Councillor Mick Young

5:37pm: There's a document the Council has to publish by law, called the Best Value Performance Plan. It's about how well we've done in the services we provide over the last year, and how we're planning to improve in the future. The problem is, the whole Council meeting of 73 Councillors has to agree it by the end of June.

The information to put in it has to be collected from various places around the Council and our partners, so it isn't really ready until the start of June, really.

Problem: Full Council meetings in our plan were meant to be in May and July. Someone noticed this a few months ago, and I suggested we meet in June instead of July.

So we changed the date of the Council to 2:30pm on the 17th June.

What nobody noticed at the time was that this would mean us having a meeting to discuss 14 things, with the England match starting at 5. Oops. Yes, Councillors are football fans too (well, some of them, I have a feeling our resident Scotland fans from Corby found it very amusing).

Anyway, in the spirit of open government, here's some information from the ever so exciting BVPP.

Getting better

The Council’s cash reserves; lower Council Tax increases; a better gender and ethnicity balance among senior staff; fewer sick days; more dealings with the Council available via the web; better GCSE pass rates at A* to C; faster Special Educational Needs statements; fewer schools in special measures; more recycling, less landfill; unclassified roads in better condition; fewer road accidents overall; disabled facilities at more pedestrian crossings; fewer violent offences near licensed premises.

Staying the same

Pupils absent from school; bicycle and motorbike accident rates

Getting worse

GCSE passes for children in care; condition of classified non principal roads; accidents involving pedestrians; number of people using buses; most crime.

I think what all that tells us is that the Council is being turned around as an organisation, and improving across most of the services we provide (of all our indicators, two-thirds are going in the right direction).

What the figures do suggest is that the biggest problem at the moment is improving the reliability, convenience, and choice of transport in the County.

Plans for turning that around largely rely on two things. Firstly, improving public transport and other links, in particular thanks to money the Government is giving us because of the likely housing growth in the South Midlands area. Secondly, getting maximum benefit out of the extra money we've announced on resurfacing work for highways. £25 million extra over three years, ought to see a significant improvement by the end of it.

11:35am: The magic of the internet
Northamptonshire.co.uk have an interview with me on their website, as an audio file. It's about the future plans for Corby (regeneration, not specifically education, it's from before the DFES gave us their views on Our Lady and Pope John School).

http://www.northamptonshire.co.uk/mickyoungtest.htm

4:03pm: Photos
I keep promising photos don't I? Here's one.


Me and Councillor Mel de Cruz, visiting the Sunflower Centre for victims of domestic abuse.

11:43am: The Tory Party - a moving target
The Council passed our budget - all the Labour Councillors who were there (one is in India collecting an award for lifetime contribution to public service by an expat) voted for it, the Lib Dem abstained, and the Tories mostly voted against it, though four also abstained.

So, although the bad news is that Council Tax will be going up by more than RPI inflation, there's lots of good news. Firstly, it looks like it'll be the lowest County Council tax in the country. Secondly, it'll be a lower increase than any of our neighbours, and finally, we've done it without cutting services.

Meanwhile, some thoughts on the state of the Tories locally.

* Tory County Councillors say there is 'no justification' for tax rises higher than inflation - but some of those same Councillors are voting through rises of more than triple inflation in Tory Councils such as Kettering and Wellingborough.

* Tory Finance Spokesman Brian Binley claims he had 'no intention' of cutting funding to the Sunflower Centre for victims of domestic violence - but his 'alternative budget' would have cut the whole budget for community safety, including the County Council's grant to them.

* Tory Leader Jim Harker dreams of being leader of the County Council - but he already faces a crisis of confidence in his leadership; 3 Tory Councillors abstained on the Tories' own budget.

* Would-be Tory MP for Wellingborough Peter Bone, who the papers once called 'Britain's Meanest Boss' because of his views on the minimum wage, has organised a petition against Wellingborough Council's 9% tax hike - but Wellingborough is... a Tory Council.

* Local Tories claim that taxpayers in Northamptonshire pay too much and get too little in return - but Tory Bedfordshire charges the average taxpayer over £180 a year more for a service officially rated as 'poor' by Government inspectors.

3:21pm: I'm starting to lose my temper with these people. It's not just that they're wrong, they're also inconsistent, managing to be wrong in different ways at the same time. They also have too much time on their hands.

Here's a special online-only preview of a letter I'm about to send to the Evening Telegraph. If you can think of anything I should put in within the next quarter of an hour or so, let me know.

Dear Sir,

I was delighted to read your correspondence from Sir Peter Fry of the STOP campaign, making clear that they are not opposed to all development. In fact he explicitly states that he is happy with over 100,000 new houses in Northamptonshire over the next thirty years.

There is a crucial difference between us, however.

In the years he was a Conservative Member of Parliament, the County grew at an average of one new home to every seven existing homes, year on year. In that time, he never managed to deliver a penny from the Government to meet the extra demands on education, transport, care services, and environmental improvements.

