Alistair Chisholm. Best known as Dorchester's award-winning town crier, he's also an independent member of West Dorset District Council, where he feels his voice is not quite so well heard.

IT’S ALMOST three months since I was elected to West Dorset District Council (WDDC) as an independent candidate for Charminster and Cerne Valley and time, perhaps, to make some early observations.

Unfortunately much that I’d been warned about in relation to the way in which the District Council conducts its affairs appears to be true.

There is precious little “democracy” as evidenced by the fact that there’s virtually no debate on major issues.

Decisions affecting the district are taken by an executive committee comprising seven members of the majority party (Conservative) each of whom is personally selected by the leader of that party (Cllr Robert Gould). I sense that their selection is based on the degree to which they can be relied on to go along with and enthusiastically support every decision he makes.

West Dorset has, effectively, an unelected Mayor.

I’m not suggesting that WDDC are behaving in an unlawful way but I am saying that, within a total of 48 elected representatives, there are bound to be different views and differing priorities. In my innocence and ignorance I fondly thought that there might be room, at this lowly but important level of local government, for the free exchange of ideas and opinions on issues which affect the people of the district.

No individual or party group is all-knowing and proper open debate is a fundamental safeguard of our much vaunted democracy which, if unavailable to democratically elected representatives, makes for a dangerously narrow and limited view of what is appropriate for the district.

The building of £10million new offices for WDDC (and a new £5million library for Dorset County Council) on the Charles Street site in Dorchester is a classic (and most expensive) example of a decision reached by the very few but claimed to be in the interests of the many.

There needs to be more open discussion at an early stage so that ideas are properly tested and do not become a sticking point from which the leader will not withdraw for fear of losing face. “Cabinet” style local government, brought in in 2000, has done little for democracy in West Dorset.

I should add that my comments apply to the manner in which important decisions are made by elected members and in no way reflect on the majority of council staff. The staff have their hands full facing, as they do;

1. a 25% decrease in central government funding,

2. an uncertain future in the case of some staff as WDDC and Weymouth and Portland Borough Council develop their “partnership working” arrangements,

3. an increased workload linked to the move into new offices and

4. a considerable number of additional tasks associated with next year’s Olympics.

I admire the staff of both councils who continue to perform their duties in challenging times. I most sincerely hope that the independent support measures, which I’m assured are in place, are sufficiently robust to cater for those who currently, and in future will increasingly, feel the pressure associated with these challenges.

I haven’t heard a cuckoo yet but I have seen the next best thing. A man, a very brave man, canvassing for the Liberal Democrats.

There he was, large as life and twice as bouncy carrying a clip board and sporting a rather large yellow rosette. Out on the stump already and the nominations are not even closed yet.

I suppose that desperation might be the order of the day. If the polls are to be believed come the first weekend in May there may be a few glum faces in that particular neck of the woods and there is no reason to suppose that Bridport will differ much from the rest of the country.

The recent edition of their Focus leaflet opted for honesty and showed both of their faces. Reams of stuff condemning Tory cuts and lauding the ways in which our gallant lads and lasses on the Lib Dem local government benches are fighting them tooth and nail. Then there’s a side-bar telling us what a spiffing job their parliamentary colleagues are doing in coalition with those self-same Tories in Westminster.

Come off it matey – you can’t have it both ways. Not now that you are part of the government you can’t.

Or perhaps I’ve got it wrong and there are two Liberal Democrat parties.

We shall see as the fight to retain places on the council develops and true colours are either shown or carefully hidden.
As the old boy said when he was a lad, “The times they are a-changing”.

It seems we are a microcosm of The Big Society, the thing invented by Oliver Letwin for the Tory manifesto after attending too many functions in this village.

Lots of things go on here. We’re an active kind of a place. Things get done.

But in order to be taken seriously, to be a voice to be reckoned with, we apparently need a Parish Plan. Others have done it and found, hey presto, the district and county councils and bureaucratic bodies of all kinds suddenly sit up and listen.

Funding is found, resources are channelled, things finally happen.

However, according to a report I read in the local paper, our parish plan will be more than that. We will be a pilot, a beacon. All eyes will be on us to see how we operate down here in this hilly corner of Dorset.

I will be going along to the meeting tonight to find out more. But if it involves being told what to do, I’m out. We need space to be creative thinkers, not central government skivvies.

In all this talk of Big Society this and that, there is something no-one has factored in. It’s a key ingredient to a thriving Little Society: it’s called energy.

And for that you need ley lines. And we have several of them, crossing right through the centre of Lush Places.

But you try telling that to Mr Cameron. He’d think we’re barking.

Dorset County Council's newspaper Your Dorset. The Red Bladder questions its value at a time when the council is planning to cut £31 million.

