Confused.con

There appears to be some confusion over what the Council has been spending on road improvements recently, not helped by the LibDems apparently drafting their election leaflets in one financial year, and circulating them in the next. So here's an attempt to explain....

• In 2003/4 the Council's audited accounts (page 16) showed spend on road improvements of £6,770,241
• In 2004/5 (page 30) spend was £6,340,310
• In 2005/6 (page 44) it peaked at £7,542,899 - this was the last LibDem budget
  In 2006/7 (page 45) spend held up for 10 months at £4,921,681, but the paralysis of the Undercliff Drive witchhunt was starting to kick in
• In the 2007/8 accounts road improvements were too insignificant to make an appearance in the accounts at all. However, in response to a request the responsible director provided the figure in writing to Cllr David Knowles - it turned out to be the princely sum of £58,267, so it looks as though the LibDem's are being generous in their assessment of £123,000!

Moving on to the year just ended, several Tory hopefuls such as Peter Bingham seem to be under the delusion that £5.3 million was spent in 2008/09, although he must surely be wondering where it all went? He is of course confusing the "budget" of £5.3 million, which under Pugh & Co has become an increasingly "aspirational" concept, with what actually happened in real life, which was spend of less than 40% of that amount at £2,055,223 million. Of course this is an improvement of £2 million on the year before, but it still represents probably the second lowest spend in real terms for a generation.

So what are we to make of the latest "island News" election special promise that roads are, belatedly, the Tories' top priority? Apparently they are going to spend £19m over the next 2 years (yeah, right).

And of course there is the long delayed PFI scheme which islandnews implies is in the bag. I suspect that anyone who reads the County Press knows by now that there is not one scrap of written evidence for that particular claim.

Don't trade in that 4x4 just yet....

Can it be that bad?

Given how our present Tory ruling group is comprised of such a cornucopia of talent, at least in its own view, it’s a little puzzling that their project delivery is, on the face of it, so consistently dire.

Part of the problem may stem from the fact that 96% of the senior management structure in place in 2005 has been 'culled', and replaced by transient consultants, commuters and short stay career hoppers. In that climate it’s not surprising that locally based middle managers and front line service providers aspiring to a longer period of service with the Council demand a countersigned chitty in triplicate before breaking wind.

In an effort to determine whether this impression of incompetence is real or anecdotal, I thought I’d see how the projects underway in 2005 and included in the medium term plans at the time have fared since:

The ecological agenda (green transport, energy conservation):
Unfortunately all cancelled - budget transferred to conferences, 'picnics' and propellers on top of public toilets.

Schools reorganisation:
Deliberately delayed for at least four years - Government funding no longer available.

Property review:
Delayed for four years, opportunities now lost due to credit crunch.

New housing on Pan:
Worth £2m a year income to the Council if signed up 4 years ago, now nothing.

Ryde Gateway:
Delayed at least four years, now £4m over budget, probably buggered.

Leisure review:
No partner, no money, no plans for better facilities. (Island Games in 2011 should be impressive)

Recycling and landfill reduction:
Against the national trend, recycling rates actually got worse here last year.

Newport Harbour development:
Delayed for four years, opportunities now lost due to credit crunch.

Highways PFI:
Delayed at least four years, Government can't afford it now.

Undercliff Drive:
Sacrificed on the altar of political expediency - £13m Government funding gone for good.

Finding a "Strategic Partner" to drive down costs:
Hasn't happened. After 4 years new computer system costing £5m will actually cost more in staff time to run than the old one, and with major implementation problems.

Service management cooperation with the Health Authority:
Yeah, right......

So, it looks like a fairly consistent record of crap, which does bear out the views of the external inspectors. At the same time, all this has happened hand in hand with a fall in the inspector's view of the Council's 'financial standing', in which the Council is unique across the whole Country.

It would be poetic justice if Pugh & co. got back in next month and had to clear up their own mess, but that would be a little hard on the rest of us.

Last one on the ferry switch the lights out, please.

Good news at last....

Timothy Hunter Henderson's last two years as highways supremo may not have been the most sparkling in the history of Island civil engineering, but his latest brainwave is encouraging. It takes the form of a Council sponsored "Pothole of the Week" competition on Isle of Wight Radio.

