How The Government Costs Business Money

The Facilities department at my work sent round an email today about the smoking ban. We have a smoking shed at work which is unsuprisingly used by smokers. Non smokers like me don't go in there as we don't smoke! However it counts as an enclosed space and under legislation people won't be allowed to smoke in it as of 1st July. Because of this my company is building a new smoking shed with a different design for people to smoke in. This will no doubt cost a reasonable sum of money. What a complete nonsense! Who exactly is supposed to gain from this?

New Look Blog

I have finally given in and moved onto the new version of Blogger. I was slightly concerned that I might lose much of the site in the process. Luckily most of it came over (most importantly all the posts). I lost all the links but I have put these back on now. I can't seem to get the picture in the title section to stretch across the whole page.

New Cabinet Appointed

Newly elected Council Leader, Alec Samuels has announced his Cabinet. The cabinet will be made up of members of the conservative party.

Leader: Cllr Alec Samuels
Economic Development and Regeneration: Cllr Royston Smith
Resources: Cllr Jeremy Moulton
Workforce planning: Cllr Terry Matthews
Children’s Services and learning: Cllr Peter Baillie
Adult Care and health: Cllr Ivan White
Environment & Transport: Cllr Gavin Dick
Housing & Neighbourhoods: Cllr Phil Williams
Leisure and Culture: Cllr John Hannides

Southampton Goes Blue!

Southampton Conservative Councillors have formed their administration since 1984

Southampton Councillors met formally for the first time yesterday after the local council elections on 3rd May.

At the meeting of Full Council, the Conservatives took political control of Southampton City Council, forming their first administration in 23 years.

Southampton has been in a state of political "no over all control" since 1999 and since then Labour and then the Lib Dems have run minority administrations. Yesterday Conservatives formed a minority administration with 18 councillors. This means that whilst the Conservatives will have more influence than at any point since 1984 and will control all the Executive functions of the Council, the other political parties will be able to gang up and defeat the Conservatives over major policy issues.

Click HERE for the Daily Echo report.

Goodbye Tony, Hello Gordon

"We're dooomed!"

I had mixed feelings when Tony Blair announced that he would be leaving number 10 Downing Street. Whilst I am delighted that Blair is finally going I feel that his replacement will be far worse.

Gordon Brown has set up a new website where you can learn all about him. There is a great deal of debate online about how Brown will change things and what new policies or policy reversals he will announce of the next 7 weeks.

Here is what Brown says on his new website:

The Britain I believe in is a Britain of fairness and opportunity for all. Every British citizen with every chance to make the most of themselves; every community fair to every citizen - if you work hard, youre better off. If you save, youre rewarded. If you play by the rules, we will stand by you.

All that sounds great and it is certainly the exact opposite of what we have experienced over the past 10 years! Somehow I am very sceptical.

Southampton Schools: More Of The Same Or Something Better?

Millbrook School and Oaklands School



Woolston School and Grove Park School

On Thursday night I went along to one of the presentation meetings for the bidders for the two new schools due to open in the city following last year's secondary school review.

It was decided last year that 4 schools would close (Oaklands, Millbrook, Grove Park and Woolston).

It was also decided that 2 new schools would open - one on the east of the city on the Grove Park site and one on the west (either on the Oaklands site or a new site called 5 acre field).

All these decisions were taken by the Lib Dems last year when they were running the council. I had some serious reservations about the decisions but we are now where we are.

By law the council has to invite independent organisations to bid for the running of the schools. This includes faith groups, charitable and not for profit groups, private companies etc. The council could have put in its own bid however if it did the decision about who would run the schools would be made independently of the council. By not submitting the bid the council now makes the decision. Personally if it were my choice I would have done exactly the same as I want to see as much choice as possible and want to see some real change in our local schools. I suspect the motivations of the Lib Dems were not quite the same. I would imagine they would have been concerned that if they submitted a council bid that lost this would have serious implications for the remaining Southampton schools as they would conclude that they also would be better off being run independently of the council. Click HERE to to read more about the process.

We heard presentations by the bidders. Here is some information about them and my thoughts.
Click on the titles to read more information about each on the council's website.

United Learning Trust

This group is bidding for an Academy on both the east and the west of the city. It runs 9 other academies in the country and 10 independent schools.

Their unique selling point they say is their track record and their experience of delivering education.

Oasis Community Learning

Oasis is a voluntary sector organisation set up to deliver the government's academies programme. They have 5 academies in the pipeline. Oasis are bidding to run an academy on the east and the west of the city.

Their unique selling point was their passion and having listened to the presentation by Steve Chalke of Oasis I have no doubt that they are full of energy and ideas.

Southampton Education Trust

This is a group of public sector organisations, local businesses (including VT) and voluntary groups headed up by Southampton Solent University. This would would be a trust and it would pick the governors of the new school(s). The school in the west would specialise in arts and science (with a focus on health).

