With the East of England plan being scrapped as a result of the coalition government’s Localism Act, North Herts Council now has the power to decide how many new houses should be built in the district during the next 20 years.

The Council has decided to consult local people on a range of options, including one that is currently the Conservative administration’s preferred option.
The options are:

•  15,800 – The number in the East of England Plan.
•  14,500 – Based on national population projections
•  13,000 – Large scales development around Stevenage, but no green field development elsewhere.
•  11,000  – Continue with recent rate of development.
•  7,700 – Continue with recent rates of development, excluding Great Ashby.
•  7,000 – Based on the number required to deliver the additional affordable homes needed.
•  5,400  – The number required to meet the forecast growth needs of the district.
•  2,500  – The number that can be accommodated without any green field development.

The Council’s preferred option is 7,000. This would need some development on the edges of Baldock, Hitchin, Letchworth and Stevenage.

The consultation will begin in February.

It is good that local people will have a chance to have their say on how much development there is in North Herts. Once we know the exact dates and how people can respond more details will be available here.

North Herts Councillors have voted to pay themselves 65p a mile for car travel at a council meeting minutes before they agreed that they would pay the workers who run local elections just 23p a mile. Conservative councillors voted down a proposal by Liberal Democrat leader Steve Jarvis that would have limited all councillors to the 46p currently paid to those with the smallest cars. 

Steve Jarvis said, “Most employers only allow their staff to claim the 45p a mile which the tax rules say is reasonable, regardless of the size of their car, but apparently Conservative councillors in North Herts think that they should be treated differently. There is no reason why local people should contribute to the cost of buying and insuring the car, which councillors would need to pay for their private use. There is also no reason why local tax payers should have to pay more just because a councillor decides to have a larger car.

“It is particularly ironic that at the same meeting councillors approved the fees to be paid to elections staff, including a payment for car mileage at just 23p per mile.”

Hertfordshire’s schools are to receive an extra £8.5m for via the Pupil Premium.

The original plans for an extra £430 per pupil have been boosted by £100m, meaning that every school in Hertfordshire will now get nearly £500 for every child on Free School Meals.

Liberal Democrat Children’s Minister, Sarah Teather, recently announced that the total Pupil Premium funding for next year will rise to £1.25bn, double the amount in 2011-12.

Thanks to the Liberal Democrats in government, the money allocated to the pupil premium will rise again each year until 2014-15, when it will be worth £2.5bn.

North Herts Council has insisted that it was right to consult on introducing car park charges in the evening and on Sundays, even though it claims to have no plans to make these charges.

The councillor responsible for this claims that they are consulting on introducing a charge of zero, which most people will think is daft.

He claims that there will be another consultation if the charge is to be canged from zero.

Most local people seem to think either that the council has taken leave of its senses or that they are going to introduce the changes soon despite what they say.

Increases in tax allowances from April will mean that 48,000 people in North Herts will pay £200 less in Income Tax. More than 1200 of those on the lowest incomes will pay no Income Tax at all from April.

Across Hertfordshire more than 400,000 people will better off.

These changes are a result of the Lib Dem policy, adopted by the Coalition Government, to raise the tax threshold.

Liberal Democrats will propose changes to the Conservative run Council’s budget to save services for young people, freeze increases in residents parking costs and protect both public toilets and recycling facilities at Thursday’s Council budget meeting.

Liberal Democrat leader Steve Jarvis said, “The proposed budget identifies savings of £750,000 in the Council’s costs and proposes a zero rise in Council Tax, both of which we have long argued are possible. North Herts has been an expensive Council for too long, but now the Coalition Government has forced the local Conservatives to make changes.

“Whilst many of the proposed savings are long overdue, some will hit local services unnecessarily. There are other areas, such as surveys, courier services and the council’s magazine where savings could better be made. The council is also planning to continue spending money indefinitely on Town Lodge in Letchworth after it vacates the offices there, which is clearly wrong.”

The Liberal Democrat proposals will deliver an additional £80,000 of savings over the next two years, whilst putting an extra £110,000 into services for local people.

Liberal Democrats on Hertfordshire County Council have set out their vision and ideas for the budget in a letter to the Chief Executive. Throughout the budget setting process for this year the Liberal Democrats have sought to find savings that will protect front line services and cut the waste in the council’s budget.

Chris White, Liberal Democrat Opposition Leader said:

We have to be clear: these are hard times but there are things that can and in some cases should have been done years ago to save money. We need to make sure that front line services are protected. Social Care, Education, and protecting children are all of vital importance. They can be services that save lives. Writing propaganda by contrast does not – it just boosts egos. This is why we have written to the Chief Executive to be very clear where we feel the savings can be made.

