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Today’s news update is a little briefer than usual because we wanted to get the stroke service decision to you yesterday.
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Somerset this week: 26 January
Hey big spender
Last week we noted that Shepton Mallet had joined the town council millionaires club. Council’s who are now raising a precept of more than £1 million from their tax payers. Frome Town Council has been a member of that club for many years. But this year the precept (council tax for the town) will go over £2m for the first time.
To date, in our patch of Somerset, only Taunton Town Council has taken a precept over £2m. That was for 2023/24, its inaugural year as a town council.
However as the crisis at Somerset Council starts to filter its way through to the next tier down, towns and parishes are asking for more.
Frome Town Council considered their precept at their January meeting. The precept will rise for 2024/25 and most of that rise is due to the "opportunity" devolution presents. The precept demand will be £2,553,158. That's up from £1,983,504 for 2023/24. An increase of nearly £600,000 or 28%.
Generally they are planning on doing much of the same things as before. There is inflation of course to think about.
However the town council already take on a number of tasks supporting their community and are involved with the Cheese and Grain, the Badgers Hill Football ground, home to Frome Town FC, run a substantial town hall that also generates income. On which note it is worth pointing out that the town council generates nearly £400,000 in income from room hire, rent, interest and grant income.
There are lots of other projects too. Plenty on the climate emergency from encouraging, educating to practical things like trying to promote lowering the EPC rating of properties in the town. Then there's projects on good citizenship, the Welcome Hub for displaced people and lots more. Each is carefully costed and all in all does not increase the cost of running the town significantly.
And then we come to the Somerset Council financial emergency.
Frome Town Council has its eye on a number of potential items that could be devolved. It doesn't seem so very long ago (it was 2020) since Mendip District Council devolved the Boyles Cross area to Frome Town Council.
The problem for Frome today, is that it is still not clear what might be on offer. So there's a pretty massive lump in the budget for 2024/25 marked simply as devolution opportunities.
£350,000 is bigger than some towns' precepts in total
The size of the sum, £350,000 is bigger than some towns' precepts in total. It speaks to the ambition (some say over ambition) of the town.
The risk is that the town council may not be able to reach a deal with Somerset Council on the transfer of assets. But there are assets that would make a huge difference to Frome. Starting with the town centre car park. Whether the town council would be able to persuade Somerset Council to part with it is another matter!
And of course if no assets are devolved, the town will have raised a extra £350,000 and will need to find a home for it.
Blue badge blues
The Blue Badge is a vital benefit for the elderly and disabled. It allows them free parking in special disabled bays in public car parks. It is also recognised by many private car park owners and businesses (such as restaurants) where disabled parking is offered.
The deal with the badge is that you must display it, showing time of arrival and the duration of your stay. All of this is facilitated by the design of the badge pack which shows your entitlement and uses paper dials to allow you to display arrival time and stay length.
As long as you comply with all of that, your parking is free,
And the way Somerset Council have been hiking parking charges to help balance their books of late, this is quite a valuable perk. Each blue badge has a life of three years. Which is both good, in that it means you don’t have to apply for a new one so often, and bad, in that it can be harder to remember when it runs out.
Of course to qualify for free parking, your blue badge must be in date. Somerset Council (indeed all councils) are required to send a reminder that you need to apply for a new badge at least ten weeks before it runs out.
One resident contacted Somerset Confidential® complaining that her badge had run out without her noticing and she had no reminder from the council.
She soon got a reminder, but not in the way she might have expected. The reminder came in the form of a parking ticket issued because the parking attendant had noticed the badge had expired.
When she rang in to explain her circumstances, she was told that this was a common problem and an increasing number of elderly or disabled people had been hit with the same issue.
Had Somerset Council forgotten to send the reminders out? We contacted them and asked.
Not so they told us. Their spokesperson added: “As far as we are aware blue badge holders are getting the usual reminder 10 weeks before the expiry date on their badge. This is either by email or by letter, depending on preference stated when they applied. If for some reason you don’t think you’ve had a reminder please do get in contact with our team straight away.”
And some friendly advice too: “We have over 10,000 blue badge holders in Somerset so it’s really helpful if people can check and make sure their contact details up-to-date. It’s possible reminders sometimes go into the junk folder depending on email preferences, so it’s also worth checking this if you are expecting a reminder.”
So what happens if you are one of the unlucky ones. Or you simply didn’t realise you needed to update your contact details. The council say that it is easy to challenge a fine under those circumstances. Listen up now please….If you want to challenge a parking fine you can do so here
So now you know.
Drop in the ocean
Money continues to dominate the headlines in our corner of the world. Or more to the point a lack of it.
As Somerset Council ponders how it will close a budget shortfall over the next two years of more than £100m, any extra will no doubt be welcome. The announcement by central government this week that extra funds would be made available to tier one authorities (mostly unitary authorities and county councils) to help with Adult Social Care will have been welcome.
In the end Government announced that an extra £600m would be made available after pressure from Conservative MPs. No doubt egged on by their ever decreasing prospects of holding on to their seats at the next General Election.
£600m sounds generous. It sounds significant.
Until you do the maths.
There are over 100 tier one councils and that means the government largesse amounted to an average of around £6m per council.
Somerset Council Leader Bill Revans has taken temporary charge of Adult Social Services in Somerset following the sad death of Dean Ruddle earlier this month.
What did he think of the extra money. We understand that £5m is being allocated to Somerset. He did not want to sound ungrateful. Cllr Revans said: “Any extra funding is of course welcome, but £5m will not help us overcome a projected budget shortfall of £100million for next year. We still have a broken model of local government finance and social care funding which needs to be addressed. We have explored all options to reduce our gap and it is clear we will need Government approval to increase Council Tax and use capital funding to create a sustainable council.”
