This Week with Brian
Your Local Area
Including a high ground, a shorter election, the first business, tribal loyalties, the full text, predicted announcements, missing measures, homes and cars, a lightbulb moment, a bad place, too much loyalty, PFI deals, Module One, trains, football, libraries, resistance, appeals, a pain in the neck, girls and boys, someone else’s silver, Dulwich College, the most players and a lucky seagull.
Click on the appropriate buttons to the right to see the local news from your area (updated every Thursday evening).
If there’s anything you’d like to see covered for your area or anything that you’d like to add to something that we’ve covered already, drop me a line at brian@pennypost.org.uk.
Further afield
The assassination attempt on Donald Trump last weekend could hardly have worked out better for him: the moral high ground; a pause in the Democrat’s campaigning; an admission from Biden that a few days before he’d done another piece of mis-speaking by saying that his opponent should be “put in the bull’s eye”; and a fairly superficial but highly visible wound for the candidate (bandaged right ears have now become a fashion statement amongst Trump supporters: you couldn’t make it up). Needless to say, the conspiracy-theory mill has been working overtime on this. Isn’t it always in that country? Only about another three and a half months to go on this one…
[more below]
• The first day
Our elections take a lot less time, thank goodness, and the results of the latest one were on display in the Commons for the opening ceremony on 17 July. One of the first orders of business was the election of the Speaker (or the re-election of the old one). All the parties are invited to speak to offer their hosannas and, as there a quite a few of them, this took some time. Only Nigel Farage, in his maiden outing in that place, failed to avoid the temptation to make an overtly political point by having a pop at Lindsay Holyle’s predecessor, John Bercow, for trying to derail Brexit.
A subsequent speaker repeated the worthy but unlikely hope that the new parliament would set tribal loyalties to one side. He nodded at Farage, sitting directly behind him, as he said this. The Reform UK’s leader’s comment couldn’t be heard, but his expression said “yeah, right”. Sunak probably picked that up as well, and sighed. Yes, the Conservative nightmare had really happened and was alive and well a few benches back from him.
• The King’s speech
This was, of course, the main attraction. As usual, this was chiefly notable for what it didn’t say, or didn’t say in detail (which, in fairness, is not its job). Here’s the text in full.
One of the first words used was “stability” (not something that generally requires legislation), followed by a pledge “to ensure that all significant tax and spending changes are subject to an independent assessment by the Office for Budget Responsibility”: this being a rather curt (but less so than planned) nod to Liz Truss’ disastrous go-it-alone budget. This was followed by economic growth, “prioritising wealth creation for all communities.” Nothing for any Tories to feel fretful about so far.
His Majesty then turned to housing: “My Ministers will get Britain building,” he assured his subjects, “including through planning reform, as they seek to accelerate the delivery of high-quality infrastructure and housing.” This is, as I said last week, pretty much a cut-and-paste from previous aspirations, right down to the 300,000 homes a year. No details are yet available as to what this “planning reform” might amount to nor of how any of the systemic problems with the current system can be resolved.
Education, the NHS, workers’ rights, climate change, tenancies, law and order, race equality and devolution also got mentions, as predicted, as did general commitments to Ukraine, NATO, better relations with Europe and peace in the Middle East. Again, no Conservative government would have done much differently. As Starmer had largely come to office as a result of former Conservative voters, this was both prudent and polite.
There were also a few themes which some of the remaining Tories might have blanched at. One was “to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the Lords”, something that’s so overdue as to be embarrassing. There’s nothing much wrong with the Upper House that halving its numbers and having elections for at least some of the members wouldn’t fix. At present, the only elections that take place there are when a hereditary peer dies and they are replaced as a result of an election conducted by the others: a process which makes the election of a new Pope seem positively inclusive. There was no mention of anything further – baby steps on this one, but at least ones in the right direction.
Even more welcome is fixing a still more embarrassing problem: “Measures will be brought forward to remove the exemption from Value Added Tax for private school fees, which will enable the funding of six and a half thousand new teachers.” The specific result, which is a hostage to fortune (and future pay settlements) seemed unnecessary as the proposal is correct on general principles. Further Conservative wincing may have greeted this.
