Good cop, bad cop.

A rather odd sensation that I don’t think I’ll ever get the hang of is banging my head against one part of the Council, whilst having a sensible conversation with another part. Hey ho.

CCC chants the mantra that registration (of the Downs as a village green) would prevent maintenance, presumably in the hope that an oft-repeated lie will somehow become true. In their objection to Kent County Council (the village green registration authority), they invoke a 135 year old, late Victorian Act of parliament to support their claim that it is actually impossible for the Downs to become a village green. Balderdash, as the late Victorians would have said.

Meanwhile, the Outdoor Leisure department has recognised The Downs is a “strategic open space”, being the only large open space in town apart from the Memorial Gardens. They are also keen to work with local “grassroots” groups, not least because such groups have access to sources of funding that are closed to the Council.

This has lead to an awakening of the idea of active co-operation:

Thank you for taking the time to chat through some joint working opportunities to enhance the Downs as we are keen to work with community groups. As you are aware the primary function of the Downs is coastal protection that may, from time to time, have to take precedence. However, we have already set aside some funding for some environmental enhancement for this strategically important piece of open space.

The aim of joint working would be to develop a management plan based upon survey work, community and partnership input and this could include issues such as: amend habitat – depending on the results of wildlife surveys, improved access, promotion / awareness, training for community volunteers or guided walks and much more no doubt. We see key partners such as yourselves, Kent Wildlife Trust, Herne Bay in Bloom, Natural England and many others will emerge.

The contrast between their stubbornness over registration and their enthusiasm for “joint working opportunities” is stark. Registration would cost them potential revenues from developers, whereas working with community groups can magic money out of thin air. Is that really all there is to it?

High maintenance councillors pocket £386k

Expenses, expenses – dontcha just love them? No suggestion here of unseemly duck houses or whatnot, I believe this is all above-board, as-per-normal stuff. It all mounts up pretty quickly, far exceeding the projected savings from museum closures, for example. But it’s the salaries that bug me. And Mr Parris has a point.

The price of democracy at Canterbury City Council is a third of a million pounds. Last year the 50 councillors cost us all £386,511 in allowances. Top of the pile was Tory council leader John Gilbey (Blean Forest) with £31,833, which included special responsibility money of £21,138, another £2,129 for his car and £431 in mobile phone charges.

Herne and Broomfield’s Peter Vickery-Jones was the second-highest paid councillor with £13,576, including £5,883 for special responsibility £1,596 for his car and £437 for his mobile phone. Wincheap’s Alex Perkins, leader of the Liberal Democrats, claimed £13,056, including £269 for his mobile phone and £675 for travel. Whitstable’s Julia Seath, the Labour group leader, claimed £6,234.

The best value councillor was Tankerton’s Martin Fisher; with just his basic allowance of £4,710. He is currently on bail facing child sex offence charges. Next cheapest was Herne Bay’s Vince McMahan, with £4,802.92, including a £92.92 bill for his car. Seven councillors only claimed £4,890 (their basic allowance, plus £180 PC allowance): Mike Berridge; Robert Bright; Paul Carnell; Roger Matthews (recently cleared on corruption charges); Mike Steed; Heather Taylor and Martin Vye.

News of the allowances infuriated war veteran Albert Parris, 73, of Herne. The former Royal Marines Commando fumed:

“Our councillor Peter Vickery-Jones received £13,576, which is more than some of our soldiers get on the front line. It is outrageous. How can he justify that sort of money when we have injured soldiers denied proper artificial limbs? He even gets an allowance from the parish council.”

Mr Parris was so incensed he has written to both Whitstable and Canterbury MP Julian Brazier, and the Prime Minister David Cameron. He said:

“It makes my blood boil when I have to beg, steal and borrow £370 to hire a coach to take our guys to Gable Cross police station to salute dead Marines coming back from the frontline. Councillors are making a laughing stock out of us with our money especially when everyone is having to make cuts.”

