Somerset this week: 16 February
The takeover of The Leveller interests the Secretary of State, goings on in Bridgwater, Chard and Stoke sub Hamdon, a camp site trashed near Glastonbury and how you'll be taxed more by the back door.
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Somerset this week: 16 February
The Secretary of State wants to know more
We explained last week that The Leveller newspaper is now under new ownership. The paper that was since the inception of Somerset Confidential®, our sister organisation, is now owned by the publisher of the Blackmore Vale.
That was the result of what should have been a relatively straightforward transaction between two local newspaper businesses.
The Leveller is a free newspaper with a circulation net of returns of around 15,000 copies. It is not going to be giving the national dailies a run for their money any time soon.
So it was with some surprise that we learned that the Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport has taken an interest in the transaction. The Rt Hon. Lucy Frazer KC must know something that we do not.
She has called the transaction into question and asked for more information. This is to say the least unusual. When two large media groups are thinking of getting together it often draws attention. There might be concern about the plurality of media ownership. There might be concern that any one media group could dominate the local media landscape.
However the normal tipping point for enquiries from the Secretary of State is a turnover of £70m. This is set out in the Enterprise Act 2002 section 23. There is admittedly a lower threshold for some transactions where the company being taken over has a turnover above £1m. The Leveller falls into neither category.
So what has the Secretary of State seen to raise her concern? Not much beyond a generic response but here is what their spokesperson gave us:
“DCMS officials monitor the UK media landscape for potential merger situations and undertake due diligence on media mergers. Sometimes this involves writing to media companies to gain information on a merger.
The DCMS Secretary of State has a quasi-judicial role in considering mergers involving media companies. They can intervene in a merger where they believe there may be a public interest concern. The details of the process and grounds for intervention are set out in the Enterprise Act 2002.
As you will appreciate, we cannot comment on specific acquisitions, the potential applicability of the Enterprise Act 2002, or other regulatory processes.”
Camping travails
It would be fair to say that the town of Glastonbury attracts more than its fair share of disputes around camping sites for travellers and others.
The latest incident was along Porchestall Drove to the west of the town heading out in the direction of the Avalon Marshes. Somerset Council’s enforcement team became aware of an unauthorised encampment and was preparing to engage with the occupiers and landowner.
It seems that somebody got wind of the plans and the site was evacuated overnight. The result was a mess. Abandoned and trashed caravans together with litter (including abandoned gas containers) were strewn across the field.
The enforcement team were not happy but they do have powers. These include:
giving the owner 7 days to clear the land.
In the event they do not clear and restore the land they can serve a s215 Notice on the landowner requiring clearance and restoration.
In the event the land it is not cleared the Council can take direct action and place a land charge on the title, with a view to seeking a possession order from the Courts to recover the public costs of the clean-up operation.
To get a s215 Notice and enforce it requires a time frame of 12 weeks
However this is not a quick and easy process. To get a s215 Notice and enforce it requires a time frame of 12 weeks. Meanwhile the whole field would be left as an eyesore.
Whilst it is unclear if this was a site used by travellers or other groups, it has long been recognised that the area around Glastonbury is a favoured site for travellers and adequate provision needs to be made for them.
And of course there is money available to help with this as part of the town deal. We asked Somerset Council how they intended to proceed with this particular incident.
Their spokesperson told us: “A Somerset Council Spokesperson said: “Somerset Council received complaints about anti-social behaviour and rubbish on privately owned land in Glastonbury. A group which had been living on the site has now left and we are trying to work with the landowner to ensure that rubbish and a number of caravans are removed – the onus is on the landowner to do this. We are considering our options should this request be unsuccessful.
Whilst we are aware there can be a cost implication to any form of unauthorised encampment we are also acutely aware that there is a real shortage of official traveller provision throughout the country. We are working proactively in Glastonbury to identify some potential local solutions for the creation of traveller sites. One of these options is supported by the Town Deal.”
Stoke sub standard?