Since the Government announced plans to help Northamptonshire deal with growth, the Labour County Council, Labour MPs in the County, and District Councils both Labour and Tory, have worked to ensure that we get the infrastructure needed.

As a result, we have won over £60 million worth of Government money to invest in better schools, more sustainable transport, and environmental improvements. This represents more than a third of the total money invested across all the growth areas in the country.

The STOP campaign’s claim that the area from Northampton to Corby will turn into a 'linear city' under the plans could not be more wrong. A simple glance at the development boundaries would show that the development plan is all about putting development into sustainable communities around existing urban areas. The plan precisely involves getting away from the unplanned, unsustainable, unfunded urban sprawl which blighted our County under the Conservatives, and which Peter Fry admits he is happy to see continue.

As usual, the Tories are grandstanding from the sidelines, while Labour get on with delivering a better quality of life for everyone in Northamptonshire, and affordable homes so that our children can afford to enjoy it too.

Yours faithfully

Councillor Mick Young
Leader, Northamptonshire County Council

10:58am: Happy birthday to me
The results of the Spencer Ward By-Election 22nd January are as follows;

Melanie Rose De Cruz, The Labour Party, 524 Elected
Michael Clifton Hallam, The Conservative Party, 347
Anthony William Woods, Liberal Democrat, 466

4:09pm: Budget
Happy New Year.

You can now have your say on our Draft Budget for 2004-5 by going here - most of the files are PDFs. Usual address, or e-mail your comments to leader@northamptonshire.gov.uk

http://www.northamptonshire.gov.uk/Governing/BUDGET

4:37pm: You win some, you lose some.
It's been a mixed week. The good news was that I was having salmon for tea on Tuesday, the bad news being that I was late home, and my dog Hector got to it before I did. That's a bit of a metaphor for everything else that's happened this week.

Without doubt good news - the government are giving us £35 million to tackle some transport problems in the area - £14 million to build a bypass round the village of Isham, and the rest for better bus services (ironically the Tory borough council are proposing cuts in their funding of bus services), safer junctions, and improving the area for cyclists and walkers.

Most of this stems from the Multi-modal study, and is part of the government recognising the infrastructure we'll need because of the likely growth in the number of homes in the County. Credit due to us I think for getting constructively involved in the proposals for how to handle that - the Tories just wanted to campaign against building new homes, and the outcome of that in the real world would be that we got the homes but not the extra investment.

Also good news (I think), the increase in government funding that Gordon Brown gave us means that we're planning to have the lowest increase in Council tax in a long while - 4.9%, or an extra seventy pence a week for the average family. It's still going up by more than wages will, but Northamptonshire will remain amongst the lowest council taxes anywhere, £20 a month cheaper to live in than Bedfordshire for instance, and it's a lower increase than almost every other County Council in the country is planning.

Less good news from the Audit Commission. Last year they said we were a 'weak' council overall (this means a score of 2 out of 5). This year we improved enough that last year we'd have been 'fair' (3 out of 5), but they moved the goalposts, so they still say we're still 'weak'. I'm not happy - especially given that some of the problems are the verdicts of other inspectorates, and in at least one case they gave us a lower score than we deserve because we'd followed the advice of the Audit Commission in making changes, and they said the changes had created uncertainty.

I'm sure that makes sense to someone, and I'm sticking to our objective, which is for us to be 'excellent' (5 out of 5) by the end of 2006.

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.

9:50am: Briefly
This morning I have had my photo taken with a week's worth of paperwork, to show how much we get, and how much we recycle. If I come out looking good I'll link to the photo.

Rather short notice I'm afraid, but if you have any questions you'd like to discuss relating to the County Council, I'll be in the Newlands Shopping Centre in Kettering with Peter Gould, the Chief Executive, from about twelve till two today.

For those of you following the pavement saga, I'm told we're going to fix it.

4:54pm: How many Councils does it take to mend a pavement?
I'm about to complain about pavements, so I suppose I ought to start with some good news. We have recently been putting a significant amount of extra money into roads and pavements (mending ones we already have, rather than building new ones). One of the statistics which crossed my desk this week was for insurance claims against us for unsafe pavements. These have fallen to 88 in the last year, having been at or around 200 every year since 1998, peaking at 253 two years ago.

That said, last week I received a copy of correspondence between a local MP, our Highways Department, our Highways Partners, and Northampton Borough Council, relating to some unsatisfactory pavements.

I went to see them for myself, and they are in a horrendous state. I have some pictures somewhere, not as pretty as my holiday snaps, but there we are. What we don't seem to have is agreement on is who will be fixing these pavements.

This might be where the ordinary reader loses the thread of the story. We have to fix pavements that are next to roads, because we are the highways authority (unless they're very major roads, in which case it's the Highways Agency). Pavements which aren't near a road are the responsibility of the owner, which will usually be the Borough Council if they're near Council Housing or Parks (though there are some private roads, such as in out of town shopping centres).

