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Somerset this week: 15 December
Missing the point (or the post)
Yesterday we reported that Adam Dance, LibDem candidate for the Yeovil parliamentary constituency had taken up the issue of the poor postal service in Yeovil. When we raised this with the Post Office in August they told us they were getting over a recruitment problem and they would have staff in place to help the service recover.
It hasn’t.
Complaints from residents have continued. Mr Dance told us he got involved after: “One of my team visited the queue at Yeovil sorting office yesterday morning at 9.45. 45 people were waiting for between 30 and 40 minutes. The sorting office is only open from 8 to 10 and those who have not reached the counter by 10 would, we were told, be sent away. Those in the queue said that they had had no post for 3 weeks and that this was an ongoing problem since the summer.”
We presented Royal Mail with the facts as told to us by Adam Dance and asked for a comment. It is worth quoting as it shows how completely out of touch Royal Mail are with the situation on the ground. A Royal Mail spokesperson said: “A number of villages in the area have been severely affected by the recent flooding and have been inaccessible for days at a time. We are resuming normal deliveries as and when we can access them.”
We wanted to tell them that Yeovil wasn’t a village. The postal problems were in a town of 40,000 people. The problems were that management have failed to get a grip on a four month old problem. We wanted to tell them it clearly has nothing to do with the floods.
But somehow there didn’t seem much point. They simply don’t seem to have a grip on anything approximating to reality.
Redundancy programme at Somerset Council
Next week (on 20 December) Somerset Council will be asked to approve several more large payouts as more senior executives are made redundant. The payout packages are all in excess of £100,000, the reason the require full council approval.
The largest package is £259,515 for a former South Somerset District Council employee. Closely followed by £258,313 for a finance manager from Sedgemoor District Council. The three others are a customer service manager from Somerset County Council (£166,935) a public protection manager from Mendip District Council (£146,175) and a building control manager at Sedgemoor (£131,877).
Overall however the redundancy program is behind schedule. Not helpful for a council looking to trim excess fat to meet what, by its own admission, is a “financial emergency.”
As part of the on going savings from bringing 5 councils together and merging them into one, two thirds were meant to come from staff cost savings.
£12.3m of savings were planned from staff cuts. That figure representing cuts of 339 posts. The saving was meant to be split between senior management posts (£2.9m) and other staff (£9.4m). A Somerset Council report yesterday confirmed that much of the senior staff saving, a total of £2.6m has been made. However there has been no progress towards savings on other staff posts.
there has been no progress towards savings on other staff posts
What makes that worse, is that had the program been on plan, the immediate impact for 2023/24 would be extra costs from redundancy, the cost savings come in later years.
So to learn that the council has a budget deficit of some £18.7m without having had to bear redundancy costs at the level envisaged, is worrying. Because that will have implications for future years when the redundancy costs eventually happen.
Whilst other initiatives are now being sought out as a matter of urgency, perhaps if some of the low hanging fruit had been grasped, making ends meet might have proved more straightforward?
Vehicle licensing conundrum
Somerton & Frome’s MP, Sarah Dyke, spoke at some length in a debate on rural broadband on Wednesday. In doing so she raised an important point which has been but poorly covered in the press.
As from March 2024, you will no longer be able to access Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency services in post offices. Not only will that once again hurt the income of post masters, it will leave something of a conundrum for residents of Somerton & Frome seeking to tax their cars (among other things).
It is bad enough that postal office coverage is poor throughout the constituency. Somerton has no Post Office and in Frome there hasn’t been one in the town centre for two years.
Banks are, as Ms Dyke noted in her speech are also a rare commodity. There are no branches of Barclays, HSBC, Nat West or Lloyds Bank in the constituency and the only two remaining bank branches are a TSB in Somerton and a TSB in Frome. The rest of Somerset is not much better for that matter.
Be that as it may. The point is that the government is no longer interested in those who are disenfranchised because they struggle to use (or simply don’t trust) smartphones or laptops to undertake transactions. Especially transactions with government.
But if central government simply doesn’t give a stuff about those who cannot or will not use the internet, what about those who do and will? As Ms Dyke points out (and indeed as her predecessor before her had done) that is all well and good if you have decent internet.
And we don’t.
Quoting Sarah Dyke from her speech on Wednesday: “In Somerton and Frome, 4.6% of people—over five times the national average—have broadband speeds below the legal universal service obligation. Nearly a quarter of Somerton and Frome is in a 5G notspot, and 39 postcode areas in my constituency are in a 3G notspot. Many constituents struggle to access services online given their sluggish broadband speeds. Although I welcome some of the Government’s actions to improve rural broadband and mobile connectivity in rural communities, we need to go further to help those in the hardest-to-reach areas
In Berkley Marsh, just outside of Frome, one constituent faces the very real prospect of having no internet provision next year. They are dependent on wireless broadband from Voneus and a BT landline, with the latter switching off next year. They will be left with broadband speeds of 250 kbps. Another internet provider wanted to supply fibre to their home, but they are being frustrated by other providers. That highlights the plight of those in hard-to-reach areas. It will affect businesses, residents and consumers alike.”
So how exactly are residents meant to interact with the DVLA? They can move seamlessly from their non existent Post Offices to their non existent banks and now onwards and upwards to their non existent broadband.
To rub salt in the wounds, this morning government announced that more than £530 million in investment this year has been made to boost broadband for over 330,000 hard-to-reach homes and businesses. All over the place. But yes, you’ve guessed, none of it was in Somerset.
Perhaps more in hope than expectation, Sarah Dyke has also submitted a written question to the Secretary of State for Transport: “To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that rural communities can access DVLA services after the end of the DVLA contract with the Post Office on 31 March 2024.”
