Councillor resigns over anti-cyclist 'w*nking off the Dutch' tweet; Jeremy Vine tours Kensington High Street congestion; Coroner records air pollution cause of death; Sir Chris Hoy: Cyclists and drivers should be 'less tribal' + more on the live blog

ChrisB200SX wrote:

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Too much Dutch Rudder got him the Spanish Archer?

I daren't look those up, I'm on a work computer....

Classic "sorry not sorry" as practised by the Home Secretary.

A Highways Committee member (and I think he might actually been Head of Highways), who is setting policy for all Oxfordshire's roads making such disgusting remarks about vulnerable road users, is really not an appropriate individual to be holding such a role.

It was not his first offence either, which is probably why the Monitoring Officer followed the guidance of the cross party standards committee, which found him to have breached the Conduct standards and recommended his removal from the role. The Leader of the Council presumably felt (s)he really couldn't find a reason to go against that recommendation. Hence the conversation where this was made clear to Cllr Walker, who opted to resign before he was pushed.

PP

You would think that if he was so concerned with others valuable time and the taxpayers money spent, that he might have resigned one hell of a lot earlier in the process.

He couldn't make time to attend the hearing because of 'other work'. Makes me wonder how much effort he put into this position in the first place.

In his defence (which is surprising as I was one of the complainants to the Monitoring Officer), being an elected councillor does not preclude you from having a job. Many are better because of this as they bring some 'real world' into descussions and decisions. Far too many don't have jobs and it is a hobby, or a pension top up, or a power trip.

I speak with some authority on the matter as my wife is a Town and County Councillor in Cheshire East and became Cycling & Walking Champion for the Borough. She puts her heart and soul into the role and spends up to 15hrs a day working on projects, campaigning alongside a normal councillor's duties such as sorting out residents complaints about drains, planning etc etc. She sits on several committees and her C&W Champion role is a bit like a Minister Without Portfolio role, where she the backing of the Leader and Deputy to 'float' and attend ANY committee meeting if there is ANYTHING that will affect cycling or walking. This includes Highways, Planning, Health and Wellbeing, Schools etc etc etc.

This means she asks the right questions about cycling provision at planning meetings, parking and pavement decisions, health and leisure planning, cycling and walking to school etc. They have to listen and as I said, with the backing of the leadership the committee chairs are also onboard so her input IS listened to and considered seriously. They pretty much have to justify why they will not follow her recommendations now.

She has spent the last month literally flat out proposing a default 20mph speed limit on all residential and town centre roads across the Borough. Each road will be looked at on a case by case basis to decide if anything higher than 20mph is appropriate.

This included drawing up the proposals, collating a case 'for' through gathering of information and supporting data. She had to get the evidence to address the likely nay sayers, one of whom was particularly vocal and aggressive. She then contacted the vast majority of the 70+ councillors personally to talk them through it to educate them and answer their (very many) objections.

This culminated in a 3.5hr debate (I kid you not) yesterday at a full Cabinet Zoom meeting where the Conservatives tried everything possible to scupper the proposals. They failed. Then they suggested a cross party working group, which would mean they could then try to scupper every move once adopted. Scandalous. But she got the proposal accepted and it will be rolling out next spring. She had to turn the camera off as the vote was confirmed as she was in tears - of relief, joy and the lifting of huge pressure off her shoulders. She fell asleep exhausted at about 8:30pm last night. Today, she has made hundreds of shortbread biscuits, wrapped them in cellophane and put ties and gift cards on them to hand out to all the Officers on the council. Amazing.

She gets upwards of 50 emails a day, endless phone calls and of course is following up constantly on planning issues which have not put in the cycling provision that was passed at the planning meeting etc etc. Developers promise the world then default as they know councils are strapped for cash and can't keep threatening to take them to court. In the past they got away with it - there was supposed to be a foot and cycling bridge put in from a new housing development into the town park - the developers were allowed to put no 'green space' on the development as the bridge would allow access to the big park. Funny old thing, they squeezed more houses onto the plot as a consequence and then never put the bridge in. This has gone on for 5 years (before she was on the council) and she is fighting tooth and nail to get the developer to fulfil their commitment. It is a thankless task that soaks up hour upon hour.

And for all that what does she get? An allowance of less than £12k a year. For all that and more. It's not surprising many do the bare minimum...

