ConservativeHome's Local Government Blog

Stoke-on-Trent referendum confusion

A referendum is taking place in Stoke-on-Trent on October 23. Voters are being asked the following: "Are you in favour of the proposal for Stoke-on-Trent City Council to be run in a new way, which includes a councillor, who will be elected by the councillors of Stoke-on-Trent to lead the council and the community which it serves?"

Nobody seems to know what the 41-word question means. The BBC report that it is "if they want an elected mayor." But they already have one. Apparently, it is really asking whether they want to give their elected mayor full executive power. The wording of the question doesn't give much of a clue.

Marie Clair, of the Plain English Campaign, says:

"This is the problem with council and government documents.They feel they need to sound pompous and official-sounding, but they are serving the people and they just want to be told things in a straightforward way."

She's got a point, hasn't she? Councillors should insist that council officers use plain English - not least for all the reports they expect us to understand.

Conservatives in power

Harry Phibbs, the new editor of Conservative Home's Local Government Blog, needs your help.

As we work to be returned to Government nationally working out all our plans it is easy to forget that we already have considerable power through the control of 215 local Councils. What are we doing with that power? How are we learning from each other? What are our prospects for extending our representation in traditionally unfriendly territory?

As I am interested in exploring these questions I am delighted that Tim Montgomerie has appointed me as Editor of Conservative Home's Local Government Blog.

I hope that this site will offer practical advice for councillors and Council candidates. News of campaigning initiatives, byelection, defections and policy experiments. Wasting money and ways to avoid doing so will be a regular theme. Lessons from the strategies adopted by Conservative Groups whether in opposition, coalition, minority control  or overall control can be examined. Conservative success stories will be celebrated and Labour misdeeds exposed. Even in Labour Councils where there is little or no Conservative representation we will seek to find out what they are up to. It is hoped that prominent figures in the Party will contribute as well as ordinary councillors and Council candidates from around the country. But this website is independent and will not seek to prohibit criticism of Conservative councils when it is reasonable.

My own background is in journalism and, for the last two years, as a councillor in Hammersmith and Fulham. Most of my existing contacts among fellow councillors are in London. But for this site to flourish I will need your help to achieve the widest participation. Please get in touch with your news and ideas. 

Harry Phibbs: In 2008 are surgeries still an effective use of local councillors?

Harry is a Hammersmith & Fulham councillor.

Councillors are not supposed to be full time but to bring some sense of reality from the outside world into Town Halls. Given each Council has a budget of tens of millions, usually hundreds of millions, it is a huge responsibility to keep track of it all so our time is very precious.

Like MPs, councillors have surgeries. Sometimes people go to the wrong one. When people have raised immigration or the NHS with me I have passed the details on to our MP. But more often the traffic is the other way, with people raising problems such as housing with their MP rather than the councillor.

When first elected in 2006 I was a bit put off surgeries because nobody turned up to the first couple I did. I had a book to read - but it was still a bit of an anticlimax. Meanwhile vast amount of case work came through by email. Cases brought by telephone comes not far behind (in a fit of accessibility which bemuses colleagues I have my mobile phone number listed on the Council website.) Then there are also plenty of causes I am given to champion by people I bump into in the street. In crude numerical terms surgeries are stradlers in terms of case work.

So to manage time sensibly I take the surgeries on a rota with my fellow two ward councillors rather than us all three turning up to each one. We have also reduced the frequency from weekly to monthly - with the offer to arrange to see someone straight away for anything urgent. Rationalising the time spent allows us to keep in touch with residents in other ways - not least canvassing regularly not just at elections.

But I am a convert to the value of keeping surgeries as an option for those residents who wish to use them. Often people want to show me papers, sometimes complicated diagrams in the case of planning applications. Not everyone has email. Often people prefer to discuss their problems face to face rather than over the phone. Perhaps they feel awkward asking for a separate meeting - feeling it would be a special favour while regarding a slot at a surgery as their due.

Those who come to surgeries are often at the end of the line. Baffled by jargon. Driven witless by bureaucracy. They are victims of the system that was supposed to help them. "My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised," declared Jesse Jackson when he was running for US President in 1984. Sometimes at the end of a surgery I'm reminded of his words.

Cllr Harry Phibbs: Improving adoption rates

Harry is a Hammersmith and Fulham Councillor.

Congratulations to Conservative Home for launching this new section.  We have too many arm chair generals in our Party grumbling about how David Cameron and the Shadow cabinet should be taking a tougher line on cutting tax, or fighting crime or raising school standards but at the same time ignoring the considerable power that we already have in local government to make a difference in these and other areas.

One of the most important tasks of a local councillor is as a "corporate parent" to the several hundred children in care that each Council looks after. But are we doing a good job? Statistically the answer must be: "No." Vast amounts are spent but the life chances are dismal. Getting more children out of institutional care and adopted into permanent loving homes is not easy - but it is critical.

So I regard being on the Adoption Panel - with its fortnightly Wednesday meetings preceded by the heart rending telephone directory sized reports that come thudding down before each one, as the most important thing I do.

Frequently problems such as crime and disruptive pupils in class are caused by 'Looked After' children.  Despite the dedication of social workers and foster parents the harsh reality is that the state makes a bad parent. It also makes for a phenomenally expensive one. How many of those Councils that insist it is quite impossible for them to reduce the Council Tax have made a serious effort to increase their adoption rates?

In 2005-06 only 12 children were placed for adoption in my local Council. In the last year the number more than doubled to 25, including 11 in the new category of Special Guardianships which is recognised by the DFES as equivalent to adoption. Adoption transforms the life chances of the child compared to be brought up in care.

Together with improved preventative measures and the decrease in teenage conception this means that the number of children in care fallen over the past year from 393 to 373. There is a target to place 45 children from adoption this year.

Political correctness needs to be confronted by Tory councillors rather than deferred to - especially when it is particularly black children who are perversely denied loving homes in the name of Political Correctness. It is a great pity that statutory requirements prevent us from having an entirely "colour blind" approach to adoption. But while looking for an ethnic match is a requirement we are quite entitled to balance this by the need to be flexible and avoid delay. Any Conservative Council worthy of the name should ensure that this is the approach adopted by its Social Services department.