Enter the Commissars

I return from a hol to find ... the Commissars Commissioners that are to run Croydon have been installed, and already started calling the shots.  Some background.

In the late 2010s Croydon, a marginal borough that has yo-yo'd between Tory and Labour since the 1960s, fell into the hands of a baleful Labour regime.  At the time we had the "Cabinet" system in place and the Leader of the Council, a paradigm case of the 'four-letter man' as my father would have termed him, ran both his cabinet and indeed the whole borough as a personal fiefdom.  Well, when you have a dictator, you'd better hope his judgement is good.  This man's judgement was appalling (for present purposes we needn't get into the cronyism and third-world-style corruption that went with it) and he duly bankrupted the borough - literally.  (Total incompetence married to property speculation, you won't be surprised to learn.)

In order to clean this out politically, residents petitioned successfully for a switch to the "Mayoral" system: the resulting referendum was a resounding win for the new system and in due course a Tory was elected Executive Mayor.  I've recounted some of this story before, and this chap  & his regime turned out to be more diligent and dynamic than I'd feared might be the case when I wrote about it last.

But his task was always gargantuan, since most of the (remaining) council services are required to be provided by statute, so where can seriously big cuts be found, and debt repaid?  The brough remains technically bankrupt, though "essential services" are being maintained, as the law requires.

Anyhow, whether for procedural or narrowly political** reasons, Starmer's government has decided to send in the commissioners.  This is a baleful development.  We live in an age where democracy seems to be falling out of favour, but experience of the alternatives might cause some to revisit that argument.  If not elected governance, what do you get?  Dictatorship, or commissioners at every level.  The priesthood.  Unelected; unaccountable; un-ejectable.  

More from South London in due course.

ND

________________

**Several leading Croydon Labour movers and shakers currently hold positions in Starmer's coterie, and the suspicion must be that they plan this as a maneouvre to get a Labour mayor elected in the borough next year. 

Are they mad? The new legislation on British Steel

Extremely odd things are happening all over just now and perhaps we are becoming inured to disturbing novelty.  In the UK, some might date this to 2015 and the rise of Corbyn, passing through Brexit, in an ever-rising, ever-accelerating crescendo of covid, Ukraine and now the daily lunacies of Trump.

Personally, however, I have rarely been more shocked than when I read this today: 

Emergency legislation allowing the government to instruct companies to keep loss-making steel operations in England open, or face criminal penalties for their executives, were passed yesterday during an extraordinary sitting of parliament.

For context: I bow to no man on the strategic imperative of being able to make steel in this country.  (Obviously, not everyone need agree.)  Nor do I object to swift and decisive use of the levers of power: in fact, more often I am criticising the inertia and lack of imagination of those who hold those levers limply in their idle hands.  

And I don't have the time to read up on the exact legislation in full, which may, I suppose, in the round be less shocking than the above summary suggests.  

But ... criminal penalties?  For an economic "offence"?  Obviously, there are such liabilities upon employers that flout health and safety regulations.  But financial affairs are intrinsically civil matters: are there any other even vaguely equivalent precedents?  The "personal liability" precedent that came immediately to mind to this former councillor was Thatcher's legislation on local authorities: to prevent rogue "socialist" councils like Lambeth and Liverpool from taking the piss at annual budget time, she made the chief finance officer personally liable for balancing the budget, with powers granted to the said official to impose balance if the democratically elected members persisted in mulishly voting for infeasible financial plans.  But these were not criminal matters.  Is Starmer proposing to bang up Chinese nationals ..?  Who was it that thought a sober grey lawyer would at least bring stable, rule-of-law government to the land?

Legislate in haste, repent at leisure.  In the wrong hands this precedent will be a joy to every mad leftist and green in the land.  You pick a piece of policy, and declare it a criminal offence to carry out any act inconvenient for said policy, property rights be damned.  What am I bid for failure to install heat pumps?  "Well, climate change threatens the well-being of everyone on the planet, it's preventing genocide we are talking about here!  It's obviously a criminal matter!!"   You can generate further nightmares for yourself.  Or indeed, generate a few prime candidates of your own for criminalisation!  It needn't only be leftists that play the game: we can all join in, see how they like that.  We are constrained only by the limitations of our imagination. 

Am I alone in my state of shock at all this?  Or do I just need to read the whole thing properly, and calm down?

