited the Charter Trustees to respond, either individually or as a group. In terms of a precedent The Charter Trustees for Crewe in 2009 had been uncertain as to whether they could respond to their District Council’s survey on a Governance Review, but they had received legal advice that this was acceptable. However, they as a group could not agree on a collective response. The Clerk confirmed that it was for the Charter Trustees to decide whether they wished to submit a response as a collective, individually or submit none at all.