Similar scepticism might have been felt at the announcement of a bill “to set up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power company headquartered in Scotland, which will help accelerate investment in renewable energy such as offshore wind,” and “to improve the railways by reforming rail franchising, establishing Great British Railways and bringing train operators into public ownership.” These both involve a long-overdue rolling back of established Tory articles of faith.
Finally, rather weaker, was the promise from CIII that “My Government recognises the need to improve water quality and a Bill will be introduced to strengthen the powers of the water regulator.” This stops short of the nationalisation many had hoped for. The way things are going, some of the firms might be bust by this time next year.
So, what was not mentioned? Two of the most glaring omissions were reforming the social-care system and dealing with the problem of council funding. These are intimately connected as it is councils that provide social-care services on behalf of the government. Mind you, HMK did end by saying that “Other measures will be laid before you” – in their words, “watch this space”. With luck something on these two matters will happen before both collapse under the weight of their considerable responsibilities, spiralling costs and increasingly unrealistic expectations.
• Homes and cars
Returning for a moment to this issue, an article in the “Road Rage” section of Private Eye 1628 points out that these 1.5m homes – if delivered – might present problems if also allied with the “growth-focussed approach”. Lord Gnome’s fear is that roads (already severely log-jammed in some areas) could become impassable. The author points out that building new railway stations close to green-field developments usually takes more than five years, even if they already have a railway line. Residents of Wantage will not need reminding about this.
The article goes on to point out, with this thought in mind, that bus services (probably subsidised) would be needed to make large new estates sustainable. It reminds us that unless these are established at the outset, the developments will be less attractive to those who can’t or don’t want to drive everywhere. Once people who do want to drive move in, then the need to establish bus services disappears.
This is probably exactly what both the developers and the local councils want. Developers have to pay contributions for mitigation measures but any suggestion of a long-term commitment is going to be unwelcome. Councils pay lip-service to public transport, but the cost of subsidising unprofitable bus routes often falls on them. Much better for both parties to say that some aspect of the circumstances of the development – insisted upon by the other party – made a proper bus service impossible and leave the residents to sort out matters for themselves (ie by driving).
Another point, which the Eye’s article doesn’t develop, is that the quickest way for development to happen is through conversions of office space to residential units under permitted development rights. If, as seems likely, these regulations are going to be loosened still further, we might expect more post-Covid transformations of offices into dwellings.
Some of these will be near existing transport links, but others will not. As such changes don’t provide all the developer contributions that the creation of other homes do (CIL is chargeable in some cases but not S106s), the local council is even less able to do anything about the consequences. The fact that the original offices didn’t need to be built near to shops, schools or medical facilities will make the use of car travel all the more likely.
• A former minister
The Post Office Inquiry continues and 17 July saw a former government minister, Kelly Tolhurst, give evidence. Yahoo News, quoting the BBC, reports that “she told the inquiry on Wednesday that the Post Office had initially reassured her about the robustness of the Horizon computer system and its chances of winning a case brought by 555 sub-postmasters five years ago.” When Mr Justice Fraser handed down the first of his landmark judgments in which he found in favour of the sub-postmasters in March 2019, Ms Tolhurst said it was a “lightbulb moment”.
Asked if she should have spotted some of the risks of Horizon earlier, she said: “Yes, I mean there’s lots of things I would wish I had done or said, or done differently. I can’t make any sort of excuses for that.”
Thus are we all trapped. Our jobs; our backgrounds; our pre-conceptions; our convenience – all conspire, at every point, to create a narrative which supports what we currently believe to be true. Only the bravest, the most reckless or the most dangerous can hope to challenge this. Such people are generally reviled until a massive change of view reverses public opinion.
This has happened with the Post Office, now the most despised organisation in the country. Is it entirely staffed by complete bastards? No. Then we have the postmasters, previously public enemy number one for many in the establishment. Are they all in fact saints? No. Were there some who, with a sigh of relief, have had a transgression swamped by this surprising change in the tide? Possibly. The full truth may never emerge, although few will argue that the Post Office screwed up on a spectacular scale.