PP

Pilot Pete wrote:

In his defence (which is surprising as I was one of the complainants to the Monitoring Officer), being an elected councillor does not preclude you from having a job. Many are better because of this as they bring some 'real world' into descussions and decisions. Far too many don't have jobs and it is a hobby, or a pension top up, or a power trip.

I speak with some authority on the matter as my wife is a Town and County Councillor in Cheshire East and became Cycling & Walking Champion for the Borough. She puts her heart and soul into the role and spends up to 15hrs a day working on projects, campaigning alongside a normal councillor's duties such as sorting out residents complaints about drains, planning etc etc. She sits on several committees and her C&W Champion role is a bit like a Minister Without Portfolio role, where she the backing of the Leader and Deputy to 'float' and attend ANY committee meeting if there is ANYTHING that will affect cycling or walking. This includes Highways, Planning, Health and Wellbeing, Schools etc etc etc.

This means she asks the right questions about cycling provision at planning meetings, parking and pavement decisions, health and leisure planning, cycling and walking to school etc. They have to listen and as I said, with the backing of the leadership the committee chairs are also onboard so her input IS listened to and considered seriously. They pretty much have to justify why they will not follow her recommendations now.

She has spent the last month literally flat out proposing a default 20mph speed limit on all residential and town centre roads across the Borough. Each road will be looked at on a case by case basis to decide if anything higher than 20mph is appropriate.

This included drawing up the proposals, collating a case 'for' through gathering of information and supporting data. She had to get the evidence to address the likely nay sayers, one of whom was particularly vocal and aggressive. She then contacted the vast majority of the 70+ councillors personally to talk them through it to educate them and answer their (very many) objections.

This culminated in a 3.5hr debate (I kid you not) yesterday at a full Cabinet Zoom meeting where the Conservatives tried everything possible to scupper the proposals. They failed. Then they suggested a cross party working group, which would mean they could then try to scupper every move once adopted. Scandalous. But she got the proposal accepted and it will be rolling out next spring. She had to turn the camera off as the vote was confirmed as she was in tears - of relief, joy and the lifting of huge pressure off her shoulders. She fell asleep exhausted at about 8:30pm last night. Today, she has made hundreds of shortbread biscuits, wrapped them in cellophane and put ties and gift cards on them to hand out to all the Officers on the council. Amazing.

She gets upwards of 50 emails a day, endless phone calls and of course is following up constantly on planning issues which have not put in the cycling provision that was passed at the planning meeting etc etc. Developers promise the world then default as they know councils are strapped for cash and can't keep threatening to take them to court. In the past they got away with it - there was supposed to be a foot and cycling bridge put in from a new housing development into the town park - the developers were allowed to put no 'green space' on the development as the bridge would allow access to the big park. Funny old thing, they squeezed more houses onto the plot as a consequence and then never put the bridge in. This has gone on for 5 years (before she was on the council) and she is fighting tooth and nail to get the developer to fulfil their commitment. It is a thankless task that soaks up hour upon hour.

And for all that what does she get? An allowance of less than £12k a year. For all that and more. It's not surprising many do the bare minimum...

PP

Pete thanks, that was a fascinating read. I wish all folk in her position were as dedicated and effective, and I also wish that they didn't have to swim upstream to be so. 

Thank you, I will pass on your comments. Unfortunately it is an uphill struggle, as you can imagine, many of the councillors are very car centric in their thinking, and county councils do tend to lag a number of years behind cities in their thinking...

My wife has had to get policy changes just to bring them anywhere near up to date - for example, Highways were still working to a 1980s design guide last year! She had to push and convince them to start using LTN 1/20 - the up to date design guide for cycling infrastructure released in July this year. It wasn't easy as she had to convince the Highways Leader and then go through the process of policy change, which is a lot of red tape. Writing a policy document takes weeks - it defines everything that the officers must work to, so you can imagine how much work that took. Now it is policy, she gets huge traction if the planning committee passes something without following it, or the highways committee designs a junction without considering cycle provision - as they have not followed policy! So she can challenge and they MUST change it.

That is massive. After several months, they have learnt and now they submit ideas, plans etc and ask for her input before even discussing it at committee meetings. Her first 4 year term is going to be changing as many policies as she needs to to facilitate improving cycling and walking provision. Everything will be in place then, so after that is when the real change will actually be implemented - these projects take years to get through design, planning, funding and building. So very frustrating for her - she just wants to see her first dedicated Cycleway, but that will take some time to actually achieve. It's a thankless task if you ask me!!!