Some disquiet and indeed discord is disrupting life in the usually peaceful village of Stoke sub Hamdon, nestling in the lower slopes of Ham Hill. Indeed it was once known as Stoke under Ham.
The cause of the disquiet appears to be a successful purchase and renovation of the old methodist church in the village. Following the refurbishment it has reopened as the Stoke sub Hamdon Youth and Family Centre. The refurbished building has been well received by the community and certainly looks the ticket.
So what is not to like?
The problem stems from the way that the project was run and the publication of the independent report,
The church was bought in 2016 for £130,000 by the Parish Council using a Public Works Loan Board loan of £150,000. The extra £20,000 being set aside to contribute towards refurbishment costs.
In 2018 the Parish Clerk, Sarah Moore and two Parish Councillors, Barbara Brooks and Hugh Donovan were appointed trustees of a newly incorporated charity: Hamdon Youth and Family Centre Trust.
Between July 2020 and May 2022 a project that would eventually cost £137,584 got underway. The project was to renovate the old church and fit it out so it could be run as the new Youth and Family Centre. The project was run by the Parish Council but those of you alert to this sort of thing will already see the problem.
The Parish Council running the project included two councillors and the clerk who were also trustees of the organisation benefiting from the project. Therein lies what is on the face of it a clear conflict of interest.
That certainly was the finding of the independent report commissioned from “Do the numbers” by the Parish Council.
After the project completed, the trustees of the new trust: Cllr Brooks (July 2022), Cllr Donovan (October 2022) and the clerk (May 2023) all resigned from the Parish Council. We should add that the minutes do show that both councillors properly declared their interest as Trustees for Parish Council meetings (and a clerk would not usually be required to declare an interest).
It is also important to note that although the report identifies numerous procedural failings by the Parish Council, there is no suggestion of corruption involved.
However the failings were, according to the independent report, significant. They included one overarching failure, that due to the total value, the project was required by law to have been advertised on the Government Procurement Portal.
This, the report says, was not done.
It goes further suggesting that the project may have been consciously divided up to get around the tendering rules. Each of the phases should in good practice have been advertised to ensure best value for electors.
The report then suggest that one of the contractors was a councillor. Worse, that the councillor was paid to for the work with no evidence of a proper quotation and tendering process.
Nor says the report, was it minuted that the councillor not only was paid by the Parish Council but was also a Trustee of the Trust benefiting from the work.
Finally the report notes that “Councillors approved payments of substantial sums for unbudgeted amounts that had not been properly approved in advance.”
it reads like a list of how not to run a public sector contract
Overall it reads like a list of how not to run a public sector contract. There are a list of lessons to be learned and a lot of those revolve around training. The report does also acknowledge that at the end of a flawed process, the community has a valuable asset. But did the community overpay or at least not get best value from the process? That remains an open question.
The report was duly published and this too seems to have caused some ill feeling. However as residents of Chard will testify, a report into a council’s processes, paid for by the public purse should always be published and indeed (unlike the report in Chard) published in largely unredacted format.
Unfortunately this is not the end of the list of issues facing the Parish Council either. The minutes of the Parish Council meetings are running a little behind schedule. As a result the 18 October 2023 meeting only appeared earlier this week. Included in them was the following item: “The clerk notified council of concerns after locating potentially irregular PAYE payments in 2021/22 & 2022/23. Council noted the comments.”
Somerset Confidential® contacted the Hamdon Youth and Family Centre Trust to ask if they had expressed concerns either over the publication of the independent report and if so what those concerns were. As we went to press we had not received a response.
There’s more than one way to raise a tax
Last week we discovered that Michael Gove would not allow Somerset Council to balance their books by raising council tax by 10% for 2024/25. Next Tuesday the council will vote on new proposals that will of necessity, replace the £17m they could have raised in council tax, with a larger capitalisation direction.
This is a device that means some of the council’s expenditure is deemed to be capital, therefore an asset against which it can borrow. That borrowing therefore can help bridge the gap in the council finances.
