New beginnings

June 17, 2010 — simonashall

On June 29, this blog will be one year old. During the election campaign, I experienced quite a bit of traffic as the Rosie vs Jonathan battle heated up but with the elections over and everyone fed up of politics, those readers have gone and the number of repeat visits – mostly I suspect from Lib Dem activists checking what I had written – reduced.

During the next 10 days, I will be busy preparing to get married and am going to take that time away from the blog to think about how to make it better for readers in future. I want to move it away from being nominally a Horsell blog because there wouldn’t really be enough to write about on a daily basis and now Horsell has The Resident blog, I’d rather contribute to the debate on that site that try to match it here. So a change in name is probably in the offing, which I know is terribly confusing but it’ll hurt me more!

I’d still like to be able to give a view of what’s going on in the Woking democratic process from the perspective I get working quite closely with the Conservative group and association. I think that’s something you probably can’t get elsewhere and could be useful (but not too useful, obviously!). I’d also like to be able to talk, within obvious boundaries, about my experiences as a magistrate because again, that’s something that isn’t necessarily available elsewhere.

As I go through my CIPR course (I got a distinction for my first assessment, by the way!) I’d also like to start talking more about Public Relations as a influential factor in our society and politics and picking  up on instances of bad PR and where it has had a subtle effect. For example the Daily Mail carried a story today about a Piranha being caught in a Kent lake. Not at all tied in to the Piranha 3D movie, released in August, I’m sure.

What I don’t want this blog to become is a commentary on national politics, because there’s a load of other blogs that are better than me at that. You know my position, liberal Tory, finding out what someone thinks of every issue gets tedious unless they’ve anything unique to say. So those are some of the thoughts going round in my head. When I get back after my marital mini-break (we’re not honeymooning until September), they’ll be a redesign using the superb WordPress 3.0 and a re-launch along slightly different lines.

Posted in Community, Mundane occurances, Other blogs. Tags: , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Free to get on with it

June 3, 2010 — simonashall

Last laugh - The commission spent money countering his activities but is now being cut to size

When the Audit Commission was first envisaged and created in 1982, it fulfilled an important role in centralising and standardising the audit procedures of local and national government bodies. It is, in effect, the public spending watchdog – and as such it carries a great amount of goodwill among the public. It was the Audit Commission that uncovered the fact that between 1987 and 1989 council houses in Westminster were being sold at knock-down prices to potential Tory voters and forced Dame Shirley Porter to cough up £12million in payback to the council.

But since these days of simple auditing, the commission has been given far more wide-ranging powers to assess local authorities based on politically correct criteria that are part of the problem rather than the solution and meaningless targets that often detract from more fruitful work. The commission also requires councils to create its own silly targets – when I was at Surrey Heath Borough Council, I was forced to come up with a contrived way of measuring our media coverage for positive and negative balance in an attempt to find something to assess ourselves against. It wasn’t totally useless or harmful – but it was pretty irrelevant to most people in Surrey Heath and took time and effort away from other things.

Thankfully, Eric Pickles has announced a couple of good things about the Audit Commission in recent days – firstly that the new head of the agency won’t receive £240,000 a year. As far as I’m concerned, no-one in government should earn more than £150,000 – not because I’m a raving socialist but because very few public sector jobs are worth more than that (especially when taking into account other perks) and also because over-egged public sector salaries contribute to wage inflation in the private and public sectors, which ultimately costs the taxpayer money.

Secondly, the new Secretary of State has said that the over-engineered and painstaking Comprehensive Area Assessments will be scrapped forthwith. We don’t know what, if anything, will replace them but the hope has to be that the answer to that question will be “not much”. The Audit Commission exists to ensure that the Shirley Porters of this world aren’t allowed to get away with defrauding the taxpayer and that is a role that it should continue in earnest. But aside from that, local authorities should be entirely free to get on with running their communities in the way that they want to. If the public don’t like how they are doing it or want it done a different way, they have their say at the ballot box – that’s how democracy should work.

Under Labour it was the government, not the people, who dictated to councils how their areas should be run. No more – and that is a reason to be considerably happier today than this time last year.

PS I also ought to mention that Mr Pickles blocked the plans for Norwich’s unitary status within days of appointment. That’s fine – local people didn’t want it - but he does have to address the question of how the mish-mash of district, unitary, metropolitan and county councils in England and Wales can somehow be standardised. It simply doesn’t make sense to have so many different types of authorities.

Posted in Community, politics. Tags: , , . No Comments »

Courting controversy

May 20, 2010 — simonashall

Woking Magistrates Court - photo: Surrey Advertiser

A couple of weeks ago, the Surrey Ad also ran a story about rumours surrounding the possible closure of Woking Courthouse, which incorporates the magistrates court, as well as family and youth courts. It would appear that this is an option being considered and many people at the courthouse are determined to fight any such proposal.

