What a great idea a cabinet system that is not a closed door.  At Blackpool every decision of every committee is made outside of the council chamber and no one gets a say.  Well done Fylde!

The idea to have public consultations in whatever form is a good idea, as long as the public (Fee payers) are actually listened to. For this kind of interaction to work, the public need to know when and where the Cabinet meetings are being held. (Changing of venues and times at the last minute and calling the police at such meetings doesn't really encourage people to take part. Remember that meeting?)

Lets hope the Cabinet have realised the attitude of "You voted us in, live with our decisions!" will not bring them back for another term.

Maybe publishing such dates of said meetings on this site would be a good idea? Then again, it may encourage too many members of the public to use their "Two Minutes" to ask some very arkward questions to the Conservatives!

Last edited by Martin Howarth (15/07/08 06:42)

This forum has come at a very apt time, I was in the process of writing to Councillor Coombes for an explanation as to why three independent  councillors have been reported to the standards watchdog regarding the public meeting at Fylde Rugby club. What are the reasons for this decision to have been taken?.

Regards

Paul (Lawrenson)

Can I ask whether it really is the Leader of the Coucil that dedicates his time to responding to the public through this Forum.  If this is the case I personally find it astounding because most council leaders are afraid of being accessible in todays day and age surrounded by PR people that tell them what to wear, what to say and which baby to kiss.  Can you encourage Blackpool to be this open and transparent, you can't even get through to the staff there!!

That is superb - on a serious note if you do have any dealings with Blackpool (I live on Newton Drive) you could teach them a thing or to about local democracy.  Our Leader spends all his day buttering up tourists that drag the name of the area down and getting hospitality from Blackpool Football Club.  I am not sure he is aware there are people who have lived here all their life and have a sense of belonging to the community.  Fylde should be commended for this brave approach.

Paul thanks for the post, can I just start by saying that let's not make this a "Them and Us" argument.  As you can appreciate the key people that needed to be there last night were the Rural Councillors and the Portfolio Holder tasked with trying to find an "affordable" option.  Councillor Renwick represented the Council - the rest of the Councillors will be given the exact same presentation during October. 

Paul your accusation that "there is a lack of support from Tories" is both unfounded and far from the facts.  Conservatives have invested more in Rural Fylde since 2003 than any other Council since 1974.  Surely if we did not have any interest in keeping Kirkham Pool open then we would have shut it in March or at the same time as St Annes?

The financial package put forward requires approximately £120,000 of Council Tax Payers money.  The Full Council will now meet to discuss the proposal and decide where the funding will come from - Council Tax increases, or from a reduction in funding for other services.  These are the only two options open to it, at this moment in time.  No doubt, St Annes Concillors of all Parties, will be equally keen to try and find funding to ensure the future of St Annes Pool?

The Council has already been presented with a first quarter bill of £140,000 for Concessionary Bus Travel - a Government Scheme which has been under funded  - you and I will now have to pick up the tab.  The Councils Energy and Diesel bill is estimated to rise by almost 50% this year - again a budget pressure that could not have been envisaged.  I am sure you will agree, we are living in very uncertain times, the Council must try and keep Council Tax bills down, whilst at the same time continuing to deliver the multitude of services we do.

Be assured that the Kirkham and St Annes Pool proposals will be given an equal and thorough hearing and that the Council will be more than happy to retain Swimming provision in the Borough if it can afford to do so.

Last edited by John Coombes (09/10/08 12:14)

Coxy thanks for the feedback, we will have to agree to disagree on the support argument as it may be the perception - but it is certainly not true.  The amount of time and effort that has been put in by Conservative Councillors has been immense.

Just to reiterate Councillor Renwick represented the Council at the meeting - as you can appreciate many of us are out almost every night at various Council related meetings and we have to ensure that we meet these various commitments.

The reason not to close the pool in March was a practical one - we said at the time that we could not afford the £500,000 + for St Annes but we could stretch the funding for Kirkham to allow School Swimming to continue, whilst we embarked on a number of feasibility studies to see what could be sustained in the long term.  St Annes reamined open to the end of the School term and to the Schools credit no School Swimming lessons have been affected.  The challenge for Rural schools is more complex and we considered that they needed more time to study their options for lessons should Kirkham Close in March.

I have seen the business plan presented by Rural Splash and it is exciting - The Council now needs to finalise it's funding avenues to see whether the propsals can be supported for the next two years.  This work has already started and a decision will be made in the very near future.

The Council had one significant challenge with finance - that was an under budget of £309,000 in the Streetscene department.  This overspend came from increases in fuel and vehicle maintenance in the main - nothing sinster - simply unforseen circumstances.  The Councils Finances are in good order and as stated earlier Fylde has some of the lowest back office support costs in the Country.  However, although this reflects well in low Council Tax bills - it simply means that when you want to invest in improvements or have to respond to a unforseen challenge then there is little room for manoeuvre.

I hope that mechanisms such as this forum are a seen as a positive step to communicate with the public?  In tha past we have relied heavily on the Press and as we all know this often works against us - The Council has nothing to hide and the website has all the answers and information that the public needs to understand what presures are facing us.