The idea is that we all 'phone in with our nominations, and the pothole that gets the most votes gets top priority from the SPS (Special Pothole Service) crack team. What a wonderful way to simultaneously empower us peasants, whilst focusing meagre resources on the most desperate cases.

Of course this isn't quite up the the standard of the Steve Matthews/Ernie Fox "strategic corridors" programme, when 25 miles of high quality highway reconstruction linking Freshwater, Newport, Cowes and Ryde appeared magically over a matter of weeks, entirely at night. Even after four years of neglect, it is still possible to travel these routes without a 4x4.

.

Nevertheless, the SPS is impressive. I was privileged to watch the lads in action a couple of weeks ago as they stood on the pavement by their 4 tonner, shovel of tarmac in hand, waiting for a gap in the traffic. Once the black stuff was deposited in the hole, and when traffic again permitted, the largest member of the team then jumped up and down on it several times. Job done!

.

Unfortunately it rained the following night, and the whole lot was washed away, but you can't hold the Council, and H-H in particular, responsible for acts of God, can you?

Manifesto review #6

Now that even our Key Stage 2 SATS scores have plummeted to the very bottom of the heap nationally, it might be worth remembering this:

"A Conservative Council will transform the council's Local Education Authority to an organisation with an excellent track record of improving school attainment levels for our children." IW Tory manifesto 11 April 2005.

The guy responsible for this slight shortfall in promised delivery is cabinet member Alain Wells, who admits to being "disappointed" by the fact that kids of above average ability when they arrive in his care are reduced to being the worst in the country - worse even than Thurrock - shortly thereafter. You're not as disappointed as the rest of us mate, especially those of use with kids in the system who are seeing their life chances compromised by four years of U-turns, endless bodged consultation, general destabilisation and universal demoralisation - all symptomatic of not having a clue what to do.

Alain reckons that this "disappointing" performance highlights the problem of the present structure, so presumably there will be some minor changes to the manifesto this time around in that respect? He will no doubt be reflecting on the fact that if he and his chums hadn't got in four years ago, restructuring (without village school closures) would have already happened long ago.

Manifesto score: er...can you have a minus out of ten?

So will Alain do the decent thing and fall on his sword? Shortly after Fred the Shred hands back his pension to RBS shareholders I suspect.

Confused.com

An acquaintance from the far east - well, Ryde actually - mentioned recently that one of the Council election hopefuls in his area was campaigning on the issue of neglected roads. This is certainly one of the top gripes among most of the people I speak to, and I was intrigued to know if it was:

1. A labour candidate pointing out that Thatcher and Major spent 18 years squeezing the highways capital investment budgets of local authorities, a blinkered and ultimately costly folly finally reversed, if only in part, by the post-1997 Labour government, or...
2. A lib-dem concerned that the average Island First road improvement budget before Pughtin got his hands on the Council was £6m to £7m a year, which had been slashed to a paltry £130,000 by last year, and although this may have been through incompetence rather than design, that sadly makes no difference to the resultant garage bills and accident toll.

Imagine my surprise when said acquaintance faxed the mystery candidate's leaflet to me, and it turned out to be from a Mr Tuson, Tory hopeful for east Ryde! Was it not made clear to Mr Tuson when he was recruited that the past four glorious years, incorporating the Bullen roller-coaster and the High Park switch-back, are all the work of the very party he aspires to represent? Surely it would be only fair, if a mistake has been made, to allow Mr Tuson to switch to another party before it's to late?

He bills himself as a local man, which is a little puzzling given that his other issue apart from rubbishy roads is the success of Community Wardens in rolling back the endless tide of doggy-poo. It may not be apparent when driving through the ward, but there is more crap on the footpaths of Appley and Elmfield today than there was in Andy "Shape up or ship out" Sutton's last manifesto. Perhaps Mr Tuson means that he is local to the Island (which is more than can be said for most of the Council's soi-disant "Top Team"). Perhaps he lives nearby, somewhere like Seaview for example.

My friend is looking forward to a chat!