The reasons for keeping Woking Courthouse open are manifold and, I believe, self-evident. We have in this country a superb principle of justice delivered for the community by the community. A person accused of a crime can expect to have a fair and uniform hearing locally in public and by their peers – removing the Woking function and placing it all with Guildford means that people from as afar as Camberley, Addlestone and Weybridge as well as Woking will have justice administered in a different part of Surrey. I feel this is entirely inappropriate.

More so given Woking’s unique ethnic and cultural diversity. The courts service in Woking has a very good relationship with Woking Mosque and other organisations dealing with mental health and social issues in North West Surrey. Moving the court operation to Guildford interrupts many of these good relationships and makes achieving the court’s objectives with large sections of society in this part of Surrey more difficult.

Woking is Surrey’s largest town with an urban population exceeding both Guildford and Reigate. It is unthinakable that we should be without the facilities to cater for the needs of that population and those include the apparatus needed to dispense justice fairly, quickly and locally. Woking’s proximity to Guildford should not be an excuse to ignore these demographics – Guildford is quite busy enough as it is.

Finally, there has to be a question about what happens to Woking Police Station if the courthouse closes. The station is linked to the courthouse via an underground passageway and both the station and courthouse have a suite of custody cells. There is a similar arrangement in Staines, Guildford and Redhill and between this quartet, 95% of people accused of crimes are dealt with in these courts. If Woking courthouse went, there would be little sense in keeping the police station in its present form if it were denied the above role – and that too is a serious worry.

As for the magistrates, I can only speak for myself but I applied to serve my community in my community and while I agreed to sit anywhere the courts service requested, my clear preference was always Woking. For that option not even to exist for applicants in the future would indeed be a very retrograde step.

Posted in Community, Justice, news. Tags: , , , . No Comments »

Centre-Righter’s block

May 14, 2010 — simonashall

So now Gordon and his merry men are out of Downing Street and DC has become PM, what is there left to write about? It wouldn’t be so bad if I could switch attention onto the Lib Dems but they are now our partners so I can’t write anything about them either (plus they are all such nice people, of course).

Thankfully, Woking Borough Council fires up in six days with the first Muslim mayor of Woking, Cllr Mohammed Iqbal, being sworn in. I’ve known Cllr Iqbal for a number of years and he cares about his community. He has worked very hard to bring about positive changes in Maybury and Sheerwater and is a very approachable man with a great sense of humour and humility.

He will make a superb mayor – and it is about time that the Muslim community in our town should be represented among the roll of those who’ve served this town as council Chairman and later Mayor. I’m particularly proud that they should come from the ranks of the Conservative Party, though I know the other parties will share our enthusiasm for this development.

In addition, we wait to see what form the council will take this year. Although the election results produced no net change with 18 Con, 17 LD and one independent, our tenancy of the mayoralty this year means that the numbers are effectively 17-all with Peter Ankers having the casting vote if parties follow the whip. I have my doubts as to how healthy this situation is but perhaps more on this another time.

While I would obviously have preferred to have been sitting in the chamber around the benches on May 20, I was sworn in as a magistrate on Monday afternoon by the Lord Lieutenant of Surrey Sarah Goad, High Sheriff Robert Douglas and Mr Justice Critchlow at Guildford Crown Court in a short but memorable ceremony. I was particularly delighted that my parents were able to be there and I could see Mum welling up as I read the oath!

In all honesty, I have several months of quite intensive training and sitting ahead of me and it would have been ambitious to have combined it with the duties of a councillor. My father thought I was completely mad to have even considered it – perhaps he was right and some things happen for a reason.

That said, I have got a meeting of the Horsell and Woodham Conservatives this evening where I have to explain away our failure to win (joke, they are all extremely supportive) and we have got plenty to do in Horsell to make sure that people’s lives are improved and that they are represented well in council. As I said a week ago, councillor or not, the community is always there to be served.

Posted in Community, Woking Borough Council, news. Tags: , , , , , , , . No Comments »

A very long night (part 1)

May 7, 2010 — simonashall

During the past few days I have been too busy campaigning in Horsell West to blog and of course I’m disappointed that having got more than 1,800 votes in the ward – the largest number by some way that I can recall the Conservatives getting - this wasn’t enough to win. The Horsell campaign team – Ben Carasco, Tony Branagan, Michael Gammon, Beryl Hunwicks, Alex Smith, Matthew King, Tim Read and others – worked extremely hard to try and secure a result in the ward and I can’t express enough gratitude for the work they have done.

As John McCain said, the failure is mine, not theirs – but I also have to pay tribute to the Lib Dem effort too. We didn’t see much of them but there was clearly some work being done somewhere as you don’t pull 1,850 votes out of Horsell West by just turning up to the count. It’s quite an achievement and congratulations to Ann-Marie Barker for being elected to replace Richard Sanderson in what was a closely-fought and intense battle with turnout at a furious 77%.