SO, EVEN in these straitened times, Dorset County Council has still managed to bring us yet another edition of that little belter Your Dorset.

A 16-page, full-colour publication that unashamedly assures us that the council is constantly striving to make our lot a better one and glorifying in its own spectacular achievements in a way that would make even the Communist-era Pravda blush.

Self-gratifying, vainglorious and Panglossian are words that might spring to your mind when thumbing through its turgid prose but they are not ones that I would use to describe it – I would be a lot blunter.

It comes at a time when old Eric ‘give him the money Mable’ Pickles, our much-loved Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, keeps harping on about what a waste of money these ludicrous rags are.

After all they have to be written, designed, printed and then, probably most costly of all, distributed to every household in the county. None of that comes cheap.

Still the bigwigs in County Hall are facing tough decisions, burdens must be shouldered and the pain shared out.

So come on then lads, which is it to be, lollipop ladies guarding and protecting the children of the area or another batch of free lining for the bottoms of their hamster cages?

We know that you are all wonderful on the Council, we know that you labour tirelessly both night and day to improve our lot and we know that making cuts hurts you just as much as it hurts us.

So for pity’s sake stop telling us about it in expensive publications  and, just for once, face up to your proper responsibilities.

Editor’s Note: You can download a PDF of Your Dorset by clicking on this link – that is, if you never got your copy, or you’ve mislaid it, or you’re visiting from elsewhere and you’d like to assess it for yourself.

Your Dorset is written by the county council’s communications team, designed by Deep South Media of Bournemouth, printed by Newsquest in Weymouth, and distributed by the Royal Mail. The council says the cost is about 12 pence per copy.

It’s hoping to attract new members who are fed up with Conservative-Liberal Democrat policies on social justice and the environment.

The party normally meets once a month in Dorchester, but this Monday it’s gathering in Bridport.

Julian Jones said: “Many people are opposed to the policies of the Coalition and looking for a alternative.

“The Greens have a real chance of winning seats in the May local elections so we are inviting both long established members and new people to come to this meeting to help achieve change.”

Time: 7.30pm, Monday 24 January.

Place: The Red Brick Cafe on St Michael’s Trading Estate in Bridport.

Contact Julian Jones on 01308 458959 for more information or just turn up.

At the moment, responsibility locally lies with West Dorset District Council but as of April 2011, it will be with Dorset County Council. 

Up to now West Dorset has been offering extra concessions e.g. free travel before 9.30am. Older people elsewhere in the UK – depending on the goodwill of their councils – have to travel after rush hour.

What seems to make sense in towns and cities where buses are busy with people travelling to work does not necessarily add up in remote parts such as ours. 

Imagine you live in Melplash and need to go to Yeovil for the morning. If you can no longer take the 07.44, the first bus available is at 10.24, getting you to Yeovil at 11.20. 

And if you want to travel from Beaminster to Weymouth without going around the houses, then you can no longer do it for free as the only bus is at 08.45. 

The consultation ends this Friday, 14th January (it started on 3rd December). Seems a bit short but I have only just been made aware of this (then again, I don’t qualify for free travel yet!). 

I understand that this consultation has had a postal survey and a web survey. If you qualify for a free bus pass, are affected by the proposed changes but have not been made aware, here is your chance: 

 http://consultationtracker.dorsetforyou.com/concessionarytravel

A Dorset County Council spokesman commented: “Whilst the official deadline is 14 January we will be processing responses received for at least 5 working days after the deadline.”

He went on: “We are consulting, amongst other things, on the possibility of restricting the use of passes before 0930 on weekdays in West Dorset, East Dorset and North Dorset (this restriction already applies in Christchurch, Purbeck and Weymouth & Portland).

“The final decision will be made by councillors taking into account the much reduced government grant and the impact on passengers of such restrictions.

“It is, however, highly likely that where buses are infrequent officers will be recommending that exemptions are allowed (there are already precedents for this in areas where the pre-0930 restriction already applies).

“We are currently identifying those journeys likely to be recommended for exemption and it is quite a long list!” 

The move is part of the council’s efforts to save £48.6 million over the next three years.

Temporary Traffic Regulation Orders are normally advertised in paid-for newspapers rather than free publications, so the Dorset Echo, Bournemouth Echo, Bridport News and Western Gazette are likely to be most affected.

A spokesman said: “The county council currently spends around £50,000 a year advertising its own works and £60,000 advertising utility works – the latter of which is completely recoverable from the utilities so doesn’t cost DCC anything.

“We would be looking to reduce the £50,000 figure to around £5,000 by signposting – i.e. small ads in the papers directing people to our website to see all notices in full. This way we would still fulfil our statutory obligation of making public notices accessible.”

