Paul Cotterill’s regular newsletter, the Bickerstaffe Record, has gone online. “Hard worker” and “tireless worker” are tired phrases bunged in newsletters often describing people who really don’t deserve it. But Paul really has plugged away in Bickerstaffe – bringing in funding for the village and campaigning for slower speeds and the creation of the South Lathom Parish Council as well as working for West Lancs through his links in education and health.

He’s standing for election this year in Bickerstaffe and is probably more qualified than anyone else in the district – it will be a great shame if he doesn’t make it this year.

Things are slowly starting to get back on track after the election. It seemed a lot harder this year for many many reasons, and personally campaigning was very difficult when our house move finally happened on the 13th April (after just under a year). So right in the middle of an election we had to pack everything, up sticks and move from Up Holland to our new place in Ormskirk. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

Since then, I’ve been busy catching up with work and house stuff, so it’s taken the best part of a month to get around to this.

We’ve also got a new group leader in Terry Rice, who has asked me to be the finance spokesperson this year – more precisely to shadow Adrian Owens, which means I’ll be looking into local e-government more. Should be interesting.

The Liverpool ’08 Capital of Culture project is in chaos – this isn’t new news. They’ve only just appointed a new Chief Exec for the Liverpool Culture Company, many projects are in free-fall and events might not happen as described recently in the Guardian and here. Plus, there’s no guarantee that the political mess left by last year’s spat between ex-Chief Exec David Henshaw and ex-Leader Mike Storey will be resolved.

Such mismanagement just leads to a political and administrative vacuum at the heart of the project. Last year, businesses tried to fill the commercial vacuum by announcing a rival logo to show support, and the Liverpool Culture Company are trying hard to regenerate some momentum and interest with thier ambassador scheme.

Amidst this mess, is there a role for other neighbouring authorities to help fill the gap?

Liverpool is not just that area covered by Liverpool City Council. Local Government Minister David Milliband has been promoting the idea of city regions which would see other neighbouring authorities take part in the strategic decision making covering all their areas. There is surely a role for those authorities within easy commuting distance to take an active role in the Capital of Culture scheme, and it fits with what the Government is calling for.

West Lancashire should be looking to see how it can exploit the obvious advantages of Liverpool being the Capital of Culture. If Liverpool is unable to cope with the project in isolation then it’s time for other, smaller, authorities to fill the gap. We don’t have the money that is being poured into Liverpool, but we have facilities that we can take advantage of.

Tourism could be encouraged in our many charming villages, Ormskirk and the beacon. We could organise a series of artistic and cultural events through the year in 2008 to compliment those larger events in Liverpool – and working with the Liverpool Culture Company – we could promote West Lancashire as an ideal place to stay for tourists: close to the city, but a short journey from the Lakes and many of the other tourist attractions of the North West.

Skelmersdale centre, even without a major redevelopment, has ample space and resources to host events. And why not promote Skem as a place to visit?

Nothing that we could do would be on the scale of that in the city centre, but there is an opportunity for us, and other neighbouring councils, to take the initiative and build a city region of culture.

WLDC have published their budget book online (here). This outlines what the council spends in each department and the council income. It has the breakdown from last year and this year to allow comparison.

Expenditure in 2006/2007 will be £18,790,79 against £16,645,957 last year. An increase of just over £2 million, or more than 10%.

The other week when we had the budget meeting and during the run-up to the budget, I realised that councillors really don’t have any idea what the approximately £20 million budget consists of. Budget negotiations appear to take the following form:

• Officers come up with a list of things they want to do for the next year – “growth items”. This includes some items that they really don’t expect to get and some items that are genuinely needed. There isn’t an obvious difference between the two in the way they’re presented.
• This year, as part of the so-called scrutiny process (controlled by the Conservatives), the capital budget went to the Overview and Scrutiny committee in February. The papers are online if you’re interested. The main thing here is that the growth items are scattered through the report as footnotes and it takes quite a bit of time to build a picture of what’s being asked for.
• It was generally agreed at the O&S meeting that we didn’t have the knowledge or training to interpret the figures given in the papers and so they were basically just noted and left to the finance spokespeople and political groups to come up with their budgets. If you check the online reports you’ll see that we asked for some basic training to understand the budgets better.
• The two political groups then look at the growth items, see which ones suit their political objectives, add their own specific requirements and come up with a budget that is proposed on the night.

The problem with this process is twofold. First, the focus of all the discussion and development of the budget centres on the growth items. When first presented these came to over £3 million and would have meant a massive Council Tax bill. Reduced down they account for most of the £2 million increase in expenditure. That means that the politicians only consider a fraction of the Council’s budget in a year.

Secondly, there is absolutely no scrutiny, and no understanding, of the bulk of expenditure at the Council.

The scrutiny issue gets to the heart of a bigger problem at the Council, that is – that the elected members don’t really hold the officers and the council to account, who could get away with all sorts if they so wished. The scrutiny process is sadly controlled by the Conservative group, who seem unwilling or unable to make any changes to the situation.

For the purposes of budget preparation next year, the Labour group will try to push for changes in the overall O&S structure. That will probably fail because it would be seen (wrongly) as just playing politics. If it does fail, I’ll try to raise something at O&S that we look at the budget in more detail before next year. I don’t hold out much hope, but I think there is a similar frustration within some of the Tory ranks at the Council.

I got a reply from Bill Taylor today about blogging. He tells me that he’s going to set one up… and a podcast… and other exciting stuff too on the horizon. Sounds great, and it is. No matter how clumsy our steps are in setting up these sites, broadcasts, or whatever – we’re trying to reach out in different ways.

On that point… it’s been remiss of me to not try and raise the profile of this site. I’ve held back partly because I sometimes just rehearse ideas here and (weirdly, perhaps for a local politician) I’m naturally a quiet person and feel rather embarrassed that anyone would be interested in this stuff. However, I think that should change and I’ll try to put my URL on leaflets and flyers that I put out in Moorside. Let’s see what happens…

There aren’t that many things that the council does that can save lives, but the GP referral scheme was one of them. And the Tories have now scrapped it.

In their wisdom, the Tories have ended a scheme where doctors could prescribe exercise to patients who are suffering from, for example, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, etc. This was a tremendously important scheme and I’ve already had a number of people contact me to complain about it’s demise.

1500 people since 1998 have been referred to the WLDC Life Matters. This is a massive number of people. The figures show that 200 people a year were referred, with many more on a waiting list. This isn’t a scheme that should have been scrapped, it should have been expanded and improved in partnership with the PCT and others in the District
The life matters scheme ran in Skelmersdale, Ormskirk, Burscough and North Meols. Patients would have an initial consultation and then were given exercise programme tailored to their individual needs. It was introducing the idea of an active, healthy lifestyle to thousands in the District.

What the Council has actually done is get rid of the “GP Referral Officer” post who was the link between the GP’s, the council, other agencies and the community. It’s not just a liaison post. The officers’s work led directly to the introduction of “health walks” with the countryside rangers and the “nifty 50’s clubs” in sports centres around the district.

Instead of being up-front about it, the Tories hid this away on the night of the budget and it didn’t emerge until we asked for the details. I suppose they hoped that it would go unnoticed, but there are many people out there who have benefitted from this service and it’s wrong to deny it to others.