None the less, I’m becoming depressed by the constant admissions of failure by those paid to do better. It seems clear that there was a serious culture of intimidation and suppression there which needs to be rooted out. The Inquiry is also telling us a lot about human fallibility. As I’ve previously suggested, some of the people who worked for the the PO, particularly in its legal department, were incompetent or worse. Others were involved in the problem more tangentially and failed to see something wrong that’s now obvious.
On 18 July, two former ministers (including Ed Davey) will be in the hot seat offering further mea culpas.
How many more apologies do we need? We all have regrets, despite sometimes having acted for the best motives. The Post Office as it was, and perhaps is, is a dysfunctional mess. The postmasters are probably mostly innocent. I may be missing the point but, as compelling as I’ve found this legal vivisection, I’m starting to wonder what more we can learn from it. Compensate, re-structure, learn and move on.
• Covid judgment
This is the stage that the Covid Inquiry has started to reach when Module One of Baroness Hallett’s 240-page report was published on 18 July. It singles out a number of ministers, including Hunt and Hancock, for having filed to rectify flaws in contingency planning and felt that the government had been focussing on the wrong kind of pandemic (flu rather than Covid).
This article in The Guardian takes a look at the key findings, the over-arching conclusion of which was that “the processes, planning and policy of the civil contingency structures within the UK government and devolved administrations and civil services failed their citizens.” Hallett makes a number of specific suggestions about how the effect of future pandemics could be mitigated, warning that it’s a question of “when, not if” the next one will strike.
This is just the first part, to set the scene of where the UK was when the virus arrived. A further six, or perhaps eight, modules will follow. Let’s hope the next pandemic holds off until these are published and their lessons absorbed. In the meantime, Module One will be providing some serious food for thought in Whitehall and Westminster.
• And finally…
• The USA is currently in a bad place. Its main man is past his prime, slow off the mark and generally but a shadow of his former self. Doubts exist as to whether he’ll be able to lead the line for another four years. It’s an unforgiving business and you’re judged not on any past records but on how well you might be able to cope with future challenges. Now is perhaps the time for the baton to be passed on.
• Exactly the same could be said about Harry Kane. There was no way he was fit, mentally or physically, in the final on Sunday. Don’t get me wrong: Spain, the best team in the world, were worthy winners and I congratulate them. However, I do wonder what Watkins or Toney might have been able to do. We were on a 10/1 shot and this could have made the difference. Southgate, who seems like a decent and in many ways effective man, was perhaps guilty of being too loyal: or too cowed by dressing-room politics.
• Some fear that the new government’s policies will mark a return to the times of the PFI deals first launched in the early 1990s. The Morning Star suggests that “the big danger is that, like Labour’s last public-private partnership, the private corporations will get all the growth, while the public sector gets ripped off.” It adds that if their big private investors put in more of the money, as Rachel Reeves has demanded, “they can call more of the shots. This is not really a national wealth fund because most of the money will not be national.” i has a similar concern, fearing that “it may be more expensive than using public funding in the long run”.
• The Guardian reports that a rapid resolution in the dispute with the train-drivers union might produce some good results before too long. These strikes have been going on for the past two years. Other issues with other rail unions also require resolution: and then there are the doctors…
• Never mind Covid: the loss of resistance to drugs that combat diseases like malaria, and the likely similar fate of many antibiotics, perhaps represent our greatest global public-health hazard.
• Life has recently been dominated by a pain in my neck the like of which I’ve never had before. This has now started to recede, only to be replaced by a distant but manifest throb in a lower-left molar. If it’s not one thing, it’s something else…
Across the area
• Someone else’s silver
It’s well known that Britain’s councils are in dire financial straits. Many have deficits which need plugging if a Section 114 notice (an admission of effective bankruptcy) is to be avoided. No one can say for how long the current squeeze will last so it’s hard for councils to know what solutions to find. Selling capital assets to plug expenditure gaps is, long-term, a recipe for disaster but, in the short-term, is sometimes necessary. Selling your own family silver for this purpose is risky enough: worse still is when you end up selling someone else’s.
West Berkshire Council has a deficit of about £9m in its Special Educational Needs (SEN) provision. As the Council only has reserves of about £4m, this would normally make it vulnerable to a S114. However, thanks to a piece of creative accounting sanctioned by Whitehall, this can be kept 0ff the balance sheet for this year at least. Whether the new government will extend this scheme is uncertain.