Councils are required by law to publish certain notices – such as lists of planning applications they have received – so it is impossible to stop paying for adverts altogether.

The last Labour Government considered whether councils should be allowed to stop advertising planning applications in local newspapers. The saving could have been £15 million a year. The proposal was fiercely resisted by the Newspaper Society, which feared for the public’s right to know about planning matters and for newspapers’ loss of revenue, and the idea was dropped in December 2009.

“I want frontline services”

The Newspaper Society’s stance was challenged by Rick Waghorn, the Norfolk-based journalist and entrepreneur who runs the online local advertising system Addiply.

In his blog, Mr Waghorn wrote: “In the current climate – as austerity bites ever deeper into those front-line services we hold dear – defending your right to demand payment for printed, planning application advertising isn’t a winner.

“It doesn’t wash.

“I want a lollipop lady outside my lad’s school; frankly, I’ll take my chances on whether or not South Norfolk District Council hide the planning application for a second floor extension to the semi in Conifers Lane…”

“The public has a right to information”

The Newspaper Society points out that not everyone has access to the internet. And it argues that the crux of the matter is not papers’ right to demand payment; it is the public’s right to know.

A spokesman said: “It is important to recognise that removing the requirement for councils to publish statutory public notices in newspapers would lead to a more secretive, less open local government and to many grass roots issues being decided without proper consultation and debate.

“This goes to the heart of the public’s democratic right to information and transparency and should not simply be dismissed as an unnecessary cost.”

He went on: “Publishers are working with their local councils around the country to help them achieve the most cost-effective method of communication. For example, we believe that councils in Cornwall have an arrangement in place which allows them to place unlimited public notices in their local papers for a set annual fee. This apparently works well for both the council and the publisher.”

The Society spokesman also cited adverse public reaction when councils tried to remove public notices and other advertising from local papers in Cornwall and in Lincolnshire.

Could there be an outcry about what Dorset wants to do with adverts about roads? The implications for newspapers could be significant. Say fifty councils all choose to save £50,000 a year in the same way; that’s £2.5 million gone from publishers.  

What do you think?

Dorset County Council’s move could (theoretically) cost a journalist his or her job, if we assume that the true cost of employing somebody is twice what they’re paid.

So, a senior reporter on £20,000 a year actually costs a publisher roughly £40,000: think expenses, desk, computer, pension, National Insurance, etc, etc.

(Note: this example is by no means perfect. For a start, the ownership of paid-for newspapers in Dorset is divided between Northcliffe and the American-owned Newsquest – and wages vary – but you get the drift.)

On the other hand, 500 council workers are expected to lose their jobs this year. Let’s pretend you’re number 501 on the list. Would you want Dorset County Council to keep spending £45,000 a year on publishing Temporary Traffic Regulation Orders in their entirety in local newspapers?

Editor’s Note: This is the second piece in an occasional series about otherwise unheralded Dorset cuts. The first piece was about Dorset County Council pulling out of the European Assembly of Regions.

UNKNOWN DETAILS: Does anyone know if an annual set fee is paid by Cornwall Council to local newspapers? And if it is, the amount?

Yet I cannot face the New Year without feeling a pang of sorrow and pity for their plight.

At some stage, before they moved up from being minnows to being the goldfish in the political aquarium, they must have held strong beliefs. Now they may well be faced with coming face-to-face with a few of the sharks that inhabit the same waters. Not an inviting prospect.

Minor Injuries Unit cutbacks “a disgrace”

The decision to cut the hours of the Minor Injuries Unit at Bridport hospital, simply to save a bit of money, is nothing short of a disgrace and will certainly prove a disaster for some poor devils at some time. There must be a few local Lib Dems who feel absolute fury at the decision.

Yet it was taken by far-away Conservatives. The big boys in the national coalition to which the Lib Dems signed up as the second XI.

So what should they do? There is a dilemma with horns upon which few of us would enjoy finding ourselves. Do they rock the boat and kick up a fuss? If they do, the powers that be will not be happy and even a rag-tag gaggle of disorganised ne’er-do-wells like the Liberal Democrat Party must try to have some form of disciplinary control, at least I’m certain they would now like to have.

Of course local politicians are not the lickspittle bunch of self-serving, idlers chiselers and vagabonds that crowd the benches of Westminster. The locals do not depend on their salaries and their expenses, well not so much anyway, mortgages and bills could still be paid, holidays taken and mistresses kept in silk stockings and luxurious chocolates even if the fountain of money that gushes from our pockets dried up on them.

They can afford the luxury of a conscience and can, in theory at least, speak up for what they truly believe and so hold their heads high and stare their reflection in the shaving mirror straight in the eye each morning.