These particular pavements are near a road, but it's a private road belonging, as we understand it, to the Borough Council, as a service road for the housing there. Despite this, when they received the original letter of complaint, they sent it to us. Our Head of Highways sent it back, noting that it is their responsibility. Which is all very well, but the pavement still hasn't been fixed.

There's a lot of sense talked about taking decisions at the right level, but there are also challenges to this approach - the average person in Northamptonshire now has an MP, an MEP, an Area Forum, a District Council, a County Council, and possibly a Parish, before we even mention the Police Authority, Health Service, Regional Assembly and so on. How many ordinary people know who is responsible for what?

My point isn't that they need to find out, it's that they shouldn't need to know in the first place. Finding out who is responsible is a process which begins when things have gone wrong, so that you can hold them to account. Solving a problem should be simpler than this, and if the MP can't be sure of getting the right person, the system isn't working properly.

So, solutions on a postcard please. Meanwhile, if anyone wants an 'A to Z of Highway Related Services' I'll happily post you one. It's not really an A to Z, because it starts with Abandoned Vehicles (District Council) and ends with Winter Gritting (Northamptonshire Highways, Brixworth Depot), via 87 other possible Highway Related Services, including Culverts, Ragwort and Street Name Signs.

5:10pm: A listening spree
This week so far has mostly been a listening week.

People sometimes find it a bit unusual when politicians just stop talking and start asking people what they think, and I've been making a conscious effort to do more of it.

Despite being the Leader of a Council employing about nineteen thousand people here, and spending over half a billion pounds a year, there's a widespread impression that I know everything that goes on in this place down to the last paperclip. Because of that, I often get people wandering into my office and starting halfway through a story. More worryingly, sometimes when something starts to go wrong, everyone assumes someone else has told me. If I'm going to get the blame (which being a politician I probably will) I'd like to have a bit of warning about the problem...

Partly because of that, and because it seemed like a good idea for lots of other reasons, I've had two major 'listening' events this week. Yesterday I got about ten of the Council staff from different departments into my office (bribed them with sandwiches), and asked them to tell me what they thought about the Council, how they felt about working here, where they thought we were doing well, and where we were doing badly.

I think they might have been expecting me to answer some of their concerns there and then, but what I didn't want to do was turn the event into a debate between me and them, because that would steer away from the main point of the meeting, which was to get them to speak openly about how we can improve. Interestingly everyone was to some degree or another concerned about how the current and proposed changes to the Council will affect them, but equally felt a frustration at how difficult it can be to change anything, even little things, because there's often a 'business as usual' culture. That's not unique to Northamptonshire of course, or even to the public sector, but it's one of the challenges we need to address.

From a relatively inward-facing discussion yesterday, I've been out and about today. We've been holding a series of lunchtime 'meet the people' roadshows around the County - myself and the Chief Executive go out to a local shopping centre / supermarket / leisure centre, and set up a stall advertising that we are available to answer questions.

On the basis that take-up of that opportunity has been high, I might have to think about moving my ward surgeries from the library opposite Tesco, and into Tesco. It's good to get input about what people think is important locally, rather than having it filtered through Councillors or the local media. Today there were a frustrating number of queries about things I can't do a great deal about - buses, litter and so on being the responsibility either of private companies or the Borough Council. All the same, some people I was able to help there and then, and we've got a stack of questions we've taken down on paper as well.

Also met someone very enthusiastic who has ideas for the ongoing regeneration of the town, and particularly cultural events and what's going on around the market square. At risk of crowding my diary ever further, I'm trying to set up a meeting to have a more detailed discussion. I'm also trying to go on holiday next month, so I'd probably better get on with things.

2:08pm: Full Council
Tomorrow is the July full Council meeting. We had a meeting of the Labour Councillors last night to talk through the agenda. Everyone seemed in good spirits, and pleased that we'll have John McGhee back as the Councillor for the Corby Kingswood division after we won last week's by-election.

The actual agenda isn't too packed (only seventeen items). There are some interesting reports from members of my Cabinet, and some updates on the work of the Council's 'scrutiny committees'. The Education and Lifelong Learning group are planning to send some 'mystery shoppers' in to our FE courses to see what they're like first hand, and they're also looking into how to widen access, which I'll be interested to hear more about - a key part of the Further Education system has to be about providing a chance to gain skills for people who missed out first time around.

Apart from that, there's a motion from the Conservative Group under 'opposition priority business' which is about having a referendum on the European Constitution. Without wanting to comment on the rights and wrongs of the issue, I'm a bit concerned that they rate this as their priority.

I've set out three priorities for the Council in the coming year, which are to improve performance in children's services, to work on better transport links in the county, and to reduce crime and the fear of crime. I think these are all vital issues, but more importantly they're issues where the Council can actually have an impact, rather than just engage in posturing.