We will find out more in the King’s Speech on Wednesday
17 July, particularly with regard to their objective of requiring large
scale house building, potential amendments to the Green Belt and stimulating
economic growth. When these details are known I will write again to update
you.
During the General Election period
electoral law prohibited me writing these newsletters. Now the election is
over there is a lot to catch up on. Besides the new Government, I also want
to tell you about the major new anti-littering policy we will shortly be
introducing. So, stand by for several newsletters in your inbox over the next
few weeks and please feel free to share them with friends and neighbours, or
better still suggest that they sign up to receive them directly.
Your Council Tax and our budget
I wanted to start with a quick update
on how we spend your Council Tax and the overall state of our finances. You
will all have seen that local government everywhere is very hard pressed; we
are no exception. This year we must save £41.3 million. This is on top of the
£75.4 million already saved since the council was created in 2020. This
remains very challenging. Whilst we are embracing new technology and looking
to redesign processes and become more efficient, there is no getting away
from the fact that we will be reducing what we do and the resources we have.
We are having to take some tough decisions to stay solvent which will not
always be popular, be it increasing parking charges, changing library
staffing or reducing some highways services.
I’m often asked; 'what do I get for my
Council Tax?' Most of the council’s expenditure, some 71%, is on four
legally required services. The early financial result for the first three
months of the year show that we are spending more than our budgets on Adult
Social Care, Children’s Services, Home to School Transport and looking after
homeless people. This is concerning. We will continue to monitor these costs
and will need to see what must be done to bring us back within budget.
Grass cutting and verge growth
I’ve had a huge amount of
correspondence about growth of verges, hedgerows, and weeds in recent weeks.
I think we owe many residents an apology. Whilst most people value the
presence of more plants and the positive impact it has on biodiversity, it
should never risk road safety or make towns and villages look ‘tatty’. In
rural areas we have reduced grass cutting to the legal requirement and there
is an appeal to seeing more wild-flowers and long grasses by the roadside.
However, in towns and villages we are still committed to two grass cuts a
year. This year however, we were taken by surprise by the very wet and sunny
weather. This led to far more vigorous growth than normal across the county.
We have brought in extra grass cutting teams and accelerated the programme
but frankly some areas have remained uncut for far too long. We will learn
from this and plan ahead for similar weather next year.
Also, safety is paramount so we carry
out three ‘visibility cuts’ around road junctions throughout the growing
season. Such is the level of growth this season that we know in some areas
we’ve needed extra cuts in these locations too, so we’ve brought in additional
crews to make sure these are covered. It is important that you tell us if
there are individual sites where additional cutting is needed for safety
reasons and we will carry these out if they’re reported to the council. We
have already responded to around 150 such requests this spring and will
always prioritise any requests where visibility and safety is an issue.
Weed spraying
These growing conditions have
inevitably also led to high weed growth in our towns and villages. The
appearance of our towns and villages and the state of our pavements is really
important to me so, as I wrote back in May, we have re-instated a second cycle
of weed-spraying and will carry out two full cycles of weed spraying across
the county over the coming months on all public pavements, as well as ‘siding
out’ in some targeted places. This is the process of clearing the edges of
pavements where weeds and vegetation have grown through.
We use Glysphosate to spray weeds;
this chemical is not harmful to people or animals and can be used safely
close to water courses.
I know from talking to people
throughout the general election campaign how important these local issues
are, which is why we’ve taken action and are working hard to tackle what has
been ideal growth conditions for all plants and weeds.
Summer roadworks
Over the past two months I have driven
around the county a great deal. Like many of you, I have frequently been
stuck in roadworks. It will come as no surprise to anyone who regularly
travels on our road network that we’ve had a sharp increase in roadworks in
recent years. The number of works permits requested by utilities firms such
as water, electricity, gas and broadband, has gone from about 20,000 a year
to 60,000-70,000 a year over just the last three years. Coupled with our own
programme of investment in local roads, it all means more work and more
disruption on our network.
We have always tried to use the
generally quieter summer months to programme some of the most disruptive
works, including some of our larger scale improvement schemes. However, we’ve
reached a stage where even the summer will see more disruption than usual
this year given the demand for works. In particular, HS2 is closing the key
A418 into Aylesbury at Stone across the weekends in July and for two weeks in
August. We have no power to stop this as national government has passed
special legislation allowing all works associated with the project to
proceed, but we continue to press them to mitigate and minimise disruption
where we can. We have worked hard to secure an offer of a free shuttle bus
service from them from the end of July; more details on dates and times will
follow so please look out for this information, plus the details on diversion
routes and timings.
Of course, none of us wants more
roadworks but with aging utilities pipes, demand for higher speed broadband
and a major investment programme planned on the road network, the associated
works are unavoidable. I know I’m delivering bad news on some level, but I do
want to be upfront and advise people to check their journey before they
travel, using your regular sat nav or route planner, and for specific
information on who’s carrying out the roadworks and their duration, you can check the council’s website.
I hope that by warning of possible and
more frequent delays this will allow you to plan accordingly. This is a
situation that frankly is not going to ease up post summer either, but you do
have my assurance that we will do what we can to co-ordinate works where
possible and to hold utilities firms to account, making sure they’re working
within their permit agreements. We’ve added extra staff into our teams who
will be out inspecting works sites to check this.
There was a proposal from the previous
Government to substantially increase the fines we could impose on utility
companies who broke their permit conditions. We will have to see if the new
Government carries on with these changes; I hope so.
Gullies and drains
We had hoped for much drier weather by
now after the exceptionally wet winter and spring. However, the very wet
weather has continued. This has meant that the amount of water in the ground,
the ‘ground water’, continues to be very high. Rain will quickly result in
more flooding as the ground cannot absorb the new rain. We have instances of
this across the county and in towns such as Chesham. We know it’s critical
that all agencies with responsibilities for flood management use this time to
plan for next winter, given the terrible flooding we witnessed in some parts
of the county over the last winter. As I’ve said before, as a council, we
have a role in co-ordinating some of this work, which is largely the
responsibility of the Environment Agency or individual water companies, such
as Thames Water, depending on the causes of flooding in any particular area.
We are doing all we can to ensure this
work continues apace over the summer – I know for example places like
Chalfont St Peter are still experiencing impacts and problems from the
terrible flooding there and we want all agencies to do what it takes to avoid
any repeat and to find long-term solutions.
For our part, we have committed an
extra £500,000 from reserves for repeat gully and drain cleansing and repairs
to mitigate against heavy rainfall and potential flooding. It means that on
top of our existing commitment to cleanse every gully, every year in
Buckinghamshire, we are spending extra time and resource on 2,000 high
priority locations as part of this programme of work.
From recent experience it feels like
wetter weather is likely to be more of a theme and we are focussed on finding
long term solutions to be more resilient overall to the impacts of heavier
rainfall.
Littering
Last, but by no means least, another
major issue for me is to tackle littering and the scourge of litter louts,
particularly those who just chuck fast food and other waste out of their car
instead of taking it home or putting it in a bin. We are about to take a
decision on a really bold new policy on this, where we want to use greater
powers and higher penalties to come down really heavily on litter louts,
while in the process hopefully deterring others from doing the same. The new
policy is due to be considered and voted on by the council’s Cabinet this
week, after which I will bring you a full update on progress.
On that note, we have a busy few weeks
of activity at the council before the summer holiday season begins. I will be
watching the new Government’s proposal announcements and will write to
you after they are announced. Also, I look forward to updating you in the
coming weeks on some exciting new projects we’re progressing locally, such as
town centre regeneration work in Aylesbury.
Please keep safe and enjoy the
hopefully better weather.
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