Somewhere, over the rainbow

Today's Audit Commission performance assessment scores look, at first sight, like a ringing endorsement for Pugh and Co. In 2006 the "new broom" Council was judged to be "improving well", and the previous 2-star rating was duly replaced by, er, 2 stars. In the following year, again "improving well" (in the auditor's perhaps over-generous view) the Council yet again notched up the familiar 2 stars. Today's results show that although the heady pace of improvement has declined in 2008, it is still "adequate", and enough to secure - you guessed it - 2 stars.

Unfortunately, of course, everyone else has moved on over this period, and two stars and "improving adequately" puts the Isle of Wight in the bottom 14 councils nationally, out of 150. The auditor helpfully provides scores for individual service areas as well, and if we look at the average score across all services for these 14 basket cases, only 6 of them are lower than the Isle of Wight. Interestingly, right at the bottom of the heap is Thurrock, which is clearly missing its ex-Education chief, Steve Beynon, now ensconced as IWC Chief Executive number 9.

As the only council to receive a reduced score from the auditor for "financial standing" last year, it looks like IWC is not just crap, not just broke, but crap and broke, which is not quite in line with "We will ensure that the Council's statutory services are rated with the best in the country" (April 2005, A Sutton).

To be fair, though, according to Pugh on the radio this morning, it's all the Lib-Dem's fault.

Meanwhile, whilst service delivery may be in the gutter, Tim Hunter-Henderson has his eyes firmly focussed on the stars, or at least the PFI crock of gold at the end of the rainbow. At last week's Council meeting, however, under relentless probing from John "Waldorf" Wortham, he was forced to admit that the much trumpeted Government award of £350m does not actually exist in writing. Given that over the last three years it has gone from being one of only 3 viable contenders to one of many, the start date has been delayed by two years, and the costings are way out of date, no doubt some thought is going on into damage limitation in the event that nobody at GOSE can actually remember what was agreed in the taxi outside Guilford railway station in 2007.

In a spirit of helpfulness therefore, I put forward these suggested mitigating factors:

• The credit crunch
• Global warming
• The Undercliff Drive illegal payments (although note that they don't actually exist outside of Bazza's tortured imagination)
• Inflation
• Deflation
• The last administration (except for Muriel Miller and Ian Stevens)

Meanwhile, manifesto score out of 20: A generous nil

Pay back time.

While taking the air at Yaverland last weekend I couldn't help stopping briefly to admire the newish Ecobog. Despite a steady breeze, the little propeller on top was again stationary - perhaps it's been disabled by a cracked team of eco-saboteurs from TWATS (The Wight Against TurbineS) - which is a pity because it looks quite jaunty on the odd occasions when it does whizz round.

Even without an operational propeller though, the illuminated display revealed that the solar panels alone were providing a useful 90 watts of power, easily enough to power the illuminated display.

It also revealed the total energy savings since the place was opened, and it is impressive to think that if interest rates remain at around 1% then the system will pay for itself in just over a century. Of course, if the economy picks up in the meantime, and interest rates rise to 2% or more, then the break even point will be sometime after the Sun runs out of hydrogen and turns into a White Dwarf (remember him?).

Council leader Pughtin is very proud of his flagshit toilet replacement project, and will eloquently see off any whingers complaining about, for example, the number of potholes in our roads, with a stirring cry of "Just look at our toilets!" Strange then that his budget this week shows that of the £1.9m approved for his loo rolling programme this year only half will be spent. However, that uncharacteristic delay is no doubt not his fault and is probably down to the Undercliff Drive, the Credit Crunch and the previous administration.

One interesting side effect of the loo construction slowdown however can be seen in Ventnor, where the new Cascades Ecobog has grown a thick layer of moss and lichen on the roof even before the first punter has set foot in the place.

Not quite there yet....

Following a recent rather foolish attempt to negotiate Ashey Road in poor light, a friend is now embroiled in a £1,000+ claim against the Council for damage caused to his car by the appalling state of the road. How gratifying then to see how quickly the patching teams were out putting things right, and the impressive quality of the road now that some of the pot-holes have been filled in.