We all care about these things very much, otherwise we wouldn’t be doing them and to say that I’m not disappointed would be untrue. But I’m also philosophical – I knew Horsell West would be very, very close when I put myself forward for selection and I certainly didn’t get sucked into envisaging myself as a councillor on May 7. It’s a ward where nothing can be taken for granted and victory really is only for four years. Let’s also not forget that this was a Lib Dem seat with a majority of around 150 in 2006. So I walked into the hall not a councillor – and I walked back out not a councillor, the only thing it has cost me is the time and energy of the campaign.

And the campaign has been a real blast, a chance to get to know the area even better than you ever believed you could (you start to remember the names of houses and their order on South Road and the location of hidden front doors) as well as meet people from all over the village. I couldn’t honestly say I look upon that as a “cost” – more like a benefit and an experience that will help greatly in the future. It won’t be much of a surprise to learn that I’m not giving up and see highs and lows as part of the political process.

Being a councillor is a great honour but it’s not a requirement for contributing to the community. I will be continuing to do this and – after a suitable break – we’ll see what next year brings.

Meanwhile, congratulations to Dorothy Farrant, new-elected councillor for Byfleet and terrific news for Carl Thomson, who unseated Norman Johns to be the new councillor for Mount Hermon East. Well done, Carl.

Posted in Community, Horsell West campaign, elections. Tags: , , , . No Comments »

Visit The Resident

April 13, 2010 — simonashall

The Horsell Residents Association newsletter The Resident is now online in the form of a WordPress blog and I have added the link to the left hand side.

The current editor Sarah Johns took over from me last year and is doing a great job of making the magazine’s format even more attractive, broadening the scope of the news stories and taking it online. There is also a Twitter feed @HorsellResident.

Well worth a visit or a follow.

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Great turnout

April 7, 2010 — simonashall

Despite the Question Time fever, the finale of Masterchef and the Man Utd v Bayern Munich game, we ran clean out of chairs at Horsell Village Hall this evening for the Horsell Residents Association AGM. Sometimes these evenings can be a draining experience but never with HRA – Rob Harris keeps a firm hand on the tiller and ensures that all the official business is dealt with in 30 minutes or so before we welcome a guest presentation.

Last year, it was Marilyn Scott of the Lightbox, this year Paul Rimmer and David Robbins of Horsell Common Preservation Society gave the audience a good grounding in the history, management and natural aspects of the common. HCPS is a superb organisation that does a lot of work for our environment in Horsell that one suspects would be a good deal less well done if left to other authorities to achieve. Membership is only £10 and can be attained here.

I addressed the meeting for a couple of minutes on the LDF character studies that I think could be important in helping to preserve some of the more unique areas of the village. Given that the old Urban Areas of Special Residential Character, which gave some form of assurance to those in areas of urban heritage merit, are disappearing, I think it’s vital for us to put our views forward about the areas that we consider important now. If we don’t, it makes it very difficult at a later stage to oppose planning applications in areas on the grounds of urban heritage and preserving the streetscene.

The old UASRC are a good place to start – The Ridgeway, Grange Road, Heath and Castle Roads, but not necessarily exclusive. Waldens Park Road, Kettlewell Hill and Manor Road are also areas with historic properties in them that speak about the village’s history. It would be a shame if we did not act now to give them the best possible chance of being preserved. I’ll be totally honest with you; my experience of the planning system is that it is an inequitable rich man’s game - a system where central government dictates the rules to local residents via their planning authorities to the benefit of big developers. Developers can afford agents, planning experts, legal advisors and to play the appeals process - residents can rarely match this.

But what we must do is make sure that we give ourselves the best possible chance by taking advantage of what democratic elements the system does afford and that is what I would like to see happen.

Finally, if anyone’s not a member of HRA, please consider it - we really would like to be able to do more but need more members and income in order to give residents a better service.

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Sir Alec Bedser

April 5, 2010 — simonashall

Some very sad news to taint an otherwise bright Easter weekend – Sir Alec Bedser, one of the greatest cricketers of his generation and long-standing Horsell resident, died yesterday aged 91. Many more senior residents will remember the heyday of the Bedser twins (his brother Eric died in 2006) in the 1940s and early 50s and his exploits for England, when he carried the attack at a time when there was precious little support as England emerged from the cricketed hiatus of the Second World War.

There are a variety of very good obituaries to him in many of the nationals today. But many in Horsell will have known him personally, living as he did in Carlton Road for so long. I was lucky enough to meet both twins at the Surrey History Centre in 2003 launching an exhibition on Surrey County Cricket Club but had no further contact with them until I wrote the obituary for Eric in the Woking News and Mail three years later. Most people would want silly reporters somewhere else on the death of a loved one – not Sir Alec, who phoned the paper up personally to make sure that we got his brother’s factsright.