Speak up for Bridport

So what will they do? Create an unholy stink about a local service which is vital to us all being emasculated on the altar of the false god Mammon? Take the course of action that they know, in their hearts, to be right and truly represent those who elected them in the first place?

So come on lads, and lasses, have you got spines?

Have you got hearts?

Do you possess a grain of compassion?

Speak up for Bridport and speak up now.

Editor’s Note:  Bridport’s Minor Injuries Unit is at Bridport Hospital in Hospital Lane, North Allington, Bridport, Dorset, DT6 5DR. Tel 01308 422371. It’s a nurse-led service currently staffed from 8am to 8pm, seven days a week.

From February 1, opening hours will be changed to 10.30am to 6pm, for what’s described by Dorset Community Health Services as a six-month feasibility test. 

The Assembly of European Regions recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. The theme was From Subsidiarity to Success: Strong Regions for a Strong Europe. Dorset County Council plans to save money by leaving the Assembly. Photograph courtesy of AER.

DORSET COUNTY COUNCIL is planning to save £4,000 a year by giving up its membership of the Assembly of European Regions (AER).

The move is part of the council’s efforts to save £48.6 million over the next three years. Dorset is one of only three UK local authorities to belong to AER (according to the assembly’s website). The others are Hampshire and Kent.

Elsewhere in Europe, AER has nearly 300 members from 33 countries.

Pulling out will mean Dorset misses the chance to participate in AER’s three main committees covering the Economy and Regional Development, Social Policy and Public Health, and Culture, Education and Youth.

Opportunities will also be lost in lobbying, networking and communications.

To quote AER’s website:

Communications – On the one hand, AER members receive a Daily Monitoring and Weekly Media Review of the most relevant European, state and regional issues. On the other, they are able to post their own Visiting Cards, press releases, and videos on AER’s website, giving them easy and direct access to a worldwide online audience (see AER’s home page at: www.aer.eu).

(Dorset County Council doesn’t seem to have taken the chance to post its visiting card, press releases and videos – such as The Promise; unlike, say, Valencia in Spain).  

Dorset County Council’s head of planning Don Gobbett said: “The county council’s decision to end its membership of the Assembly of European Regions will not affect its ability to draw down European funds, influence European policy or learn from other local authorities in Europe.

“Whether or not people think we should be part of the EU, the fact remains that we are. The county benefits from EU funding and we need to influence EU policies, which could end up costing the council money.

“We can also learn from what happens in other parts of Europe and so save money and provide services more efficiently and effectively.”

Editor’s note: This is the first in an occasional series of articles highlighting some of the smaller public sector cuts occurring in Dorset.

Dorset can look forward to an increase of 0.25 per cent for 2011/12.

So does this mean that Dorset will not have to make cuts? That proposals to slash 500 jobs will be abandoned? 

The answer would seem to be NO.

English local government finance is famously a very, very complicated subject, and county council officers will be making all sorts of fresh calculations before a Cabinet meeting on December 15, but it looks like not all that much will change.

Why?

Because Dorset still has to make big reductions. And county council officers – and, one must presume, the council’s ruling Conservatives – want to get on with the job.

The crucial paragraph of the Cabinet agenda paper is 2.3.

“Availability of the grant settlement should not change the Council’s approach to achieving spending reductions.

“Our relatively low dependence on grant means that most of the current funding shortfall arises from factors other than potential cuts in grant.

“The need to allow for slippage in some aspects of the savings programme and the requirement for further savings in subsequent years mean that all opportunities identified should be pursued as vigorously as possible, whatever the outcome of the 2011-12 grant settlement.”

To give an example of what this means in practice: the county council is hoping to transfer 20 libraries to communities and volunteers, but – see paragraph 6.2 – “experience to date has indicated that this will be very difficult to achieve in any realistic timescale.”

So unless there is a sudden change of approach, the council will still seek to make cuts of £17 million in 2011/12, because it believes that it is the wisest policy – long-term, medium-term, and short-term.

Paragraph 4.4:

“If the settlement does not require a figure of this magnitude in 2011-12 (e.g. if the ‘front-loading’ is less than feared), it is proposed that a savings target of £17M be pursued in any case given:

a) The Comprehensive Spending Review requires savings in the order of an additional £26M on top of MFC [Meeting Future Challenges] by 2013-14, so proposals in this report will need to be pursued regardless of whether the shortfall is worse in 2011-12 or not;

b) Many of the proposals will be very difficult to achieve in the time-frames available anyway, so it is advisable to aim to exceed the savings targets than face a large over-spend;

c) Our communities and our staff deserve as much clarity as soon as possible and this can best be achieved by a single major change programme rather than having repeated changes year on year, with the uncertainties that generates.”

Put another way – the scene is potentially set for a huge political battle in Dorset in the run-up to next year’s council elections.