Local Government Reorganisation in Suffolk - the three Unitary solution has it...

The Conservatives at the County Council having thrown a large chunk of public money at trying to persuade us that what Suffolk really needed was a Unitary County, the Secretary of State, Steve Reed, has concluded that the three Unitary solution proposed by the Districts and Ipswich Borough Council was his preferred choice.

I have to admit that I'd rather have seen a rebirth of East and West Suffolk, as I was of the view that two councils, each serving around 400,000 residents, was probably more faithful to the criteria laid down by the Government and would offer two vaguely sensible and coherent geographical areas.

But Ipswich Labour wanted something that they might have an outside chance of winning and so, here we are. The proposals read as follows:

• Western Suffolk Council (current local government areas of West Suffolk, 21 parishes from Mid Suffolk, and Babergh (less 31 parishes)).

• Central and Eastern Suffolk Council (current local government areas of Mid Suffolk (less 29 parishes), and East Suffolk (less 25 parishes).

• Ipswich and South Suffolk Council (current local government areas of Ipswich, 31 parishes from Babergh, 8 parishes from Mid Suffolk, and 25 parishes from East Suffolk).

Admittedly, the Written Statement made to the two Houses of Parliament gets the constituent parts of Western and Central and Eastern mixed up - oh how we laughed when we read the Statement - but it does look like the decision is pretty much what the District/Ipswich bid proposed.

I would say that Western Suffolk, centred on Bury St Edmunds, and Ipswich and South Suffolk, centred on Ipswich, are broadly sensible, but Central and Eastern Suffolk, whose only significant town is Lowestoft at its north-eastern corner, stretches all the way across to Rattlesden, whose residents may well never have been to Lowestoft. And Creeting St Peter will be joining them, despite the fact that we're about ten miles from Ipswich, eighteen miles from Bury St Edmunds and forty-five from Lowestoft.

I'd argue that, if you really want to make local government feel remote from the citizens it serves, an arrangement like that will achieve exactly that, and a Unitary authority that includes the deprivation that Lowestoft suffers from, with the Notting Hill on Sea that is Aldeburgh, the "bow and arrow" county that is Eye and its surrounds and Stowmarket, with its sea of new housing estates, is going to suffer from a split personality pretty quickly.

And given that the new Unitary is highly likely to be "no overall control" from the outset, it could be a trying few years for those trying to make it all work.

The only consolation is how badly the Conservatives have taken the whole thing. Our prospective new County Councillor, Matthew Hicks, is apparently astounded, which given that the evidence is that Suffolk residents were opposed to a single Unitary by a margin of 2:1, merely reminds me how difficult Suffolk Conservatives find the whole "democracy thing".

But unless something is done to secure local government finances going forward, this may be only delaying the inevitable. Suffolk County Council was creaking under the costs of SEND and social care, and neither of those is going to improve any time soon, so this may be just a first step towards a Unitary County or even a Region. Only time will tell...

Thredling - a warning of things to come?

The late breaking decision to reinstate the County Council elections in May means that the new boundaries for Suffolk County Council kick in. And yes, the elections should be taking place but, for Creeting St Peter, it comes with a bit of a sense of loss.

I don't tend to be too kindly towards non-Liberal Democrat councillors - for obvious reasons - but the new boundaries mean that our current County Councillor will be fighting a division that doesn't include us, and it must be said that he has, from our perspective, done a very good job, attending as many Parish Council meetings as he can - indeed, he's missed precious few - and playing a full part in our meetings. You might almost say that he's been our "sixth councillor".

At our meeting last week, my colleagues and I passed a motion thanking him for his service to our community, which is not a common event in our recent history. And yes, Keith Welham is a Green, but credit where credit is due. In fairness, he's probably fit in nicely with the Liberal Democrats, but the Greens asked him first, apparently, so their gain is our loss, I suppose.

Instead, we leave Stowmarket North and Stowupland and have been assigned to Thredling division. Don't look for Thredling on a map of Mid Suffolk - you won't find it - as, in the traditional Suffolk fashion for never discarding anything, the division is named after a Saxon hundred (see also Bosmere, Thedwastre, Thingoe...).