Local Education Authorities (LEAs) have the power to claw back balances which they regard as too high. This document, prepared for a recent meeting of the WBC Schools Forum, explains that “the maximum amount that could be clawed back each year is the amount of school balance in excess of 10% of their budget share. This is subject to leaving the schools with a minimum of £50,000 balance.” The paper went on to identify about a dozen schools from which a total of about £2.85m would be clawed back.
There seem to be a number of problems with this…
- This Gov.uk document (section 6) refers to this measure being applied to “schools which have built up significant excessive uncommitted balances or where some level of redistribution would support improved provision across a local area.” It seems moot as to whether tipping all this money into the SEN pot satisfies the second part of this. There’s also the word “uncommitted”. What is the school meant to do: get suppliers to raise invoices well in advance of having done the work just so the funds can be “committed”?
- This claw-back was due to happen from April 2025. Last month, however, WBC pulled this forward by a year (so, effectively, back-dating it). This was probably prompted by two things: if you know you’re going to have unspent money taken back then you spend it; and the cash was needed not next year, but now. The Schools Forum, which may or may not be a suitably effective vehicle for scrutinising such decisions, gave way.
- Schools have to deal with this almost a quarter of the way into the financial year and a week before the end of the academic one: not great timing by any standards.
- Much of this money was raised by the schools themselves and their PTAs for specific projects, often ones that WBC had decided not to fund. To claw this back seems like a landlord not only refusing the fix a tenant’s roof but also grabbing most of the money that the tenant’s saved to do it themselves, which the landlord then uses to repair even more dilapidated buildings (or avoid bankruptcy).
- The school from which the majority of money is to be clawed back is itself an SEN specialist.
- This claw-back will only fill about a third of the SEN black hole. Where’s the rest of it going to come from? And, even more worryingly, what’s going to happen next year?
The matter was given a brief airing at the meeting of WBC’s Scrutiny Commission on 17 July (you can watch here from about 1′ 45″). In answer to a question from the Chair, the financial portfolio holder Iain Cottingham said that PTA-raised funds should not be subject to claw-back unless they’d been moved to the school’s general account, in which case they would be.
However, WBC Scheme for Financing Schools 2024-25 makes no reference to this. Indeed, clause 8.3 expressly says that “schools may retain income from fund-raising activities” and is silent regarding the account in which it’s held. The new MP for the area, Olivia Bailey, agrees that this money should be ring-fenced and has promised to raise the matter with the DfE.
It would seem that the LEA can only claw back money which has come from government funding, not just anything in the account. To be compliant, WBC needs to establish the provenance of the funds and only claw back from the public ones.
WBC Councillor David Marsh is hoping to ask the following questions at the meeting of WBC’s Full Council on 18 July:
- Is WBC aware that this week’s decision to claw back some £2.8 million from agreed school budgets – three months into the financial year, having initially promised that there would be no such “clawback” until 2025 – has caused anger, dismay and distress in schools across the district, created a huge amount of work for hard-pressed head teachers and business managers in the last full week of the school year, and so undermined relations between maintained schools and the local authority that the council’s strategy – “endeavour to retain current schools within the Local Authority rather than becoming academies/joining multi-academy trusts” – is put at risk?
- Has the council fully taken into account the legal and moral implications of the decision to target the agreed budgets of 12 West Berkshire schools – including primary and secondary schools, a nursery school, a school for children with complex learning difficulties, and a college for those unable to access mainstream education – in order to achieve a one-off reduction in the High Needs Block deficit which, even if these measures take effect, will still total more than £6 million?
- The Downs School has self-generated over £700,000 of income in the past three years, including £147,000 in fund-raising through its charitable trust. How can the council justify the decision to claw back £490,000 which includes money that has been raised by parents specifically for the school?
• CIL appeals
Earlier this year, West Berkshire Council announced plans to commission a review aimed at improving the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) customer journey. For some residents, the journey was rough, expensive and characterised by very poor customer service: a bit like a long British Rail trip in the 1970s.
