Sherington Tory

I hope that many of you reading this will have seen the letters page in this week's Citizen. I wrote about my dissapointment at the response of the Lib Dem Councillors to the very real concerns of the residents of Stoke Goldington after the recent floods. Let me add a little detail as to why after reproducing the letter:

Monday 15^th October 2007

Dear Sir,

Anyone who attended the public meeting to hear the results of the report into the recent floods in Stoke Goldington could be excused for feeling short-changed right now.

The report commissioned by the Council from WSP, and reported on at the meeting on the 8^th October, identified a number of measures that it categorised as short, medium, and long term improvements to drainage, none of which came as any great surprise to residents of the village who have been calling for the Council to make many of these improvements for some time as a quick reading of the Parish Council minutes from January through to March of this year will show.

Where I join residents in feeling utter astonishment is at the response of the Liberal Democrat Councillors who chaired that meeting. When pressed by residents about how much the works would cost, whether the council would commit to funding, and when they could expect the work to be delivered, Cllrs Potts and Irene Henderson were evasive to the point of allowing a consultant from WSP to field those questions. While Cllr Henderson repeated that she was “sympathetic” towards the residents of the village, I couldn’t help but note that being sympathetic, and being resolved to act are not the same thing!

The cause of the entire debacle is clear: an opportunistic attempt to grab publicity. Cllr Potts took pride in the fact that he unilaterally and irresponsibly announced an independent report live on TV without fist discussing this with his own Cabinet, who have now evidently had to embark on a damage limitation exercise much to their obvious annoyance at being bounced into policy commitments they have no means of keeping. The fact that the report has cost £30,000 when there are arguably council officers with the skills to undertake the investigation at no cost to the Council Tax payer has obviously escaped Cllr Pott’s attention. Equally, with a remit as flawed as it is, it is no wonder that WSP reported that the full cost of the solution they are proposing potentially runs to “seven figures”. I would certainly have ensured that any report included an options appraisal that covers a number of other costed options for consideration, it seems that this report does not.

I now repeat the calls on the Council made by the residents of Stoke Goldington last week that it funds the £150,000 of works of urgently needed works, with a commitment to a timescale of when they are to be completed, and an action plan detailing when the money will be found to begin the medium and longer term drainage improvements needed by the village. Anything less will be a waste of £30,000 spent on a paper exercise with no net gain to the residents affected.

Yours sincerely

Keith Fraser

Conservative Party Spokesperson

Sherington Ward

If you look back through the PC minutes as I suggest (available on the parish website) there were concerns raised with former Cllr Seymour in Jan, Feb, and March about the state of the drainage after a few mini-floods through the winter. The respnse received was a mix of "we'll investigate the problem", but the flooding around Water Lane in Sherington was higher profile at that point so was getting more attention (though only after Mark Lancaster interveined). To say that there was no warning on the part of MK Council is astounding, more so when you consider that they produced a risk assessment in 2003 which identified SG as "at risk".

When the floods did happen the Lib Dem Cllr saw it as a prime time to grab some publicity and sew SG up (or rather stitch it up!) and take it out of being a safe "Tory" area, just like they had done in North Crawley and Moulsoe by scaring the villages half to death with lies and insinuation about MK Conservatives (i.e. me) being in league with our neighbouring authorities (and probably the Devil if they could have stretched it that far) to build over the villages in a plan that was never going to be accepted by the SE Regional Assembly anyway. Our Cllr announced, live on TV and without consulting his own Cabinet member, an independant enquiry. Was that nieve or irresponsible? I vote the latter because the nieve politician would have gone back and checked their facts first before speaking, the irresponsible speak without thinking.

Lo and behold, at the meeting on the 8th, Cllr Potts gleefully boasted about what he had done and the fact that Cllr Dougl;as McCall was livid with him. Hardly a start to the issue any sensible cllr would want, alienating the very people with the authority to act. £30K had to be found to fund the work, but it turns out that was a waste of money because there are in the Council surveyors who are qualified and experienced in these matters and who, after the first flood, had done most of the work that they then handed to WSP who re-presented it on the 8th October. That was £30K that could have been better spent!

On the evening we then got into the semantic arguments. Cllr Irene Henderon announced that she would be "sympathetic" to the residents of SG, but being sympathetic and actually doing something are two completely different things. I can be sympathetic but utterly unresolved to act. The report suggests that £150K will be needed immediately, but there were no hard and fast commitments given that night, only hedged bets. Jane Geary did a marvelous job standing up to Cllr Henderson's dodging of the issue, and so did Phil Gott for pointing out to the Cllrs present that it was WSP that were doing all of the talking about funding issues and legal issues that only the Cllrs themselves could truely answer.

For my part, what would I have done instead?

Well I would have started by checking my facts and not announcing anything without the assurances of my colleagues that funding was available now. I certainly wouldn't have wasted £30K on a half-finished report that was already nearly complete by council officers. If I were going to commission a report outisde of the competences of the council I would have put an options appraisal in the brief. Remember any consultant will do only what the brief asks, and if it doesn't ask for a series of costed options all you will get is the "ideal" solution, which in this case looks to cost up to £1m. In other words I would have secured capital funding in this financial year, next, and the year after, and had the work to improve defences organised around the funding. Far better to do much needed work according to affordability (and I would have pressed government hard for the extra funding that has gone to more densly populated but less affected areas) than do what has been done in this instance and find that you are staring down the barrel of a commitment you can't afford because you acted unilaterally and botched the brief.

You will see some small things done over the next few months, it would be political suicide if the Lib Dems didn't atempt to do something. But expect to see a poorly planned, poorly funded damage limitation exercise rather than a coherent strategy to defend the village from future flooding.