PP

Pilot Pete wrote:

Thank you, I will pass on your comments. Unfortunately it is an uphill struggle,

....

y, but that will take some time to actually achieve. It's a thankless task if you ask me!!!

PP

Well, she has mine and a large number of other vistor's to this site I suspect. Chapeau!

Say thank you from me. Sounds like we need more like her.

Thank you. I will.

Sounds like your wife is doing a great job and thank you for putting forward a complaint. I suspect this individual was not quite as diligent in the role.

Certainly there are some who like to collect these roles, whilst they don't pay much individually, if you manage to bag a few it's not a bad sideline.

Thanks for the support. That individual was far from 'diligent'. Turns out he was warned about his conduct a year or so back for calling people 'bell ends' on twitter, which I knew nothing of until after receiving the decision to fire him by the monitoring officer.

The thing is I think he has only lost his cabinet position, so he will remain a councillor - just losing a portion of his allowance which he would have got for leading on Highways (I know he was on Highways, but not sure if he was actually the leader)

When you say 'bag a few' I'm not sure what you mean. You can be a councillor on a town council (for which you don't get paid anything), and on county council, for which you get a basic allowance, there are then special duty allowances for various roles such as being leader of the council, deputy, then chair of each of the various committees. Remember you have to be elected onto the councils first, then realistically you need to be in the controlling party on county council to be council leader/ deputy or chair of anything. Those roles are chosen by the controlling party. On our council that is a Labour/ Independent coalition, so the leader is Labour, deputy Independent and the various chairs are a mix of the two.

So you can't really 'bag' anything else - you can't chair loads of committees, only one, and you can't sit on loads of different councils as you have to live or work in an area to qualify to stand for election.

On our council, under constant Tory control since Cheshire was split into two councils (East and West) many years ago - at the last election the perfect storm hit them - the council leader sacked for giving a contract to his physiotherapist without following any kind of tendering process, a finance director (an officer, so not elected) who was suspended for a year on £150k+ whilst an investigation was conducted, who resigned the week he was to have his disciplinary and then none of the details were made public, and of course the anger at the Tories nationally over Brexit.

My wife stood as an independent as did a number of others, campaigned hard (which virtually nobody does in local elections as voters normally just tick the same 'colour' candidates as they vote for with their MP in a general election) and they took loads of seats. Not enough for an overall majority, and neither did Labour. The Tories assumed the independent candidates would side with them to get power, but as most were disgruntled Tories there was no way they could as that would have betrayed their voters! So, they negotiated and agreed a coalition with Labour, reviewable each year and with the caveat there was no Momentum members in Labour. It has worked really well. The Tories are livid and now just constantly trying to undermine and trash anything and everything the coalition tries to do.

In my opinion, party politics shouldn't come into local politics - if a 20mph speed limit or a zebra crossing is needed near a school etc, it should simply be voted in favour of to improve your town/ Borough. It is bizarre that the Tories oppose their own national party's policies, such as cycling, LTNs etc at local level. It is all about regaining control in their eyes and they are happy to trash anything to achieve that, even things they might believe in! That is local politics for you.

Our local parish council is like a club. It's really difficult for new members to challenge the status quo - in fact, they can be quite rude to each other, as the recent publishing of zoom calls has shown. I've a lot of respect for those who do it out of a sense of duty; your wife would fit that category admirably.

However, there are a lot who just like to have fingers in pies and pick up hats; chair of this, advisor to that etc. Perhaps I'm being harsh, but this Walker chap strikes me as a hat collector rather than a transportation policy fanatic.

But do remember, Parish councils have very, very few powers. Less than Town Councils, which the saying goes 'look after parks and dog shit'!!!

The actual power and budgets lie at City/ County Council level. My wife spent 4yrs on Town Council trying everything to get her ideas listened t9 and implemented, all to no avail. Hence why she stood for County Council and is now getting traction.

So I wouldn't worry too much about your parish council, the6 probably look after a few benches and the green! Highways comes most definitely under County Council, so as cyclists if you want stuff done you need to lobby your county councillors. If enough engage with them on issues they have to act....

PP

Since my days as a Monitoring Officer, Town Councils have been my absolute fave for getting tangled up in sheer nonsense. They are big enough - just about - to matter,  but too small to have any real responsibilities and not enough officer support to keep them on track. Sherborne, Minehead are a couple of examples. 

