Flooding – sorry

This winters rainful has been historic and contributed to significant flooding.

As a nation we’ve also notable success around flood protection. Less rainful caused 200,000 more homes to flood 50 years ago and the significant measures taken sicne then have resulted in far less flooding. But that’s little consolication to those that have been affected.

But it’s also clear that recent governmental agricultural rule changes have also had a major impact on this – http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/17/farmers-uk-flood-maize-soil-protection

It’s little consolation that it was Conservative ministers that let this happen when Lib Dems are in coalition with them nationally.

Sorry to those affected that we didnt block these stupid agricultural rule changes.

81 seconds to answer

Southwark Council can be painful to deal with. It’s such a large organisation doing so many different things that people often tell me it’s hard to find the right person or get the response they expected.

All queries are dealt with by a now in-house contact centre based in Peckham. It handles huge volumes of phone calls and emails. Typically 25,000 calls a month but only gets to answer between 45% and 73%. The average time taken to answer those calls is much improved from a high in October 2012 of 5 mins 56 seconds down to 1 mins 21 seconds in December 2013. But most organisations aim for just a few rings before answering in less than 10 seconds. So still huge work to be done.

When you do get through, 77% of residents found they received the help they needed, 15% didn’t and 8% aren’t sure. Importantly many of these calls are to tell the council something they want to know to fulfil its duty to us as residents.

During 2014 efforts to get more services online to avoid having to make a phone call are planned. Silly things like bulk waste collection will go online. So far 55,000 residents have registered to use online services and is increasing by 300 pw. If you haven’t registered please do register here: https://my.southwark.gov.uk/Default.aspx

What have your experiences been like?

Which council officers has gone the extra mile for you?

Lewisham Hospital

Great news about the Save Lewisham Hospital and Lewisham Council challenge in the high Court against the government about closing the A&E and maternity departments at Lewisham Hopsital.

If the closures had proceeded it risked placing intolerable pressures on Kings College Hospital affecting services for Southwark and Lambeth residents.

It does make you wonder why the Conservative Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt didn’t accept the Judicial Review and avoid the public expense of appealing.

We now need Jeremy Hunt to advise how these departments will be funded going forward.

Income equality 25 year high.

Amazingly post recession UK is less unequal than any time over the last 25 years as per the Office for National Statistics(ONS). As measured via the Gini index an internationally recognised method.

This appears to be from wage stagnation but with benefits and tax credits rising by inflation helping protect the poorest.

The ONS has just announced that 2011/12 tax year the gaps between the poorest and richest has narrowed. And to close a gap that for 25 years has been widening this is big.

Using the Gini index Sweden is at 25%, US 40%, and the UK has improved from 33.7% to 32.3%. So we clearly have some way to go but its clear that over the next few years we’ll increasingly moved towards Swedish levels but the rate will dramatically slowdown with benefit restrictions coming into force.

I suspect during the next government 2015-20 indirect taxes such as VAT will be reduced. These disproportionately hit the poorest who currently pay around a third of their income on indirect taxation whereas as the richest fifth pay around 14% of income.

Direct taxation also disproportionately hits the poorest. Things like Council Tax. Clearly moving local taxation from asset based to income based would also help close the Gini index gap. Another correction for the next government.

Do you think we should aspire to be more US or Swedish?
Personally I’d go for the latter and the most cohesive society we can but creating better entrepreneurial support mechanisms.

 

Outrageous £36,040 Meetings

 This week I had the opportunity to challenge the Labour council leader Peter John asking why community council meetings now cost £36,040 each!

I asked him “Will the leader consider returning to eight community council areas and allowing chairs to manage the existing budget more efficiently?”

In 2011/12 the council spend £1,376,003 to hold 52 community councils and 61 planning community council meetings – so they each cost £12,166.

This year the council will spend £901,000 to hold 25 community council meetings so each cost £36,040.

This is partly because the 8 previous community councils have be squashed and squeezed into 5 and partly from holding fewer meetings.

Savings had to be made but I see no reason why the meetings should have tripled in price. Do you?

I suggested to him that Community Council chair people would be sufficiently skilled to hold the original number of community councils and the 113 meetings for the £901,000 budget or £8,000 per meeting.

He disagreed said no and ranted on about how much money he’d saved.

Anyone can cut outputs but cutting the costs genuinely is achieving more with less. But £36,040 per meeting is outrageous and not saving money.

Sociable Spending

Some years ago the Lib Dems created Community Funds for each of Southwark’s 21 political wards to spend locally, £100-£1000 on local groups running local projects and events. It turns out we were onto something bigger and more meaningful than we ever imagined.