After, I met Sir Alec on various occasions and he espoused everything good about sport. Eric bequested an amount of money to Horsell Residents’ Association, which the association uses to fund achievement prizes for the village’schools. For some time in the 1970s, Sir Alec ran a youth and sporting club at Horsell Village Hall, where signed potraits of the twins are now on permanent display. Generous with his time and wisdom, there was nothing of the modern-day sporting prima donna about Sir Alec. He would talk with gusto about the modern game and while, yes, he was very definitely of the old school, he never left you in any doubt what he meant. And that’s less common than you’d think.

Both twins were passionate about their sport and also believed in the value of community, of selflessness and that sport was an act of athleticism and competition, yes, but also of pleasure and entertainment for the paying public. Their sense of duty to Surrey, England and those around them was a rare thing and Horsell and Woking have been blessed to have the Bedser twins play the part they did in our story.

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Assessment of Horsell Village Centre

March 25, 2010 — simonashall

Let's keep the development in the town centre and out of Horsell

I attended a meeting tonight on behalf of Horsell Residents Association at Woking Borough Council about carrying out Character Assessments for the Local Development Framework Core Strategy. What this means is that I will be filling in survey details – quite a few of them, actually – about an area in order to provide the council with information it can use when putting together future planning policy.

The area I have chosen is an important one – Horsell High Street between the village school (where Church Hill ends) to the junction with Bullbeggars. This obviously includes the pubs, the village hall and all the shops and so getting the information right is going to take a little while. Among the questions on the survey are positives and negatives about this area and this doesn’t just include planning and built environment issues. I know that we need better parking arrangements in the village centre both to allow people easier access to our shops and make the pavements and roads in the village safer for other cars and pedestrians.

But if there is any other feedback on the character of this area of Horsell that anyone would like to raise, please let me know either by commenting here or emailing me.

In addition, I think that Horsell could benefit from some more surveys being done by residents in conjunction with Horsell Residents Association, particularly in areas of urban heritage value. The whole process should take around three or four hours in most instances, depending on the size of area. All the areas not completed by HRA or residents will be done by the council – they won’t be done badly, but it would be nice to have some control over the information that goes back to the council in the areas of Horsell that we care about most.

So if anyone else would like to do a survey, please get in touch with HRA or Woking Borough Council’s planning department.

Posted in Community, Woking Borough Council, planning. Tags: , , , , . No Comments »

Rhetorical Questions

March 23, 2010 — simonashall

Firstly, it’s good to see that Ann-Marie Barker’s nomination as my Lib Dem opponent in Horsell West is now official (unlike her, I am happy to afford my opponent the courtesy of using her name!). Richard Sanderson has left big shoes for whoever replaces him to fill and I look forward to a good-tempered if hard-fought final six weeks.

I’m also glad to note that she’s been reading my blog judging by her comments on Community Question Time and I’m delighted to discover that she’s in agreement with me over developing and expanding the Community Question Time into something more meaningful:

The funny thing is a local Conservative [that's me by the way - Simon!] is now suggesting that a quarterly or twice yearly event that moves around the borough would be a good idea. It’s a great idea and one that was put in place under the theme ‘Tune In’ through a local Liberal Democrat initiative.

Let’s make one thing clear – Tune In was never given a budget to do anything. So its travelling around the borough raising residents’ expectations of what might be achieved was a particular exercise in futility and one that as a journalist and then a press officer at a participating local authority I looked upon on in amazement. The only thing that Tune In was able to do was shift money from one budget heading to another and push some things further up the work programme.

The idea that “working in partnership” is the answer to everything needs to be challenged. Partnership working can be a useful tool in some regards but having six different organisations trying to make decisions together is seldom successful. Very rarely do they truly gel as one “partnership” and the individual interests – usually budgetary – almost always prevail. What you need is the right balance between operational matters that are best worked on together with the support of the community and those that really should be left to one organisation and its professionals to deal with.

My idea of a Community Question Time separates the democratic elements of community dialogue and council accountability from the bureaucratic rhetoric of partnerships and any false expectations of delivery. The views of residents should be constantly expressed at every level by members and every single year, voters have the chance to show their feelings at the ballot box. They are entitled to ask the questions in public that will give them the information they need to inform their vote. I believe that few are interested in how well various slices of local government are working together or not – so long as the outcomes are there.

I agree with Ann-Marie that Tune In was meant to be much more but I believe the only way to achieve it is by little steps. The idea of Question Time standing alone is meant to be that first step - it is distinctly not trying to emulate the flawed Tune In model.

Posted in Community, Horsell West campaign, Woking Borough Council. Tags: , , , , , . No Comments »
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