Pilot Pete wrote:

which the saying goes 'look after parks and dog shit'!!!

lol, you're not wrong there - the most recent contentious issue was PEOPLE crapping in the park bushes because the council closed the public loos! high-level stuff

Meanwhile, out on the doorstep, it's  "they're all in it for the money", "they're all corrupt",  etc. 

I do think that certain councils suffer a lot of corruption - remember they hand out grants to local projects as well as handing out contracts to businesses for millions. Some are more, shall we say, diligent at doing some (any) due diligence than others.

Many councillors sit on trusts and the like that apply for such grants. Mates of some of these on the various committees sometimes seem happy to hand out thousands without asking anything more than 'what's it going to be spent on?' Once it's granted there are sometimes very few, if any checks to see how the money was spent, no check for receipts or accounts. I'm not saying this happens a lot, but I know of a few who have been 'at it', who may well get a 5am raid in the new year....

If you follow the news there are plenty of stories of people getting done for fraud on councils - I believe the Mayor of Liverpool was arrested recently.....

At one point, the Liverpool Mayor was "co-operating fully with police" - as opposed to what - going on the run?

I can't remember whether it was East or West, but Cheshire seems to feature in the Private Eye Rotten Boroughs page. 

Another doorstep-ism is "they shouldn't be political" - CEC seems to be doing pretty well at being other than just the main parties.  It's hard to keep an Independent group together over time, and I notice a couple of Real Independents. 

It's quite worrying when individual councillors think the can go about with an order book and cheque book - new instances keep on happening, so it must be something they can do and get away with.  I always think trade fairs shouldn't exist, at least so far as the public sector goes - fine as a shop window and a day out, but they're driven by sales made on the floor, so by definition no procurement process. 

I had a quick look at Oxfordshire CC's website, Cllr Ian Walker is still there in his portfolio holder role - I couldn't see an obvious Highways Director among the modern job titles, but there must be one. As you say, his departure is likely to be a final straw case. It's depressing that somewhere as "bikey"as Oxford has taken this approach. 

It was Cheshire East under the previous Tory administration. You wouldn't believe the corruption and incompetence.....

PP

Pilot Pete wrote:

It was Cheshire East under the previous Tory administration. You wouldn't believe the corruption and incompetence.....

PP

invariably found dwelling together. It's horrible, knowing or suspecting it's going on around you - do you risk it all to make a disclosure or stay shtum.

Good 'un Pete

You would not think that the bleedin' obviuos 20mph speed limit in residaential areas would be so difficult to get approved.

I don't think Cheshire East is that different from the rest of the country.

Cycloid wrote:

Good 'un Pete

You would not think that the bleedin' obviuos 20mph speed limit in residaential areas would be so difficult to get approved.

I don't think Cheshire East is that different from the rest of the country.

Indeed. It's bizarre, muddled thinking that cars should not be restricted in any way, shape or form. Many local politicians, especially Conservative think this way - as though it is a threat to 'freedoms'. They don't think how the more basic freedoms of walking and cycling and not being killed by motor vehicles has been infringed for decades... however, THE PEOPLE are changing.

What parent, even who own 1+ cars, doesn't want safer residential streets where their kids walk, play and travel? What parent wouldn't want to be able to cycle with their kids, even if just on a Sunday morning, to the park, or into the town centre, or a circular loop for a bit of exercise and family time?

Town centres need to change. The current model with a main thoroughfare blighted by through traffic, tons of kerbside parking and shops which are dwindling in number due to the challenge of online retail, has failed. 

Who doesn't want their town centre to be a more friendly place to spend time? Who wouldn't want the decades of 'throughput of traffic' being the primary design criteria dropped in favour of walking and cycling space? The whole concept is changing with ideas such as shop spaces that can transform throughout the day from one use to another to try to maximise their usage and revenue streams. We have to re-invent the high street and make it a welcoming place where people want to spend time. That doesn't include shifting thousands of vehicles and hour through them, it is folly to claim this traffic is bringing trade - in my town, the choice of shops has got so bad it is literally only locals who pop in for a few bits - we are a major confluence of several A roads. The vast majority of traffic on those A roads is going somewhere else, we are NOT their destination. Why would you want to encourage them and prioritise them through your town centre? It's madness that people have had enough of.

20mph speed limits are just one small step in this sea change that is coming. We have a bypass that will be complete in 2021 so good riddance to all the lorries that plough tough our town centre and those who are just trying to get somewhere else. Segregated cycling infrastructure is being planned, and that is another small step. I have great hope that our town will be a completely different place in ten years from now...

PP