Mr Vickery-Jones was not available for comment, but he is a member of the council’s executive with responsibility for property and engineering, planning and regeneration, housing, community safety environmental services, community development and outdoor leisure, including beach huts. He also serves on the Herne Bay area members panel, and the housing appeals and benefits committee. He is a magistrate and member of the Canterbury and Herne Bay Volunteers Centre and Canterbury Mediation Service. The former Merchant Navy marine engineer lives in Herne Bay with his wife and their daughter; and is a governor of Herne Junior School. He has since re-trained as a plumber.

HB Times 17th June 2010

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It’s a vexing question, whether the Elected should be paid, and if so – what for, and how much? Nobody’s forcing them to be there, after all – they volunteered for a spell of selfless sacrifice for the common good. The Car, Travel, Mobile and PC categories are what I would regard as expenses. The fixed Basic allowance, plus the grand total of the various “Special Responsibilities” tariffs the councillor has chosen to take on, look to me like a salary by-any-other-name.

The Council probably has a small swarm of officers devoted to drawing up contracts. I would like to see them produce a contract that describes what the councillors must do for the Electorate before they can claim their salaries, let alone their expenses. One of our councillors moved to Surrey not so recently, his attendance dropped from 90-ish% to 20%, but his salary is an undiminished 100% – bonkers.

No expenses spared

The nitty-gritty in all its unadorned nitty-grittiness. Here are our councillors’ expenses for 2009 – find out who’s chatty, who’s got wanderlust, and who’s just very, very special. I’ve corrected a couple of errors in the table as it appeared in the HB Times, and re-jigged it as an Excel spreadsheet. There’s a link at the bottom of the article for you to download it. Click the table below to see a bigger version.

click it to big it

Download the spreadsheet

Museum Friends in the press

Crash, bang, wallop! A massive multi-media extravaganza accompanied the public launch of the the Friends of Herne Bay Museum – people, dogs, cameras, sunshine, words on sticks, you name it – total sensory saturation, Herne Bay style.

Save our museum for sake of town

A campaign group which wants to save Herne Bay Museum from closure has been formed. The Friends of Herne Bay are battling to keep the museum in William Street open after the city council announced plans to change it to an education centre for schools and advanced bookings as part of an effort to cut its budget by £35 million over two years. Nearly 2,000 people signed a petition to try to stop museum closing David Cross, the Friends’ secretary, said:

“Herne Bay museum is different from the rest of the museums in the council’s remit. The larger part of the collection is owned by the Historical Records Society who hold it in trust for the town. Unlike Whitstable and Canterbury there was no supporting interest group representing the users of the museum and the residents of the town.

After an encouraging campaign there was a strong feeling that the body of opinion revealed in the petition and the letters, needed permanent representation. This especially at a time when the council is talking to interested parties and stakeholders. The Friends of Herne Bay Museum representing the interests of the users and supporters of the Museum in Herne Bay now needs people to join and help to secure the future of one of the town’s important attractions.”

HB Gazette 17th Jun 2010

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Friends wanted to help preserve the museum

Supporters of Herne Bay Museum are being encouraged to join a Friends group to help keep it open. Council bosses announced last year that they planned to close the museum in William Street and replace it with an education centre for schools and groups which would have to book in advance and pay a fee. After massive public opposition and a petition of almost 2,000 signatures, officials decided to keep the museum open for a year while they discuss options for its future. Now campaigners have formed a support group to make sure the town’s views are heard. Spokesman David Cross said:

“The council received many letters and e-mails in support of the museum, and although the total museum budget has now been cut, the museum remains open while the council engages in a consultation exercise.

Herne Bay Museum is different from the rest of the museums in the council’s remit. The larger part of the collection is owned by the Historical Records Society which holds it in trust for the town. Unlike Whitstable and Canterbury there was no supporting interest group representing the users of the museum and the residents. After an encouraging campaign there was a strong feeling that the body of opinion revealed in the petition and the letters needed permanent representation.”