Perhaps we should not hold our breath waiting for the answer.
In Labour
The Labour party’s process of selecting candidates for the seven Somerset seats we cover is proving to be more painful than giving birth. And for a process that officially started back in May 2023, it may well end up taking longer than an average pregnancy.
The problem here is that all seven Somerset seats we cover ( Yeovil, Taunton, Bridgwater, Frome & East Somerset, Wells and Mendip Hills, Glastonbury & Somerton, Tiverton & Minehead) are considered by Labour to be “non battleground seats”. That’s not based on some spurious leaked document with no headings and little provenance (as has been reported on elsewhere over the summer). It is the official title used by the Labour Party on their own website.
It is a title that flies in the face of polls suggesting both Frome and Bridgwater should be target seats for Labour.
An initial process had been agreed by Labour for selecting candidates back in May 2023. This has now been replaced by a new procedure agreed by the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party at the end of November.
Bear in mind at this point, that a General Election can be called at any moment. Whilst a sitting Prime Minister lagging behind by 20 odd points in opinion polls is unlikely to call for an election, he still could. And if, for instance, the Rwanda Bill’s next reading in Parliament becomes a confidence issue, we could be looking at an election as soon as March.
Labour however is showing no sense of urgency in finding candidates for seats in Somerset (or indeed anywhere else on the list of “non battleground seats.”
Those candidates who had previously expressed an interest in being a candidate under the old process, will apparently be contacted again so they can go through the new one. One of those hopefuls is Bridgwater’s Leigh Redman. He tells Somerset Confidential®: “I am applying to be the Bridgwater Labour candidate and I believe that candidate must be local and be able to demonstrate a long resume of community work. We need a Bridgwater voice in Westminster not another voice of Westminster in Bridgwater.”
The deadline for applying for the shortlist is 10 January 2024.
Panels will be set up to vet candidates and draw up a shortlist. In fact I quote here: “Following the deadline for applications, a Panel will carefully review the applications and information before it and agree a provisional shortlist.”
Once a short list has been drawn up, and it is not clear how long that process could take, final selection will be made at a hustings. Those hustings should take place no more than 14 days after the shortlist is announced but candidates must have at least 3 days notice.
hustings should take place no more than 14 days after the shortlist is announced
Either way it seems unlikely that Labour will have announced candidates for the Somerset seats before 1 February 2024. Which if there were to be a March General Election, would leave very little time to get up and running with a campaign.
Especially given that the Conservatives have already got candidates in place for all seven constituencies. The LibDems have candidates ready to roll in Taunton, Wells, Yeovil and Glastonbury & Somerton and the Greens have announced candidates in Yeovil and Frome constituencies.
It leaves Labour with a lot of catching up to do. It may also give Rishi Sunak an unexpected reason to call an early General Election.
Somerset Council asks you what to do
You can’t blame them for trying. Faced with an economic crisis, partly but not entirely of their own making, Somerset Council is asking for your help.
They would like to know how you would solve the financial crisis. They would like to consult you. The consultation is open to everyone and the council say the results will help influence Councillors as they look to set a balanced budget in February 2024.
The budget consultation opened yesterday (11 December) and will close on 22 January. The link to it can be found at somersetcouncil.citizenspace.com/comms/budget-consultation-2024-2025/, or can be completed in libraries and council offices across Somerset.
They start by asking you to select the services you cherish (and use) the most. But when it comes to the numbers, the cash they don’t have, you are asked to rank nine items in order of priority that will help square the books.
For the record and in case you want a go yourself - these are:
Lobbying central Government to change the laws on local government funding
Generating additional income
Introducing and increasing charges for some services
Using the Council reserves
Increasing Council Tax
Changing services
Reducing services
Job losses
Selling council-owned property
No doubt you’ll all have a view on this. But it does in itself tell a tale. The first item on the list is lobbying for central Government to give some more cash. The other items you get to afterwards are the things the council can do for itself.
In his introduction Somerset Council Leader Bill Revans makes it clear where he feels responsibility lies: “I urge everyone to take part in our consultation, read through the information, understand our challenges, and have your say. We are facing very difficult decisions – this is not where we want to be. But we must face the reality of what is, fundamentally, a broken system of local government funding nationally”
The consultation the takes you through each option in turn but spends a lot of time on the lobbying central government option.
That said, this is far from the worst example of a consultation we’ve seen. And it is good to have your say. It will take you around 20-30 minutes to complete if you intend to do the job properly and thoughtfully.
is it not the job of the council to balance the needs of different sections of society?
But is it not the job of the council to balance the needs of different sections of society? An older person won’t necessarily value educational services as much as adult social services. A bus user may value different aspects of the Highways budget to a car user. Will a consultation really tell us things we do not already know?
And how likely is it that a genuinely representative sample of the population of Somerset will fill the consultation in? And if say 5,000 people do - out of our population of 500,000 then what does it really mean?
The consultation does not of course ask if Somerset Council should consider putting its own house in order - starting with completing the redundancy program that it is behind on (see above). Or selling off investment properties that arguably should never have been bought in the first place.
Consulting is a worthy idea. But actually is it not simply devolving responsibility for making difficult decisions from councillors who were elected and are paid to make them, to the public who are not?
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Regarding the 'consultation' by Somerset Council.
I had a chuckle at the thought of the highly paid management team, utterly stumped for ideas (which is what they are highly paid to do) and asking the public their thoughts!
As and when SC declares itself bankrupt, the same highly paid management team, will be able to pass the buck onto the taxpayers for not coming up with 'the right ideas' on how to save money.
Will they pass on some of their high pay to those who contribute their thoughts.....no of course not..... the 'consultation' is just an abduction of responsibility.
If they are unable or incompetent to do the job, why did they apply in the first place?