Last Night, we had a ‘Special Council’ at Forest Heath.  This was primarily to discuss Car parking charges in Newmarket.  My colleagues from Newmarket, Andrew Appleby and Ian Radford had been doing their homework on the range of options and spoke well.

Tory Cllr Millar spent most of the time making political points with such verbosity that Neil Kinnock would have been proud of him. 

We then waited with baited breath for what options the Tory ruling group were going to come up with or support given they supposedly run the Council.  Then the Tory leader got up and spoke and proposed we should study the options further!   Given that we were at a Special Council to discuss these options you would have thought the ruling group would have had something useful to say, unfortunately Cllr Miller was more intent on honing his Kinnock impression perhaps it just blew Cllr Jaggard away.

The ruling Tory Group have placed James Waters on the Planning Committee.

The former Cllr Waters adjudication from the Standards Board can be found here.  

In a vote taken behind closed doors. Forest Heath Tories voted to stop the legal challenge against Suffolk’s closure of local Middle Schools despite being advised they had a better than even chance of winning any such case.

Liberal Democratseven proposed an amendment that would have meant that any costs wouldn’t have created any additional burden on the council taxpayer. They proposed taking money from the huge war chest of £100 000 that Forest Heath Tories are hoarding for a legal challenge to save their own skins in local government review. The estimated costs of any challenge on Middle Schools was estimated at about £20 000.
Liberal Democrat Tim Huggan said ‘When it came to deciding to save their own skins or supporting local parents the Tories chose to save their own skins. Not an edifying spectacle.
For all their bluster, they failed parents when they were most needed.’

We were given a presentation about jobs in Forest Heath tonight at full council.   The last ten years have not been good for the district in job creation terms.

Growth 1998-2006 (Conservative controlled the whole time) was just 2.3%,  most of those gains coming in Government (bureaucracy and consultants) and leisure (Stable staff and Centre parcs),  at the same time neighbouring East Cambs which was Lib Dem controlled for the same period saw 48% growth.

Economic development has stagnated, we are over-reliant on  horse-racing, the American air bases and Centre Parcs for employment.  Average wages are over £100 per week less than the national average.

All in all it was a shocking indictment of the administration and how it has failed local people.  What summed it up was when a Conservative councillor claimed East Cambridgeshire had done better because the A10 was a better link to Cambridge than the A14!  I will share that one with my colleagues in East Cambridgeshire.

Forest Heath District council was informed that advice given to the district solicitor by a barrister was that it had a better than even chance of winning a challenge to the consultation process on closing the 5 Middle schools in Forest Heath.
Lib Dem Cllr Tim Huggan seconded a resolution proposed by Cllr Andy Drummond for the council to write to the County Council saying it was minded to institute proceedings to force a judicial review on the flawed consultation carried out by Suffolk County Council on changes to the school system in Forest Heath.
The ruling Conservative group proposed an amendment that would have weakened the Council’s intention to seek judicial review. This was defeated in a recorded by vote 11 votes to 10. The ruling Conservative group then voted against the motion signaling its intention to institute legal proceedings.
Tim Huggan (Lib Dem) Commented ‘Local people will be disappointed that after much talk from local Tories that they opposed Middle School closure s they failed to turn words into action
and support local campaigners in their fight to overturn the flawed process.’

Councillors voting for the Council to take action were:-
Cllr Huggan (LD- Manor), Cllr McCloud (LD- Red Lodge), Cllr Radford (LD - Newmarket), Cllr Allen (Ind- Newmarket), Cllr Drummond (Ind- Newmarket), Cllr Hirst (Ind- Newmarket), Cllr Bishop (Con- Brandon), Cllr Stewart (Con- Brandon), Cllr Waters (Con- The Rows), Cllr Fairman-Smith (Con -Exning), Cllr Vincent(Con- Brandon)

Those voting against the council to take action were:- Cllr Jaggard (Con – Newmarket), Cllr Miller(Con – Newamrket), Cllr Honeyford (Con- Newmarket), Cllr Roman (Con – Mildenhall), Cllr Wheble (Con – Mildenhall), Cllr Simmonds (Con – Brandon), Cllr Flack (Con – Lakenheath), Cllr Gathercole (Con – Lakenheath), Cllr Dicker (Con –South)

Cllr Burt (Con – Iceni) voted for the amendment but abstained in the main motion

Finally we got the admission that the £6million overspend on Newmarket Leisure Centre has left a hole in budgets and other much needed projects in Forest Heath.   It seems however that Local facilities are now taking a backseat to the Council’s  own battle for survival.

 Newmarket Town Council’s application for  help in turning this facility into  something that would be an asset for Newmarket fell foul of the financial mess the Tory council finds itself in.  Rathedr than looking to see how it could assist it chucked the whole project out.  Rather blandly saying it may look at it sometime in the future.

 Not a single Newmarket Tory voted to help.  The Lib Dems wanted the council to help but but this was rejected after only Cllrs Fairman-Smith, Bishop and Allen sided with the Lib Dems.

On Tuesday night at Special Council, the Tories pushed through a blank cheque for any legal challenge to the Local Government review currently being undertaken by the Boundary Committee. 

In a year when budgets are tight, services are under stress ,  a contingency of £100, 000 has been put into the budget, the equivalent of £6 for every band D property in Forest Heath!  The Independents, as usual backed the Tories and the matter was pushed through with only the 4 Lib Dems voting against this waste of council taxpayers money.

On Friday evening,  The Tories at Forest Heath decided that they would celebrate its opening by having a meal at the new restaurant at the Newmarket Leisure Centre.  Lovely that the Council taxpayer has funded this jolly.  I hope the Tories enjoyed their meal especially as Forest Heath residents were picking up the tab. 

I decided  that there are better ways to spend council taxpayers hard earned cash and stayed away.

Today we here what everyone knew, the consultation on the future of Middle Schools  by the Conservative County Council was a sham.  The vast majority of residents opposed to this vandalism of our school system and yet they decide to scrap anyway.

Of course I support Judicial review of this sham decision but the only effective way of keeping Middle Schools is by changing the party in charge at County Hall in elections in June for the County Council.

This is the time of the year that we get the individual committee budgets at Forest Heath.   In each budget report there is  a summary of the budget containing info on how much the budget has cost last year, is expected to cost this year and next year etc.

A great way to compare you would think?  Unfortunately to mask their deficit in Council finances they have bumped in money taken from reserves for this year, so unless you look at the appendix  you can’t see how the overall spend is and how it compares year on year. You then have to total up each committee individually and then work out what the total raid is on reserves is this year.  Not the most transparent system for the layman I think.