HB Times 24th Jun 2010

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The group is now encouraging as many people as possible to join up and help play their part in securing the museum’s future. Membership costs £5 per year for individuals, £8 for families and £50 for a life membership. For more information e-mail museumfriends@hernebaymatters.com or write to Membership Secretary, The Friends of Herne Bay Museum, 56 Beacon Hill, Herne Bay CT6 6JN.

2004: a vintage year for reports

The not-so-dusty Pier report from 2004 has been the cause of much pulse-quickening, gander-upping and even name-calling. My insatiable curiousity compelled me to send my spies to the four corners of the earth to learn more, and here’s some of what I have gleaned…

The report itself is made of unobtainium and is scarcer than unicorn poo – it appears that very few people have actually held a copy in their hands. It is not available on the Canterbury City Council website. It is not available anywhere online, as far as I know, but it will be available here shortly. One of my operatives based in the North Africa bureau traced a fragment of the elusive document through an antiquarian booksellers in Marrakech. By a great stroke of good fortune, it’s the executive summary of the 2004 report, and is well worth a couple of glances.

• It turns out that people have been peering at the Pier on and off for decades: Feb 1974, Dec 1996, Jun 1998 and the now contentious 2004 report. In the meantime, of course, the Pier itself has been falling to bits.
• At the beginning of 2004, CCC chose PMP Consultants (from a shortlist of three) to produce a feasibility study into “a new pier at Herne Bay” in PMP’s words, or “the rebuilding of Herne Bay pier” in Canterbury’s words.
• The study was jointly funded by Canterbury City Council, Kent County Council and Tourism South East (now called Visit South East England), and was seen as being the first phase of the project: investigating the options for the new pier and assessing the economic viability of the project.
• In March 2004, CCC had the good manners to ask the people of Herne Bay about “the kind of facilities a new pier should provide”. I’ll see if I can track down what, if anything, they were told.
• In May 2004, PMP delivered their report on the future of Herne Bay Pier – here’s the summary.
• In June 2004, CCC announced that PMP had delivered the report, and gave their own summary of PMP’s findings – do feel free to compare the two and play spot-the-difference.

Two-thirds Canterbury City

Grab a handful of your favourite blood pressure medicine and have a good hard stare at this. Times are hard and getting harder, attractions are closed and closing. In Canterbury, however, there’s over £1 million ear-marked for Westgate Gardens…

Canoeing pontoons, fishing platforms and an outdoor gym are all part of Canterbury council’s plans to revamp the Westgate Gardens. The idea is to spend £1,136,000 on the green space, including Toddlers’ Cove, to bring it up to date.

Executive member for the environment, Cllr Rosemary Doyle, said:

“This has been in the pipeline for quite a long time. It does need doing. Every now and again you have to revise and see how gardens are being used and whether they are being used for their best effect. The idea is to make it usable for more people. Certainly the canoeing and the fishing are things we have had requests for as people are interested in it. There are canoeing groups that use bits of the Stour at the moment, and we want to make it easier for them to use the river. This will benefit all sorts of groups.

 

The aim is for it to have universal appeal with improved play areas for children, to improve things for young people such as the canoeing and the fishing, and to make it comfortable for people to walk there and have picnics and admire the trees and the flowers. We want to bring more of the river in to use as well; that is one of the garden’s great strengths. It is a huge asset to Canterbury.”

The park will benefit from a new play area for children, new bridges, an extended area for events near the Westgate Towers, a better picnic area and improvements to the war memorial area. In Toddlers’ Cove, the area of the park further out of town, there are plans to make the area under the Rheims Way bridge safer with CCTV, better lighting and fences and make it easier for people to enjoy the river and its wildlife.

In particular the council wants to open up Bingley Island, a semi-natural site covered in scrubland and trees, so people can better enjoy it. And near where the children’s play area is there could be canoeing and fishing areas. Riverside Meadow, which is directly over the river from the picnic area, space will be opened up for older children to play ball games. And the council wants to emphasize the heritage and cultural aspects of the gardens with educational activities, archaeology etc. There will also be new toilets and paths, seating and lighting throughout.