I suppose we should learn to expect this sort of quick response from a Council that is, according to the completely impartial watchdog District Auditor, improving well year after year (or did he say "Improving? Well.....")

Reflecting on how this impressive rate of progress must soon move from reactive to proactive, with roads improved before accidents happen rather than after, I thought I'd revisit the progress of Pugh's much trumpeted £5m road improvement initiative. This was announced at the end of last year, when spending on road improvements under the previous administration running at a consistent £6m to £7m every year had fallen to only £123,000 in 2008-09.

Everything obviously got of to a great start this year, with a budget set of £4.8m, but unfortunately only £818,000 will actually be spent, presumably due to procurement problems, the Undercliff Drive enquiry, the Credit Crunch, global warming etc. etc. (in fact all the unavoidable slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that give Robert Mugabe a bad press so unfairly).

There are two serious concerns about this disappointing performance, apart from the ever increasing threat to life, limb and property as the road system disintegrates further:

1. The Government has been handing over large wodges of cash each year expecting it to be spent on roads. When they find that it's been poured into toilets instead, or not spent at all, they may get very upset and stop sending any in future.
2. Faced with the real Credit Crunch and its horrendous impact on the public finances, how likely is the Government to hand over £300m to a council which doesn't appear to be able to deliver a programme of even 0.3% of that amount?

And what do you think plan B is?

Look after the pennies....

Nice to see the Council seamlessly combining economic and ecological considerations in correspondence now issuing from, inter alia, its Planning Department. The attractive pre-printed stationery no longer includes the identity of the current Chief Executive, which is now disclosed instead by means of a separately applied adhesive label.

No more needless waste of paper every 18 months - well done!

Slippery slope

Nervous residents of the Undercliff may be wondering where the promised report on the future of the road has got to. According to Hunter-Henderson's Environment Department last June, consultants were to be appointed in September 2008, with a report on "the options" appearing in January 2009.

Following enquiries by David Knowles at the last Council meeting it now appears that there has been some delay in the appointment due to the usual lack of capacity/inertia, and it is now claimed that the consultants will start work in May 2009 and report in September 2009 (coincidentally, beyond the next election). The terms of reference will be to look at "all the options", and the main selection criterion will presumably be a PhD in stating the bleedin' obvious. Fees are unknown, but £130,000 has been set aside as a starter, and for this we will learn that:

1. Since Pugh and Co told the Government to take their £13m funding and sod off, there has ceased to be an affordable way of keeping the road open in the medium to long term.
2. In due course the road will split at up to five known weak points, providing a haven for wildlife and ramblers, but at some inconvenience to local residents.
3. The only viable solution is some large yellow and black signs at each end saying "Diversion via Whitwell".
4. The potential tourism opportunities and attractions of Kemming Road need to be heavily promoted to fill the gap.

My advice, given the current lead times for procuring anything more complex than a toilet roll, is to start work on the signs now, so that when the time comes they can be deployed quickly without any more procurement or consulting delays.

Meanwhile we can take comfort from assurances that the Council is "continuing regular monitoring of ground movement", and will "maintain the road as it currently is, to ensure that it stays open for as long as possible".

Bit of a mess - a little more illumination....

Some of you may have spotted the article in the Sunday press a couple of weeks ago questioning the high level of remuneration of some local government chief executives. For some reason the Isle of Wight was mentioned, and it was rather unkindly pointed out, apropos of who knows what, that it was the only one of the 150 upper tier councils in England that received a reduced score from the District Auditor last year for "Financial Standing".

This is indeed true. The score fell to two out of four, which means that in terms of the strength of its financial position the Council is now in the bottom 12% nationally, and with only Liverpool and Harrow in a worse state.

Looks like this decline predated the credit crunch by several months, and is clearly a local phenomenon that our rulers needn't be shy about claiming full credit for.

Bit of a mess.

What a nasty surprise it must have been for Cllr. Barry Abraham, financial supremo extraordinaire, to discover that there was a big problem lurking in the Council's coffers after all, and indeed one which would require a cut in staffing which is, proportionately, several orders of magnitude greater than any announced elsewhere in the Country to date. How rapidly things have deteriorated since November, when Bazza was able to assure us all that everything in the garden was rosy.