But of course borrowing comes at a cost. Especially with the Bank of England interest rate unchanged at 5.25%. That means more assets will have to be sold in due course to finance the council’s “transformation plan” to reduce the scale of the organisation and breadth of services it can offer.
In the meantime council tax will rise by more than £10m anyway. This has nothing to do with Somerset Council adding 10% to their own tax take.
It has everything to do with town councils seeking to take on assets and services from Somerset Council and looking to finance them through their own town council tax (the precept).
To date the total tax raised by the thirteen largest town councils in Somerset will be £23.439m for 2024/25. That compares with a total tax raised of just £13.043m raised for the tax year 2023/24. That’s an overall increase in the tax take of some £10.395m.
That’s an overall increase in the tax take of some £10.395m
Which begs the question, if the town councils can raise taxes by taking on former Somerset Council services, was there a way that Somerset Council could have done the same.
Curiously, the answer to that is yes.
It is often assumed that upper tier councils have no power to raise council tax above the limits set each year by the Secretary of State. This is not actually true. Under certain circumstances a unitary or county council can raise council tax above the threshold.
This is governed by the Local Government Act 1992, section 35. This allows a billing authority to increase the precept (without recourse to central government) where an upper tier authority wants to devolve a service down to a town or parish and the town or parish refuses.
Obviously this only applies to discretionary spending, but surely a considerable amount could have been raised by Somerset Council using this mechanism without recourse to central government.
Perhaps enough to balance the books of the council.
Had Somerset Council gone to the towns and parishes and encouraged them not to take on devolved services, s35 offers them the opportunity to raise more council tax themselves. In short the £10m extra the 13 largest town councils are now raising, could have been raised by Somerset Council without recourse to the secretary of state.
However instead of discussing this route Somerset Council has taken the opposite approach. Actively encouraging town and parish councils to take on as much as possible. And the town and parish councils have enthusiastically taken the opportunity.
As a direct result of the approach Somerset Council has taken, local people will be paying more council tax to their town and parish councils, and Somerset Council is still short of funds.
When we asked Somerset Council about s35 and why they had not explored this option, they instead answered a different question. Their spokesperson telling us: “We are working with City, Town and Parish Councils who have shown an interest in devolution or in funding services of value to their communities. Parishes have the ability to set their own precept levels without Government permission, and Somerset Council, as the collection authority, will perform the collection and distribution role. This important work is underway with a number of services having been removed from risk of reduction or closure.”
Bridgwater row over councillor allowance
We have already reported on Bridgwater Town Council’s hike of their council tax as they seek to take on more services from Somerset Council. But within the budget a much smaller item caught the eye of opposition Conservative Group Leader Diogo Rodrigues. His stand was supported by one of the Town Council’s other Conservatives, Cllr Gill Slocombe.
It wasn’t so much the eye-watering increase in the council tax (precept) from £1.153m for 2023/24 to £3.908m for 2024/25, as the £1,200 in council tax allowance councillors would receive in 2024/25 that offended Cllr Rodrigues. It is interesting to note in passing that until 2019 Cllr Rodrigues was a Leader of Bridgwater’s Labour councillors. He then sat as an Independent before finding his latest resting place with the Conservatives in 2020.
Cllr Rodrigues’s opposition to the idea of councillor allowances spurred him on to start a petition on 38 degrees against the idea. When Somerset Confidential® last checked, it had attracted 466 signatures. If you’d like to find out more and read the petition, you can do so here.
He points out that the Labour group were “costing each of us at least an extra £120 annually but also see them awarding themselves a comfortable £1,200 pay annual pay”
Brian Smedley is the Leader of the Labour group who rather boringly has only ever represented Labour and never seen the need to nail his colours to anyone else’s mast. Responding to the petition he told us: “The Tory councillors – Rodrigues and Slocombe – are actually being incredibly hypocritical. They’ve launched a petition against these small allowances whilst not mentioning at the same time that they are drawing more than £40,000 a year as county councillors between them. Are they saying Bridgwater councillors shouldn’t be paid even a small amount for running local services while they can draw vast allowances for being part of another council? They are just trying to scare people and are not being honest with them. We know they’re Tories, but they needn’t be so clichéd!”