The council already has £377,500 for the project, much of which is from developers who are required to give some money for community projects when they build houses and flats. And the rest is to come from the Heritage Lottery Fund, if a bid the council is to put in during August is successful.

The plans are out for public consultation, so to find out more and have your say go to: www.canterbury.gov.uk/westgategardens or visit the Information Centre in Sun Street. Those who fill in the council’s questionnaire by Friday, July 9 have the chance to win £100 of vouchers valid in many high street shops.

yourcanterbury.co.uk 9th June 2010

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If ever you need a handy reminder of what’s wrong with Canterbury City Council, the clue’s in the name:

It’s two-thirds Canterbury City and one-third Council.

In terms of population and tax revenue, the district is fairly evenly split into four: the Villages, Canterbury, Herne Bay, and Whitstable. In terms of spend, Canterbury seems to be getting the lion’s share: the Beaney is an £11.6 million project; the New Marlowe is a £25.5 million project; the Westgate Gardens revamp is a £1.1 million project. More locally, the Herne Bay Pier Trust has received £5,000 in start-up funding – a reflection of CCC’s priorities, I suppose.

When CCC was explaining the budget cuts earlier this year, they went out of their way to pre-empt the oft-repeated complaint that Herne Bay is the “poor relation”:

… ongoing regeneration work shows that the council is putting plenty of resources into Herne Bay, so the suggestion it is the poor relation is simply a myth.

Bollocks.

More maintenance nonsense

Wholly wrong!

More tosh from the Council, I’m sorry to say. A local councillor is reported as saying that village green status would delay emergency repair work on The Downs. This is STILL nonsense, merely a cover story that is getting flimsier by the day. The sharper-eyed amongst you will notice that the picture clearly shows a ladder running down to the bottom of the hole. Obviously this is not an accidental, natural hole – as Council spokesman Rob Davies says it’s “part of the slope drainage system”. Mr Davies also points out that “the responsibility to repair these lies with the City Council”.

The Council neglected its responsibility to inspect and maintain this part of the drainage system. The manhole cover became overgrown, disintegrated and fell down the hole – the remains appear to be at the bottom of the ladder in the picture. The soil that once covered the manhole wore thin, and hey presto – suddenly there’s a deep and dangerous hole in the ground.

This hazard is entirely due to the Council’s neglect. Read on.

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Foot-long crater opens up to reveal drop of 10 feet

A dog almost fell 10ft into water after a mysterious hole appeared on the Downs at Herne Bay. Authorities were alerted after the foot-long crater believed to be an old manhole was discovered less than a metre from a public footpath on Saturday morning.

Surrounded by loose earth, the pitch dark hole was mistaken for a rabbit hole by an eager Jack Russell. But only the quick-thinking actions of its owner, who grabbed the pooch as he went to dive into the hole, saved a potential tragedy. Bay councillor Vince McMahan, called by the owner and first on the scene with foreshore ramp attendant Doug Arponen, says a small child could have drowned:

“My two-year-old grandson Connor would have stood no chance if he’d fallen down there. It wouldn’t matter how quick the fire services arrived. I wouldn’t be able to get down there myself and would be helpless. It`s really quite frightening. Small kids love to walk along the ledge of the footpath, and this hole was probably just a foot away. If someone had slipped and fell down the hole it would have been a disaster”

Mr Arponen and Cllr McMahan alerted the city council and waited by the hole for three hours until Serco arrived at 12.30pm. Workers covered the hole with a sheet of wood and returned later to fence the area off. Mr Arponen said:

“There’s no way it could have been left as it was. You could tell it had probably been like it for some time as well, because the edge wasn’t neat and the grass had grown. When I saw it I thought it was best to stick around. After all, the number one priority is public safety”

Cllr McMahan says the discovery of the hole adds weight to the argument against granting the Downs Village Green Status:

“If the status was awarded we would have to ask the Secretary of State to carry out emergency maintenance work like this. That takes time and money and could well have been too late in this instance.”