So why has the IWC been hit so much more severely than most? Does the clue to the problem lie in Pugh's constant bleating about the poor grant settlements we get from Central Government?

It would appear not.

Over the three years of the current grant period, the Council is receiving a total increase of 14.8% in its Formula Grant, well above the English average of 9.2% and comfortably ahead of the Retail Price Index in every year.

Which makes it all the more surprising that Pugh has been chasing a 5% tax rise for next year when inflation is forecast to fall to 1.2%. Expect some backtracking from this because the Government is almost certain to cap any rises of that level, on the grounds that only an idiot raises taxes in a recession.

Nevertheless, we shall still see a unique combination of one of the best grant settlements in the Country, some of the most draconian service cuts, and one of the highest tax increases. Nice work, guys.

How far we've come since the halcyon days when Pugh & Co. were able to promise "to set a level of Council Tax in line with the most Frugal (sic) Unitary Authorities in the Country." (11 April 2005).

Even after adjusting for the fact that we run our own fire brigade on the Island, to achieve that promise would require a cut of 12% in the Island's Council Tax next year rather than an increase of 3.5%. Yet another manifesto commitment looking a bit iffy then?

Manifesto review #5

"During the first week we will ............ identify where traffic flows can be improved to reduce journey times." IW Conservative website, 11 April 2005.

Taking my ease in Church Litten one morning during the recent sunny spell, and enjoying a well earned can of purple label as I watched the tumbleweed blowing up and down all three empty lanes of the carriageway, I was reflecting on how effectively the free flow of traffic in that particular thoroughfare had been improved. Oddly, just a few metres away, the South Street tailback was backing up as usual around Coppins Bridge and beyond, effectively blocking all of the entrances and exits to Newport yet again.

As I pondered this paradox, I recalled that a retired highways engineer once told me in a pub that the trick in all this was to make best use of all of the finite network available. Although I dismissed him at the time as a dangerous lunatic, I wonder if he had a point?

Meanwhile Pugh, after several years of careful consideration, hints that he is not necessarily averse to doing something, possibly, one day, to do with Trafalgar Road. Breathtaking!

Manifesto score: 0/10

Je ne regrette rien

Tucked away on page 30 of the first CP of the new year was the heartening news that the Council's Children's Services has hung on to it's Ofsted rating of "adequate" (2/4).

Commenting on this fulsome praise the responsible cabinet member, francophile Cllr. Alain Wells - clearly a fan of either Edith Piaf or Norman Le Mont - said he was heartened by this "recognition" and that the challenge was now to continue this "improvement".

Unfortunately, while he has been "consolidating" his position, the rest of the Country has been moving on, and the 75% of councils are now "good" (3/4) or "excellent" (4/4), leaving yet another important service on the Isle of Wight dropping into the worst quartile nationally. Only 5 councils in the Country are scored worse than us.

This has been achieved by the usual formula - inept and incessant buggering about at senior level (four heads of children's services in three years) - coupled with a continuous diversion of resources away from front line service provision to fund back office consultants, fat cats and spin doctors.

The Manifesto is oddly quiet when it comes to vulnerable children, perhaps judging rightly that in a society which gives several times as much to the RSPCA than to the NSPCC it's not much of a vote winner. When things go tragically wrong, however, it can certainly be a very big vote loser.

Manifesto score? 0% of nothing is still diddly squat.

Manifesto review #4

"A Conservative Council will work with Town and parish Councils to further develop community participation in the management of their local areas.
By 2009 we will deliver on the promise to help Town and Parish council's (sic) to deliver truly local services"
- A Sutton, IW Conservatives website, 11 April 2005.

"It is not current practice or a statutory requirement to consult with town councils on the discharge of planning conditions once an application has been determined" - Bill Murphy, IW Council Head of Planning, explaining last week why the recent comprehensive buggering up of the kiddies paddling pool on Ventnor Esplanade was not something he needed to run past the Ventnor Town Council first.

Oh well, looks like nil out of 10 again.

Thank 'e kindly, sir!