Various research projects of traumatic events have discovered that communities with more robust social networks coped much better with earthquakes, heat waves, etc than those without.  Even the day to day issues and problems are ameliorated by strong social networks. Importantly stornger social networks have a large impact on things like child health, school grades, teen births, adult mortality, social disorders and even amazingly IQ scores. Some have dubbed this the “enduring neighbourhood effect”.

The more community groups the great the “enduring neighbourhood effect” – lowers crime rates, less violence as well as the other benefits mentioned earlier. You name a parameter and its improved.

How to foster more community groups and networks?

Censored by Southwark Labour

Southwark Labour have proposed changes to the protocol councillors have to follow else they received sanctions.

Amazingly counter democratic proposal “…members (except when accessing services as a residents of  the borough) should always advise the relevant chief officer in advance of such visits”.

Sounds innocuous  enough but it would mean council would always be prepared for visits. Little opportunity to really tests services. It also precludes helping residents in person when they need. Help as we wouldn’t be able to brief the chief officers in advance.

See the reports  page 24. The Labour chair said many things including “I don’t see any problems with these changes.”

After an awful lot of hassling Labour they finally agreed for office to review the proposals again. Hopefully Labour will be shamed into something much more democratic.

Tax cut still higher

 This April will see a tax cut for the richest. The top income tax rate will be reduced from 50% to 45%.

 Much comment has been made about how unfair this is.

 The 50% income tax rate has an interesting if short history. It was introduced by Gordon Brown in the last month of the 13 years of a Labour government. Some suggest it was an election stunt.

For the other 13 years the Labour government top income tax rate was 40%. Under the coalition government, the top rate of income tax will have been 50% for three years or 36 months. When this top rate is reduced it will still be at 45% which is still higher than the 40% that Labour used to collect.

So when you hear howls of derision about this tax cut. Remember it will still be higher than under Labour.

Cost of an NHS stamp

My GP called me last night about a recent blood test. I’ll need another one in a months time.

“Can you please post the blood test form to me?”

GP ” No”

“Why not.”

GP “We don’t post things to patients.”

“But it’s really not convenient to make a special journey to collect a form.”

GP “Can you not come in.”

“I could but it will take 40mins of my time, has to occur when you’re open which is when I’m at work versus the cost of a second class stamp.”

GP “We don’t post things to patients”.

“Could you email me the form and I print it out.”

GP stunned silence.

“It’s really easy to email a PDF document for example”

GP continued stunned silence.

“You really don’t have any stamps.”

GP continued stunned silence.

“So I guess I’ll have to make a special trip and change my working day.”

I hate public services that treat members of the public time with such contempt. In my case the cost of an NHS stamp is 40 minutes of my time and a reorganised work day.

What stories do you have where public services are designed and configured as if from the Stalinist era state?

Secondary School Admissions

Today parents will hear about secondary school place applications – online today or via 1st class post tomorrow.

For the whole of Southwark 58.7% of parents  have received their first choice. A smidgen up on last years 55.9%.  But this represents the fifth worst performance in the whole country.

Overall for London 71%, Lambeth and Lewisham managed 66%, Merton 65% and Wansworth 56%.

Overall 6.9% of Southwark parents were allocated a school they hadn’t chosen, down a little from last years 8%.

But it’s likely that across London more families obtained their first choice – last year 66% across London leaving Southwark some distance behind.

We’re trying to find out this data specifically for East Dulwich.

Any of 6 stated preferences – Southwark parents and carers had 93% success obtaining one of their up to 6 stated preferences whereas the average for London last year (we don’t yet have this years) was 95% with 88% offered one of their top 3 choices. So Southwark still has a long way to g o and with a pending secondary school places crisis is likely to get considerably worse. That’s why we think our area needs another excellent secondary school.

If you didn’t get the school you wanted a large number of places aren’t accepted and become free so a lot of shuffling of places is still to come so please don’t despair. Parents can go on waiting lists for schools they’d prefer a lot of movement usually occurs between now and September.

If you need support you can either contact the Councils School Preference Advisor Liam White liam.white@southwark.gov.uk they’ll also be drop-in sessions TBA.

OR  if you need any help or support around secondary admissions (or any other issue) please either call or email me or one of my colleagues:

James Barber james.barber@southwark.gov.uk 07900 227366
Jonathan Mitchell jonathan.mitchell@southwark.gov.uk 07903 967911
Rosie Shimell Rosie.Shimell@southwark.gov.uk 020 7525 3488

We’re available for home visits and have reserved time over this weekend and next week specifically for this.