The areas where Liberal Democrats think savings can be made are:

1. Procurement. The savings currently being achieved on contract negotiations seem too modest. In highways, for instance, they amount to little more than £3 million out of a spend of £70 million. It should be possible, at a time in which economic growth is hardly booming, to drive out greater savings, possibly in collusion with other counties.

2. Developing capacity. We continue to be expensive in comparison to other councils when it comes to social services. The county must do more to develop in-county capacity and to manage the costs of care packages.

3. Headcount reduction. Headcount appears to be reducing at a rate of only 6%, even though the grant reduction is nearly 50% higher. Improved working practices, greater use of IT, outsourcing, partnership working and customer self-help – as well as cultural change – should all lead to greater efficiency and effectiveness and thus a larger reduction in head count. We continue to question the rather modest reductions proposed for the HR department.

4. Property. The property portfolio continues to be large and comprises (despite TW3) some 33 offices, 50 houses, a large number of farms and many other properties of doubtful use to the council. While these should not be marketed together and while there are also some important green belt considerations we need nevertheless to make sure that as much as possible is divested.

5. Sharing offices. It is vital to make real steps in sharing offices with other councils as well as the rest of the public sector, the voluntary sector and the private sector. So far little progress seems to have been made. We noted also when we visited Hampshire that their county hall has been redeveloped: we would seek a plan to dispose of the front part of county hall, which might make more sense as a conference centre, while redeveloping the back to make it more suitable for 21st standards of energy usage.

6. Invest to save. Again, we were impressed that Hampshire has used prudential borrowing to fund an upgrade of their road network so as to reduce maintenance costs over time. We wish to see Hertfordshire do the same: £100 million does not seem an unreasonable starting point. Meanwhile, more efficient methods of pothole repairs are available – proactive rather than reactive work cuts out the pointless management functions of identifying holes in a road which, by definition, must be obvious if they are in need of repair. Any increased spend on inspecting completed works is likely to pay for itself.

7. Sharing services. There is still further scope for rationalisation so that the boundary line between county and district services is no longer so arbitrary (classic nonsense are the division of responsibility for street cleaning, gully-emptying, yellow-lining and so forth). There are some modest cost savings to be made here straight away but far greater savings may be made by (for instance) merging the legal service into a single Hertfordshire-wide professional unit.

8. Information technology. there is still a great deal of progress to be made on this front – the paperless office is now achievable but some of our departments are still locked into a paper chase (not least Highways).

9. Devolution. Greater working with towns and parishes could yield some modest savings over (for instance) the provision of library services and grass-cutting.

10. Waste. The public relations machine remains an enormous source of waste and needs to be cut back, first of all by abolishing press releases relating to locality budgets. We also seek a 50% cut in the number of publications produced for external and internal consumption, especially Herts Horizons which could usefully be merged with periodicals from the police and other councils to establish an acceptable and politically neutral publication at lower cost. Meanwhile the concept of councillors receiving free lunches is inappropriate in this day and age.

North Herts Council has agreed the proposed package of savings totalling £1.9M. Of this total around £1.2M is a result of reductions in government grant.

The savings include reductions in office costs and IT systems that Lib Dem councillors have been suggesting for some years.  They still include some savings that are a bad idea, such as cutting recycling banks, closing public toilets and reducing youth services.

There are better alternatives such as saving money on couriers, surveys and publicity that the council could choose to make the necessary savings. Liberal Democrat councillors will be trying to make these changes when the budget is considered by the full council on 10th February.

The proposals also include a zero Council Tax rise – something else we have been proposing for some time. Unfortunately this will still leave North Herts paying one of the highest levels of Council Tax in Hertfordshire.

The government has now announced the grants that councils will receive in 2011/12. North Herts Council will receive £7.1 million from the government compared with £8.1 million in 2010/11. This reduction of £1 million is slightly less than the amount that the council had been expecting.

North Herts Council has identified ways to save nearly £1.4 million in response to the Coalition Government’s reductions in grants to councils. Nearly half the savings will come from staff “restructuring”with much of the rest coming from savings that could have been made long ago.

Lib Dem leader of the opposition on the council, Steve Jarvis said, “We have been saying for years that North Herts Council was spending too much for what it delivers for local people, but were always told that savings of this sort could not be made. Now we see that it is possible after all.

“Although many of the savings are in areas like office accomodation, stationery and equipment and pointless surveys there are some proposed cuts, like those to the young people’s services and plastic recycling banks, that save little and will affect many local people.

“At the same time there is scope for bigger savings in areas like IT systems and courier services.

“I hope that we can get the council to focus more on these areas before the budget is finalised.”

The council is expected to discover exactly how much grant it will get from the government and whether the savings found are sufficient in the next two weeks.