Thredling is a diverse County division, consisting of twenty-five parishes across a swathe of Mid Suffolk with little in common. The current incumbent is Matthew Hicks, the Conservative Leader of the County Council, who has usually won with plenty to spare. He might not have it so easy this time.

The Greens will no doubt give him a stiffer challenge, given that they did well in a lot of the constituent District wards in 2023, and he can expect to haemorrhage votes to Reform to the right but, regardless of who wins, I don't expect to see much of them - trying to find time to visit twenty-five parishes and attend all of those County meetings would be a stretch for anyone.

And, perhaps more critically, we've done very well out of the locality funds for our County and District Councillors in recent years, and whoever wins in Thredling will have many more calls on those funds than Keith ever had. Luckily, we probably don't need very much just now, but you never know.

I will make a point of inviting all of the candidates to attend our Annual Parish Meeting on 18 May - if you don't ask, you certainly won't get - but I won't be delaying the start of the meeting in the hope that they're simply running late...

Creeting St Peter: keeping the finances on an even keel

As my reign of terror glorious leadership of Creeting St Peter Parish Council nears its end, I am beginning to reflect on what I’ve achieved during the nearly eight years that I’ve been its Chair.

It would be self-indulgent to take too much credit - I’ve been lucky enough to have had the support of two good Parish Clerks whom I could trust to handle the administrative stuff and keep the show on the road, and fellow councillors who have both placed their trust in me and shared the load in terms of tasks performed.

But there are some things that have been successful over the years.

I’m still proud of the efforts we put in (and still put in) on the Gateway 14 development. We wrote a serious, credible response to the initial hybrid planning application - much of which turned out to be entirely prescient - and continue to lobby the District Council to fulfil their commitments as owner of the site.

We got new street lighting for the village - taking advantage of a County Council offer to let us piggyback on their massive order. As a result, we have streetlights that work, cost less to maintain and power, and reduce light pollution.

The new speed indicator device has evidently reduced speeding through the village, making the effective shared space - we don’t have pavements - safer for everyone.

And the finances are healthy. I had worried about staffing costs, but the retirement of our Responsible Finance Officer has been managed in terms of expenditure, and we have been able to freeze the precept for 2026/27. Quirkily, because the number of households has increased marginally - don’t ask me how - this means a small cut in the Band D charge.

My successor as Chair will inherit some challenges, it is true. Rumoured housing development will, if it happens, encroach further towards the village, and our new County Councillor (and the replacement Unitary Councillor in due course) will be more remote and probably less generous in terms of grants. They will, however, have a solid financial and organisational base to work from.

I’d like to think that I’ve done my best, and whilst I may not have always been entirely focused, my heart has been in the right place. I’ve learned an awful lot about governance, leadership and community, and had the opportunity to play a role on the national stage for our sector.

All in all, not too bad, I guess…

Natalism: the next "interesting" set of policies coming our way?

If you follow what Reform UK are campaigning on, and I wish that I didn't, you know that many of their ideas come from thinktanks which slavishly follow a right-wing perspective. Reduce immigration, attack benefit claimants, penalise diversity - that sort of thing.

But, taking immigration, if you've succeeded in restricting the number of new immigrants to virtually none, you've then got the problem of how you maintain the size of the workforce in what is likely to be an aging population, given that the rate of births per woman over lifetime has fallen below the replacement rate, something which is true across most of the developed nations.

Well, the Heritage Foundation, one of America's leading conservative thinktanks, has a series of suggestions. You might not like them, especially if your idea of a model family is not one with a husband, a wife, 2.2 children, a house in the suburbs with a picket fence and some sort of medium-sized dog.

Naturally, single parents are an abomination, and unmarried ones almost as bad, so our friends at the Heritage Foundation recommend something termed a "marriage bootcamp",

where non-profits, including church groups, could run a program that covers important topics like communication, money management, blended families, fidelity, and conflict resolution. Successful completion of the program would mean that couples are ready to walk down the aisle at a communal wedding by the end of the bootcamp. The bride and groom would also be matched with a mentor couple to help them to navigate the highs and lows of early married life.

Now that may seem idyllic to the sort of people who would give the Moonies a second hearing, but I’m not sure that it sits well in a society where we have been told that there is no such thing as society. It also smacks of state-sponsored relationships, following a cookie-cutter pattern.