How quickly times change. With Duckworth's booster seat hardly cold, and despite public denials of a financial meltdown at the Council, financial wheeze-kid Dave Burbidge called senior managers together this week to announce 2.5% cuts across all services in a last ditch effort to bridge the £8.5m gap which has appeared in the budget, despite an ongoing massive raid on balances.

Coupled with this announcement was an admission that next year's Council Tax rise will be 5% regardless, whatever the results of the "budget consultation" currently underway.

So how is it that Pugh can raise Council Tax next April by the maximum amount allowed under the Government rate capping rules, thereby inflicting on Isle of Wight residents the highest increase in the Country, and yet still deliver on his manifesto commitment? As ever, the devil is in the detail. All the manifesto said was that the increase would be "no more than the Retail Price Index", without specifying when or where. The Council has settled on the one month 5% blip in the index last September which resulted from the similarly short lived peak in oil prices, rather than using the 1% or less forecast for the coming year and beyond.

The justification for this odd but convenient choice is that state pensions next April will go up in line with the September 2008 Retail Price Index, so pensioners can have no gripe if Council Tax does the same. This might be a plausible argument if Council Tax reflected ability to pay, or even level of service received, but this has never even remotely been the case.

Many pensioners like myself, whose income is mainly fixed and whose modest life savings scupper any prospect of means tested support, will pay an extra £6 per month to have the bins emptied at their band D dwelling next year. The increase in state pension will be £15.60 per month, so Pugh and his administration will be grabbing a whopping 38% of it to pay for fat cats, consultants and financial mismanagement.

Bastards.

Procrastination, procrastination, procrastination...

Perhaps the greatest of all the Duckworth/Pugh contributions to the Island - greater even than the Big Green Picnic In The Car Park, or the Yarmouth (IW) International Climate Change Conference - was the Newport East regeneration scheme. Although it was RSM Sutton who first ran the idea of demolishing County Hall up the flagpole back in 2005, it was Duckworth/Pugh genius that translated this into a bold plan for a complete redevelopment of the entire site into a world-class high-rise conference and hotel facility, with luxury penthouse developments and top quality retail and leisure facilities. Feelers were put out to top architects and developers to tempt them away from less attractive commissions in Dubai, Shanghai and Moscow.

So after four years of discussion, with enough hot air to float a fleet of Zeppelins, several acres of rain forest converted into recyclable paper waste, and the inevitable large wodges of cash handed over to consultants in return for reams of stunning word-processed insights, how are things going? Well, it now transpires that the "most business-like option" is to slap a bit of paint on the old eyesore, and leave it at that.

Also appearing to suffer from chronic procrastination is the Council's "Asset Management Strategy" which too has been four years in gestation (so far). Unfortunately that delay has meant that what would have sold for £5m last year, is now worth only £1m this year, thereby adding to the Council's budget mess. Whilst admitting in last week's County Press that he "probably" hadn't reduced the Council's building stock at all (despite manifesto promises), Pugh attempts to turn this into a virtuous refusal to flog of the family silver at economic recession prices.

The main conclusion reached so far seems to be that the Council lacks buildings which are "truly fit for purpose". It's worth remembering that the three major bureaucratic edifices built by councils on the Island in recent times, County Hall, Seaclose Park and Sandown Barracks, were all erected by Tory councils.

Perhaps total inactivity isn't such a bad idea after all......

Bear faced cheek.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, as Samuel Johnson so aptly put it, although at the moment the "credit crunch" is definitely running a close second. According to "One Island" things are so bad that they are impacting even on the Isle of Wight Council and are the primary cause of its (admittedly dire) financial difficulties.



Now, those who wrest a living from the real world may be forgiven for looking somewhat askance at this claim. After all, most of the Council's income is guaranteed and provided over three year periods by the Government, and the rest comes from their power to tax you and I up to 5% extra each year on the Council Tax. Debt is guaranteed by the Government and borrowing is therefore easy and cheap - no bank managers to worry about - and the so called "customers" are, in reality, service users with nowhere else to go.



Even inflation for the Council is lower than that experienced by industry and families, because most of it goes on staffing. For staff below senior management level, this year's pay increase is less than 2.5%, half of the Retail Price Index.