But does the blame lie entirely with central government? We noticed that reacting to the announcement of the £600m, the Local Government Association chairman James Jamieson was reported as saying the funding fell short of addressing the current £1.6bn shortfall needed each year to maintain current service levels.
Really?
We’ve already noted that Somerset has a projected shortfall of over £100m. We know councils such as Birmingham and Nottingham are in a similar boat. It is likely that the £600m would be eaten up by a handful of councils.
Which makes us wonder if the £1.6bn figure is anywhere close to accurate. Somerset Confidential® is not aware of any councils who are fully confident of balancing the books over the next 48 months.
And these shortfalls are not just for tier 1 councils, they impact on district councils and borough councils too. And there are 317 of these in England.
The £1.6bn shortfall works out at an average of around £5m per council per annum. Which looks like a pretty radical underestimate to us. Perhaps the Local Government Association should be running a slide rule over their numbers?
Wells wants more too
Wells City Council has raised the precept (local council tax) in recent years to the point where it had nearly doubled from £652k in 2021/22 to £1.149m for 2023/24. The council has raised funds form the good citizens of Wells to take over local assets that were offered to them by Mendip District Council (the Bishops Barn) or Somerset County Council (the Portway Annex).
All of which was signed sealed and delivered before anyone had even heard of the Somerset Council financial crisis.
This year the precept will rise again but by a more modest amount. The 2024/25 level was set at the January meeting of the City Council at £1.178m, a comparatively modest rise by the standards of recent times.
This is partly because Wells was a little ahead of the game. Last year it anticipated the opportunity to see assets devolved down from Somerset Council. It set aside £50,000 as a contingency for any opportunity that might come along. This has not been spent as yet and this year, despite some ups and some downs in the budget. So for 2024/25 a new provision of £50,000 for devolving assets down from Somerset Council has been added on.
Giving them a handy war chest of £100,000 should they need it.
Wine news
If you enjoy a drop of red or white and you know your Chenin from your Chardonnay, your Bordeaux from your Burgundy, then there’s some good news.
Yapp Brothers have announced they are relocating to Somerset. For over 50 years the small wine merchant in Mere (Wiltshire) has been punching well above its weight. Specialising from the start in French wine, they’ve built up a discerning clientele.
Mainly through attention to detail, smart buying and just being incredibly knowledgeable and very friendly.
Initially operating out of Robin Yapp's garage they eventually moved to their current location, a set of Victorian warehouses in Mere town centre where they’ve settled down since 1972.
As they’ve grown so they’ve out grown their cellars and now they’re moving to new premises in Sparkford.
Wiltshire’s loss is Somerset’s gain.
The move is scheduled for May. And although Sparkford will no doubt eventually be an excellent location, the much delayed work on the A303 will not help in the short term.
The modern wine cellars in Sparkford will treble the company's storage capacity, provide an improved working environment for our team and of course for customers too.
And be a bit of a feather in Somerset’s cap for attracting a celebrated wine merchant to these parts.
Good governance
Good governance can be a bit of a struggle for our Unitary Council. So expecting heaps of it from parish councils is perhaps a bit optimistic. Some do try really hard, but sometimes things can go awry.
A meeting of Charlton Horethorne Parish Council was held on 15 November to discuss a planning application for 33 houses and two commercial buildings.
Cllr Archer is the chair of the parish council.
He owned the land right next door to the proposed development that was the subject of the planning application.
He did declare his interest, but gave a variety of reasons for why in his view it was not a prejudicial interest. So he took part in the debate on the application and voted.
CPRE the countryside charity was in attendance and read out a statement to the meeting to the effect that they felt Cllr Archer needed to recuse himself from that item.
He didn’t. When the vote was taken, all councillors recommended refusal of the development. All bar one. Only Cllr Archer voted in favour.
CPRE submitted a complaint that Cllr Archer had a prejudicial interest and that he should have known as much. And having that interest and then voting on it breached council standing orders.
Specifically that “Cllr Archer’s interest was so significant that it was likely to prejudice his judgement of the public interest. The complainant also believed that the planning approval would affect his position.” And again that “The complainant was also of the opinion that Cllr Archer may have knowingly or recklessly provided misleading information to the meeting regarding his financial interest, contrary to the law and relevant provisions of the Charlton Horethorne Parish Council code of conduct.”
That complaint was referred to the Deputy Monitoring Officer of Somerset Council, Tonya Meers. Earlier this week she produced her report into the incident.
Her findings were that: “Cllr Archer did have a personal and prejudicial interest that he should have declared this at the meeting on the 15th November 2023 and therefore upholds this part of the complaint.”
However she also added that: “Cllr Archer did not need to declare a Disposable Pecuniary Interest and therefore this part of the code is not engaged and the Deputy Monitoring Officer does not uphold this part of the complaint.”
As a result the following sanction was agreed to by Cllr Archer. To undertake: “training on the declaration of interests and that training should take place within the next two months. It is also recommended that the Deputy Monitoring Officer is notified as soon as that training has been undertaken.”
we hope that Charlton Horethorne Parish Council will publish the decision on its website
Following the decision by Tonya Meers, a spokesperson for CPRE Somerset and CPRE Sherborne told us they: “are committed to doing whatever we can to ensure that high standards of councillor conduct are observed at planning committees throughout the county. In this case, we hope that Charlton Horethorne Parish Council will publish the decision on its website because people have a democratic right to know whether a councillor has failed to declare a democratic interest. This kind of information becomes very relevant at election time.”
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