Tomorrow, I’ll look at the bribes they’re proposing to offer…

Thinking about trains again...

Professional training takes me to Croydon in a few weeks time which means navigating our official travel provider's website. And clearly, it's been a while since I've done so because I was surprised today to find that the new one works extremely well, which is not a phrase commonly associated with anything in the public sector and particularly anything contracted out by the public sector.

But it rather led me to thinking about trains (aahhh, trains...).

Firstly, what very good value a Senior Railcard is at £70 for three years if, like me, you don't drive. I paid mine off within the first month, and it even saves you, the taxpayer, money as I use the railcard, paid for out of my own funds, to buy discounted tickets for work purposes.

But I also got to thinking about interrailing, which is a bad idea. Last year, I travelled to Lecce via Nuremburg, Brno and Udine, and back via Rimini, Basle and Mainz, with a detour through Liechtenstein in search of schnitzel. But, if another opportunity arises, I'm thinking of heading to the Arctic Circle... And yes, there might not be schnitzel (which is a pity) but the scenery would be stunning...

Does technology offer a solution to my lack of focus?

Ten years ago, I got myself a Fitbit and started walking 10,000 steps each day. And, apart from a brief, food poisoning induced, hiatus in February 2016, I haven’t missed a day since.

The Fitbit kept me on track, reminding me to walk, and congratulating me when I reached my target, which feels like the right sort of motivational tool for someone like me. The calendar on my smartphone reminds me of events to attend, and sometimes I’m even prepared for them.

But my organisational capability has, up until now, relied on my fairly reliable memory. And, whilst it is generally good, I do tend to be easily distracted from carrying out essential tasks. And so, I’m trying out an app-based reminder system, which offers me an e-mail highlighting the tasks to be carried out that day. So far, I would have to say that it hasn’t entirely dealt with my tendencies to prevaricate, but I do have a sense of mild progress.

I’m also working with a shopping list app that Ros can add things to, reminding me to pick them up on my lunchtime walk around the town.

Think of it as less “building a bettter walrus” than “developing a more organised walrus”. Wish me luck!

Creeting St Peter: another year of financial prudence

In my capacity as finance portfolio holder for my beloved Parish Council, over the years I’ve been preparing what I tend to think of as cautious budgets, designed to meet our ongoing spending needs and avoid drastic year on year increases in the precept. That hasn’t always been easy.

When our Clerk resigned a few years back, it proved necessary to employ both a Clerk and a Responsible Finance Officer, increasing our required spend quite significantly. Luckily, I was able to manage the situation thanks to a lengthy period without any professional staff at all - I was, for a while, Chair, Clerk and Responsible Finance Officer and, as a sitting councillor can’t take a salary, the resulting savings came in handy later.

But I had it all covered and then, suddenly, our Responsible Finance Officer retired, meaning that we were, suddenly, underspending on our salaries budget line once again.

As a result, our reserves increased a bit and I was able to freeze the precept. This year, I’ve proposed another standstill budget. Curiously, or at least, it was curious to me until I gained a better understanding of parish council finances, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the band D charge is unchanged. Each year, Mid Suffolk District Council tell us how many qualifying households there are in the parish. If that number increases, the band D charge is reduced slightly, and the reverse is true if the number decreases.

We have increased the hours of our Clerk, who has taken on the role of Responsible Finance Officer, but otherwise our spending remains modest. We do need to pay for grass cutting, dig bin emptying and street lighting - we own our ten street lights but have a maintenance contract with Suffolk County Council - and we have subscriptions to pay to the Suffolk Association of Local Councils and the National Association of Local Councils amongst other things. But most of these are predictable and subject to modest annual increases at or around the rate of inflation, so making budgeting pretty straightforward.

And, as it may be the last budget I draft, I’m pleased that I’ll be leaving the Council with extremely healthy finances. Indeed, it might be said that our most pressing concern is to reduce our reserves somewhat, given that we currently hold reserves representing about 250% of our annual budget. Some of this is earmarked to replace aging play equipment, and some will go towards replacing the street lights in 2046 or thereabouts, but there is some money that really could be spent on village improvements, if it wasn’t for the fact that most of our meagre needs are generously met from the locality funds of our County and District Councillors.

Something for me to reflect upon in the months ahead, perhaps?…