Cllr Smedley and his colleague Cllr Leigh Redman are also Somerset Councillors also drawing a substantial council allowance. A point not lost on Mr Smedley (who hasn’t quite caught up with the fact that he serves on Somerset Council not the now defunct Somerset County Council). He added: “I’m also a County Councillor like Rodrigues and Slocombe. County councillors get £298 a week. We’re proposing that Town councillors get just £23 a week!”
It’s hard in Chard
Last week we noted the way in which Chard Town Council’s love of secrecy appeared to be coming to the fore again. That town council meeting had two in camera items on the agenda which, on the face of it, did not merit being held away from the public gaze.
Which leaves one wondering what have they got to hide?
Is there more bad behaviour of the sort itemised in the Rolley Report into bullying at the council by three town councillors?
That resulted in a high turnover of council staff. A simple fact that is costing the council tax payers of Chard dear.
Now yet another Town Council meeting has been called for Monday 19 February. It too will be held in camera (well the only substantive issue on the agenda will be). Again there really is no legitimate reason for this as there is but one item on the agenda. The recruitment of a new town clerk. There’s no obvious need to discuss the clerks salary, so there’s no legitimate reason to hold the entire item in camera.
What is despressing is not so much the hiding behind closed doors as the fact that yet another town clerk has resigned. No doubt for similar reasons to the others who have exited stage left.
When Gareth Hughes was appointed last May he was the 10th clerk to serve the town in 12 years. Brought up and educated in Chard, at the time he said he was: “excited by the opportunity to work in his home town and being able to work with the Town Councillors and residents of Chard, to help them shape its future.”
Now he is gone. It has been barely 10 months since his appointment. Which means since January 2011 the following have held the post of town clerk, or deputised for it, on a permanent or temporary basis:
Gareth Hughes
Adrian Turner
Paul Russell
Andrew Gun
Tracey Lamb
Nick Randle
Tracey Lamb
Zoe Truong
Sarah Robson
John Furze
The next incumbent will be the 11th clerk to serve the town in 13 years. Anyone with a mind to see it, can see that the problem does not lie with the clerks.
There is a consistent theme here. Until the problem with the bullying is sorted, and council staff are able to do their jobs without feeling targeted, the problem will persist.
The world of clerks is a small one. Soon Chard Town Council may find no-one is willing to serve there.
Bus battles
Finally this week there appears to be a concerted effort if not to actually solve the problem of four subsidised bus routes being withdrawn, at least to avoid being blamed for their cancellation.
The current focus is on the 25 service between Taunton and Dulverton and the 28 service from Taunton to Minehead.
Somerset Bus Partnership is holding a rally in Wiveliscombe tomorrow, Saturday 17 February. It will be held in the Town Square at 11am with the hope that people will come and join in including travelling on the 9.55 bus from Taunton that arrives in the town at 10.43.
Maverick Conservative MP for Bridgwater and West Somerset Mr Liddell-Grainger, says he has been having intense discussions with Somerset Councillors and officials to try to find ways in which both can be retained. The MP says he was: “heartened by the protests organised by the Somerset Bus Partnership in support of retaining threatened routes - including the Taunton-Yeovil and Yeovil-Wincanton services which are under threat of being withdrawn completely.”
As First Bus are coming under criticism for their hands off approach to these vital rural services, a new statement from their spokesperson reads: “Somerset Council and Buses of Somerset continue to have positive discussions over the future of the four routes. We’re exploring all opportunities and are now looking at detailed proposals. We understand the concerns of the community and we’re working hard to find a way forward. We hope to be able to provide an update as soon as possible.”
Positive?
Certainly the brightest note we have seen for several weeks.
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