Their unique selling point was that they are local.

How they came across

The two academies produced by far the most dynamic and interesting presentations. ULT seem to have huge experience and they run two well known local independent schools (Embley Park and The Atherley). Oasis had boundless energy and enthusiasm. Southampton Education Trust came across a bit woolly and their presentation was quite tedious. They really struck me as offering more of the same whereas the two academies had something new and exciting. I feel that if we are going to radically improve exam results in Southampton (which are well below Hampshire and the national level) we need new ideas.


Trusts vs Academies

There is one very important difference between the two and it's a difference which should have a huge bearing on the person who makes the eventual decision as to which bidder to select.

An academy brings with it the immediate guarantee of government funding for the building of a new school (£20m-£30m). A trust doesn't. A trust can bid for government money from its Building Schools for the Future (BSF) pot which is available in 2010. However there is no guarantee that a bid will be successful. Government is keen on academies and that's where it is putting the money. So if the council opts for 2 academies it gets £40m - £60m for education in the city. That's pretty much a no brainer for me. Also I would like Regents Park Community College and St Marks Junior schools to be bidding for BSF money for new schools on the St Marks site. The more schools bidding in Southampton the less likely they are to all be successful.


Who makes the decision?

The decision will be taken on 2nd July and the decision maker will be the political party that takes control of the council on Wednesday. So there is a lot at stake on Wednesday!

Well Done Brian

Here are the results of yesterday's city council elections in Freemantle Ward:

Mitchell, Harry - Labour Party 815
Parnell, Brian, Edgar - Conservative Party - 1369 Elected
Pickering, Darren, Carl - Green Party - 395
Williams, Juliet - Liberal Democrats - 407

Rejected Ballot Papers - 13

Electorate: 10621
Turnout: 28.2%

I am delighted that Freemantle residents have re-elected Brian as their councillor for another 4 years. Brian fought a very clean campaign and worked extremely hard.

It is disappointing that despite efforts by the council (at considerable public expense - including the chartering of a light aircraft and election buses) turn out fell again. I suspect that this is largely as a result of Labour voters chosing to stay at home in protest.

Conservatives Top The Poll In Southampton

Southampton Conservatives were celebrating last night after an excellent set of election results in yesterday's council elections.

Conservatives held all our seats and gained one seat in Millbrook (Linda Norris) and one seat in Swaythling (Jane Odgers).

A brief summary is as follows:

Conservatives +2 (18) 19,022 votes
Labour +2 (18) 15,656 votes
Lib Dem -4 (12) 11,879 votes

Conservatives won 9 out of the 17 seats contested and came second place in 6 seats.

A full list of Southampton City Council Election Results can be found HERE.

I was particularly pleased that Conservative Group Leader Alec Samuels was re-elected with a large majority. Alec is tremendously experienced and does a huge amount of work in the city.

I was also delighted that Sholing Councillor Gavin Dick was re-elected convincingly. Gavin has worked very hard over the past 4 years on behalf of Sholing residents and has been particularly supportive of local schools.

Newly elected Conservative Councillors are: Matt Dean (Shirley), Andy Wells (Millbrook), Linda Norris (Millbrook) and Jane Odgers (Swaythling).

What Use Is Free Bus Travel if There Aren't Any Buses!

That's the question pensioners are asking following the government's bungled introduction of free bus travel.

The government's legislation requires that councils provide free bus travel within the authority.

A pot of money has been provided to councils to pay for this. Inevitably the sum of money is not enough.

The effect of this that councils are not paying the bus operators the full cost of carrying pensioners. Southampton pays them 50p for every pound of travel.

This means that bus operators are losing money on some routes. This may happen even if there is a net increase in the numbers of passengers using the route.

Bus companies are therefore challenging the legislation and withdrawing uneconomic routes.

The X27 from Southampton to Portsmouth (pictured above) is one such route. It ends of 1st June 2007.

The peverse impact of government legislation is that they have introduced free travel on buses for pensioners and the impact of this is the routes they want to use are being cancelled.

What use is free travel if there isn't a bus!? Many pensioners I have spoken to would rather pay and still have a bus. Next year revised legislation will means that free travel is introduced countrywide and a larger pot of money will be made avaialable. This may mean a higher fee for the operator and more routes becoming economical and therefore staying open or reopenning.

Southampton city council have until now supported the X27 route in >conjunction with Portsmouth City council however this will end in June as Portsmouth have advised that they can't meet the extra costs acked >for by the operator, Solent Blueline. Southampton are looking at alternative provision perhaps via Southampton Airport.

This is another example of how Labour's top down centrist approach fails. Bad legislation has had the opposite impact of what was intended.

Surely it would have been much better to provide more funds to local government and let them decide how the money is best spent locally. The money might still have gone into subsidies for public transport but might have been much more effectively targeted.