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.