So how does anyone living in this financial Goldilocks world manage to foul up so badly? A clue might come from the fact that Pugh had to hire a team of external consultants to tell him that he was paying £1/2 million more in 6 figure salaries for fat cat non-jobs than similar small rural councils in the rest of the Country. Everyone knew but him, it would seem.



In the response form in "One Island", the various permutations of council tax rises and carefully selected service cuts (each deplorable, but, significantly, each only affecting a minority) are clearly designed to provide a "mandate" for the Great Leader to do a U-turn on the last few surviving manifesto promises from 2005, thereby bowing to "the will of the people".



My advice therefore is to vote for the lowest tax rise on offer, and in the large box at the bottom described as "other areas to look at" put "None of the above. Let's have a basic level of competence and efficiency instead."

Controversial I know, but worth a try...........

Credibility Crunch

Whilst we may not be quite up there with the leaders when it comes to service standards, we're certainly in the top decile when it comes to top flight top paid top management. When Dave Burbidge was parachuted in the Summer before last as interim Director of Finance (before it was quietly pointed out that such an arrangement is unlawful) he was reputed to be on a higher rate of pay than even the great Duckworth himself. Unlike many interims, Dave is still with us, but now spends a few minutes on the payroll each week to keep the District Auditor happy.


He has faced a daunting task, and as co-author with Bazza Abraham of the February 2008 budget master plan he certainly hit the ground ...er... running. Unkindly branded a "budget for bankruptcy" by the "glass half empty" brigade his master plan addressed a forecast budget gap of £7m in the current year, £8m next year, and £7.5m in 2010/11 through the spiffing wheeze of planning to find £12m of efficiency savings and taking £10m from balances (and borrowing £30m, but prudently of course)


So how have things fared? Well according to the "Quick guide to budget and council tax setting for 2009-10" issued to selected invitees to the Council's budget consultation process, it seems that we aren't quite out of the woods yet.



In fact, the combined budget gap for the three years appears to have risen from £22m to £67m. The guide suggests that £43m of this will come from savings, and £24m from balances, but a cynic might well be concerned that if the savings target for this year alone has actually risen from £2m to £7m since last February, with only 4 months of the year left to go, then the whole plan looks a bit aspirational. Also, despite Bazza's touching belief that he added £14m to balances last year, the reality is that they reduced from £42m to £29m, and even under his own optimistic assumptions will fall by a further £24m to a pathetic £5m by March 2011.

However, there is no need for concern. Having seen the incredible improvements in service delivery and massive savings that inevitably flow from all public sector IT initiatives, our esteemed leaders are committed to a wholesale replacement of many mission critical systems by, appropriately, April 1st next year, and without wasting time on namby-pamby parallel running. This is a courageous move, especially with elections so soon afterwards, and we must wish them well.

Meanwhile, look out for a top-percentile Council Tax rise in February!

Manifesto review #3

In lesser organisations than our own highly respected local authority, constant reorganisations are usually a displacement activity to divert attention from the fact that the leadership hasn't a clue how to run, never mind improve, the services provided. I wouldn't have thought that could possibly be the case on the Isle of Wight, but as we embark on the fourth phase of Children's Services restructuring since 2005, I thought I'd better make sure school standards were on target.

"A Conservative Council will transform the council's LEA to an organisation with an excellent track record of improving school attainment levels for our children." 11th April 2005 (A. Sutton)

Well we all know that when we hand our dear little kiddies over to the tender care of Pugh's education service they score collectively about 10% above the national average in ability. Just how much added value do we see reflected at the end of the process through GCSE A-C scores? OK, so it's not upper quartile performance, or indeed second or third quartile. But at 119 out of 150 we are right up there in the upper quartile of the bottom quartile (although admittedly only just). There are 31 inner city education authorities out there that would be proud to have that sort of performance, and we should count our blessings!

Incidentally, on the same IW Conservatives web page is a further promise from our esteemed former leader:

"A Conservative Council will maintain local village schools as vital centres of the community.."

Doesn't say all village schools, does it, suckers?

Manifesto score 0/10