This is a reminder that applications are now open for the discretionary review of historical CIL payments. Please click on the link to see the Discretional CIL Householder Review Scheme application form. You will also find information on the eligibility criteria and how applications will be assessed on that page. If you have any questions or difficulty completing the form please email cilreview@westberks.gov.uk for assistance.
• Local libraries
Click here for the July 2024 Libraries newsletter from the West Berkshire Library Service. Items covered include the summer Reading Challenge, the West Berks Book Challenge, summer activities in your local library for children and adults, wellbeing classes, e-library books and useful links.
News from your local councils
Most of the councils in the area we cover are single-tier with one municipal authority. The arrangements in Oxfordshire are different, with a County Council which is sub-divided into six district councils, of which the Vale of White Horse is one. In these two-tier authorities, the county and district have different responsibilities. In all cases, parish and town councils provide the first and most immediately accessible tier of local government.
West Berkshire Council
• Click here to see the latest Residents’ news Bulletin form West Berkshire Council.
• Click here for details of all current consultations being run by West Berkshire Council.
• Click here to sign up to all or any of the wide range of newsletters produced by West Berkshire Council.
• Click here for the latest news from West Berkshire Council.
Vale of White Horse Council
• Click here for details of all current consultations being run by the Vale Council.
• Click here for latest news from the Vale Council.
• Click here for the South and Vale Business Support Newsletter archive (newsletters are generally produced each week).
• Click here to sign up to any of the newsletters produced by the Vale’s parent authority, Oxfordshire County Council.
Wiltshire Council
• Click here for details of all current consultations being run by Wiltshire Council.
• Click here for the latest news from Wiltshire Council.
Swindon Council
• Click here for details of all current consultations being run by Swindon Council.
• Click here for the latest news from Swindon Council.
Parish and town councils
• Please see the News from your local council section in the respective weekly news columns (these also contain a wide range of other news stories and information on activities, events and local appeals and campaigns): Hungerford area; Lambourn Valley; Marlborough area; Newbury area; Thatcham area; Compton and Downlands; Burghfield area; Wantage area.
• Other news
• Rural business in West Berkshire have so far received funding grants worth £160,000 from West Berkshire Council to help boost the local economy and promote sustainability – and there’s more money to be give away. More information can be found here.
• Coffee and tea pod recycling has recently been made available at West Berkshire Council recycling centres.
• Councils from across the South East (including West Berkshire) have come together to create the country’s largest local authority fostering partnership to increase the number of foster carers across the region.
• West Berkshire Council reports that the Climate Ambassadors Scheme, supported by Department for Education, is recruiting volunteers.
• West Berkshire Libraries will through the Summer Reading Challenge be encouraging primary age children to read up to six library books and to collect free incentives from their local library for their achievements as they read, with medals and certificates for everyone who completes the challenge.
• The animal of the week is this lucky seagull which was rescued from being trapped at the top of a (badly designed) lamp post in Glasgow. The video has a warning: “Contains behaviour which could be imitated” – not by me…
• A number of good causes have received valuable support recently: see the various news area sections (links above) for further details.
The quiz, the sketch and the song
• And so it’s time for the Song of the Week. With the holiday season starting in earnest, what better than almost the best song Blur ever did: the wonderful Girls and Boys.
• Followed by the the Comedy Moment of the Week. You’ve had enough of football? Well, here’s a bit more from Mitchell and Webb.
• And concluding with the Quiz Question of the Week. This week’s question is: Which English Premier League club had the most players taking part in Euro 2024? Last week’s question was: Apart from both being wonderful writers in their very different ways, what do Raymond Chandler and PG Wodehouse have in common? Chandler, the master of genre-defining hardboiled US prose and Wodehouse, the quintessential Englishman, both attended the same English public school, Dulwich College – through not quite at the same time, as PG was a few years older. What a thought that would be. These are also two of only a handful of writers in English whose surnames have become commonly used adjectives to describe their style. It’s certainly hard to think of two writers whose style are more immediately distinctive, nor so different from each other’s.
For weekly news sections for Hungerford area; Lambourn Valley; Marlborough area; Newbury area; Thatcham area; Compton and Downlands; Burghfield area; Wantage area please click on the appropriate link.