City council spokesman Rob Davies said:

“They are part of slope drainage system. We were alerted to this problem on Saturday and on-call staff attended to inspect the site. The hole was covered over and fencing was put up around it, as well as a second manhole cover further along the Downs, to make them safe. The responsibility to repair these lies with the city council, because they are part of the slope drainage system. An order for this work to be carried out has already been placed and we will inspect other covers on the East Cliff in case of further problems.”

HB Gazette 3rd Jun 2010

Pier Board: Who’s Who

The Herne Bay Pier Trust was set up in 2008.  This is your handy, at-a-glance Who’s Who and Who does What guide.

Julian Jennings – Chairman

Julian is married to Angela with three children and has lived in Herne Bay since 1989. Julian has 30 years experience in financial services, including as Sales Director within a financial services division of Lloyds Bank.  He now has diverse business interests as a landlord and Compliance Consultant to a small portfolio of financial services firms.  He is also Managing Director of two private limited companies, Guardian Estate Nominees Ltd and Estate Shield Ltd.

Andy Newell – Membership Secretary

Andy has fought publicly for many years for the restoration of Herne Bay’s pier. He has many memories of the old pier and passionately believes it should be restored to its former glory as a benefit not only to the people of Herne Bay but also for the rest of the country. Andy is married to Jackie and has two daughters: Nicola 19 and Frances 17; and a son Todd 21. He works in the construction industry.

Michael Khoury

Michael has lived in Herne Bay for 23 years where his business interests include amusement arcades, catering and retail. He is a founder member of Town Partners and active in Herne Bay’s Chamber of Commerce, for which he is currently President. He started life in a refugee camp and as a young man he worked on oil rigs in the Arabian Gulf. He was Employee Relations Representative for an American company for 4 years before being head hunted for the Ministry of Petroleum. After 5 years he moved to the UK, where he met his wife June.

Sue Austen – Website Administrator

Sue was born and brought up in Kent, and has lived in Herne Bay for almost 10 years with her husband, two teenage children, and two dogs. She has worked for over 25 years as an independent film and television producer and has made programmes for the BBC, ITV and Channel Four. Her first feature film was selected for the prestigious Director’s Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival and she has received two BAFTA nominations for her work.

Jason Hollingsworth – Treasurer

Jason is a Chartered Accountant with over 17 years of commercial experience.  He has worked extensively for blue chip organisations, including as Manager of Price Waterhouse and an Associate Director of Deutsche Bank.  In the past decade his focus has been on the Third Sector where he has fulfilled roles including Finance Director of a multi-million pound public arts project in London (www.alunatime.org).  He has also co-founded a number of not-for-profit enterprises including etheco.com.  Jason lives in Herne Bay with his wife and two children.

Andrea Leach

Andrea, 44, is married to Kim and has 2 sons Alex and Max.  Born in Canterbury he has lived all his life locally and moved to Herne Bay over 3 years ago.  Andrea is passionate about improving and developing the town.  He is bilingual Italian and has extensive business contacts both locally and in London. Andrea has over 20 years extensive European B2B experience with a number of leading global FMCG companies, including the sports apparel and leisure sector. As Capital Appeals Manager for a local children’s charity he helped to raise £6.5m to build and open South London’s first residential children’s hospice.  He has worked with Britain’s oldest brewer Shepherd Neamne as an Export Consultant for over five years.

Ian Priston

Ian is a communications manager responsible for relationships with the media and a wide variety of public bodies for the Courts Service in London. He is experienced in new public building project management, consultation, advising government and explaining proposals to wide audiences. Ian moved to Herne Bay with his wife Jane and their three young children last year and believes passionately that the town deserves a pier it can be proud of and which will appeal to future generations.

Peter Lee

Is a Conservative Councillor representing the Herne Bay ward West Bay on Canterbury City Council.. Peter has lived in Herne Bay for 50 years and has been involved in many local voluntary organisations during that time.  He runs his own IT Consultancy based in the town.

Margaret Flaherty

Is a Liberal Democrat Councillor representing Greenhill and Eddington Wards. Margaret lives in Herne Bay and is a teacher and mother of four grown up children.?