So to close -the challenge with the Streetscene funding was a problem however, even without that, the Council would have had to close the Pool.  This year with bus travel, energy bills etc rising we will have some other difficult decisions to take.  The Councils house is in order but we are finding it increasingly difficult to square the Local Government Funding circle.

This exercise in communicating effectively is to be applauded.

We are having tremendous problems involving the Freckleton Parish Council;the Village in which I live;lack of consultation and squandering without an effective business plan ratepayers money in order to drive through a Dog Ban, is causing deep resentment and a feeling of being disenfranchised.

I have put a short history and the present position the Village is in under the Local Issue Forum.

As a Village we will welcome any feedback or advice from Fylde Borough Councillors and members of the Public.

The media have been very supportive in at least allowing the Village to be informed as to what's happenning.

Our aim is to work together, however this if you read our points, this is  not the case regarding our Freckleton Parish Council.

Dear Ansdell Resident,

Thank you for taking the time to post a comment on the Forum it is always great to welcome new people.  I can confirm that Fylde has entered into a number of joint working arrangements with Blackpool, Wyre and Preston that take different forms. 

Some involve sharing the cost of a service that could not be effectively delivered in isolation and include health and safety advice and procurement.  Some are joint service partnership agreements such as the revenues and benefits service and some are delivered under service level agreements including human resources and payroll.  All the arrangements have been subject to public committee report approval and the reports can be found on the committee section of our website at www.fylde.gov.uk

Joint working is one of the key means of achieving reduced cost and improved efficiency for all local authorities that has been championed on the national agenda.  Fylde does not hide the fact that we have services delivered through neighbouring local authorities in fact we have been commended for the open and constructive approach that we have taken to joint working.  On several occasions we have been used as a best practice exemplar for delivering savings to the tax payer and at the same time improving performance and quality.  These successes have been published on the website, in press articles, in leaflets and in corporate publications e.g. the corporate plan and perfromance plan. 

Each arrangement is scrutinised by the public overview and scrutiny committee to ensure that we are achieving value for money and improved performance.  The reports and agreements are published in the committee reports and available to the public.

The challenge we have is generating public interest in these issues, it seems the press don't want to champion great success stories like this so they either don't publish the press releases or they hide the story on page 20 in the bottom corner so I can see why you may think that they are not widely published.  Equally, very few, if any members of the public attend the committee meetings we have where councillors debate the arrangements and where they have the opportunity to ask questions.  I don't think this is unique to Fylde so it is great to see you have an interest in knowing more about these arrangements and I am sure you will do your bit to tell people about them.

As an example of the success of these arrangements you refer specifically to the human resource and payroll services.  The payroll service is delivered for less than £40,000 per annum with electronic paysips and online expense claims compared to a cost in excess of £78,000 in 2003 for a paper based system.  By changing to a service delivered through Blackpool we have saved over £38,000 per annum and have a better service for the Fylde employee.  The human resource service in 2009/10 will cost £15,000 less than it did in 2007/08 and the Council has access to specialists in a vast range of subjects where previously we had three general human resource employees and two support staff.  The service through Blackpool provides access to over 20 specailists and support staff as well as an online management system that Fylde would never have been able to fund on its own.

We have extensive contact and networking with all of the Lancashire authorities and are always open to learning from them and on many occasions have worked with Chorley and South Ribble applying what they do in Fylde when it canbe transferred.  I am also delighted to say that on many occasions we have shared best practice with Lancashire neighbours in particular on joint working with others because some authorities nurture a fear of losing control that prevents them realising the opportunities to save money for the local tax payer while at the same time improve services.

Finally, it is true that sickness absence at Fylde is amongst the worse in Lancashire at 13 days per employee per annum and we do not shy away from publishing this figure (see all the reports on the website to the Performance Improvement Committee) or outlining how we aim to address this and the fact that one of the reasons is down to the success of winning the contract to deliver refuse and cleansing services for Wyre.  The increased proportion of staff that are manual workers does mean that sickness absence will be higher than average because the measure is per employee and we have more staff out in the cold, wet and wind doing intense physical labour.  However, we are committed to reducing this figure.

I hope this response addresses your questions and thank you once again for coming to the Forum.  If you do need to know anything else please do not hesitate to contact me or use the Forum again!

Thanks

Allan Oldfield
Performance & Improvement Director
01253 658576
allano@fylde.gov.uk

I think Blackpool's problem is its leadership - the departments do not work together well to achieve the aims of the council as a whole, quite the opposite.  I thank Allan for his well-written response.  I really feel Fylde needs to up its game and become much more visible as a community leader.  My personal opinion is that the administration of Fylde has been too cosy and static over a lot of years.  A change in political balance would provide refreshment and challenge.  The swimming baths issue and perceived behaviour of the elected members at meetings attended by the public will have turned a lot of people off voting conservative.  However, now the baths look set to reopen (St.Annes that is), which is great but we should never have been in that situation for a seaside area - and people have short memories.  I'd urge anyone reading this to give other parties a chance to make some changes.  Even one term under a different administration could shake things up - then vote the Tories back in if you like.