ND

Labour & local government 'reform'. Hmm

Some years ago I had a long stint (3 terms) as a local councillor.  Local government has changed in various ways since then, but I remain very well tapped-in locally and have plenty of first-hand perspectives.  I like to think I've seen, and indeed participated in, some genuinely useful Local Authority actions over the years. 

Lots of folk reckon that giving local people "more say" in matters makes for better, more informed decision-making, as well as creating an important cadre of people that step up to take responsibility for stuff.  Doing this for the most part in the properly-constituted, formal Local Authority framework is only right to protect all concerned.  But we can also applaud, for example, the many benefits of healthy local media organisations, albeit precious few local newspapers survive that are worthy of the name.

From Burke and his "little platoons", through Simon Jenkins and his localist enthusiasms, to Andy Burnham et al with some decent track record to display, there are many advocates of wholesale transfer of powers to local authorities.  I should stress that I, too, see major benefits of localisation in sectors where / governance arrangements under which, it is shown to work in practice.  These should be carefully identified and reinforced.  But there are just so many examples of utter nonsense in play.  To take just a few:

• Lutfur Rahman
• the outrageous goings-on at the Teesside Development Corruption - sorry, Corporation, that would disgrace a banana republic
• Rebecca Long-Bailey

Ah, LRB - remember her?  In a substantial pre-GE 2019 document (by weight, that is, not genuine substance) she planned to hand the whole of our energy infrastructure, physical and supply, over to local authorities (the irony! when you see what a cock-up they've always made of their energy endeavours), right down to the level of parish councils and even "local communities ... of around 200 homes"; and of course all workers in the sector to be unionised.   200 homes!  That's when you know you're dealing with a doctrinaire head-case.  OK, nobody ever paid it any serious attention at the time; and she languishes, whipless, on the back benches now, having been the "continuity Corbyn" candidate in 2020, thoroughly trounced by Starmer, and reduced to feeble parliamentary protest-votes.  But still, it shows what some people mean by localisation.

There are other worries, too - see this article by the intelligent-for-a-Grauniad-writer Martin Kettle.

The Labour government itself is of course deeply conflicted on all this right now.  More power for LAs - but don't dare stand in the way of our house-building or energy plans, because we ain't gonna let you.  Ah yes, local people know best - until they run into a Thatcher or a Starmer who "really knows best".

What do we all think?

ND 

To Hull in a handbasket: the perils of monopolies

A most unlikely anomaly persists in the area around Hull.  Uniquely in the UK, it evaded liberalisation of landline telecomms - a sop to John Prescott? - and its municipally-owned telephone network, Kingston Communications, persists as a local monopoly.  It's always claimed the locals are "proud" of KC and their crap cream-coloured kiosks - which, bizarrely, have now been granted Grade-II listed status.

I say 'claim' because in point of fact, the locals despise KC and its utterly useless landline services, telephone and broadband.  If it wasn't for the fact that everyone has mobile 'phones these days, somebody would have demanded it get fixed long since.  Such is the fate of local monopolies, or indeed any properly contestable service, that local authorities get involved with - see Bristol Energy, Robin Hood Energy (Notts), Together Energy (Warrington), not to mention Croydon's ridiculous essay into building and property speculation, and Thurrock's ruinous solar farm ventures.

It reminds me of a conversation I had, many years ago, with a bright junior member of my staff who was (is) of Indian heritage, and who would periodically return to the subcontinent to see relatives etc.  After one such trip she said to me: "You need to take an internal flight to see some of my family.  There's only one airline that flies there, and the tickets are very expensive.  It's odd, because with no competition and high prices, you'd think they would put on a really good service - but it's rubbish!"

I was able to enlighten her on, *ahem*, the Ways of the World.   She went on to become a well-known TV personality, and I imagine that by now she'll have amassed plenty of personal experience to ratify the truth of what I told her.

How many times do these simple lessons of practical capitalism need to be learned and re-learned the hard way?  

ND

UPDATE: Jim (BTL) gives additional detail: KC no longer owned by council

Croydon Goes Bankrupt: The Sequel

The story so far:  in a series of stunning scandals and maladministration, a curiously non-ideological one-man Labour dictatorship in Croydon reduced the largest London borough to bankruptcy.  Considerable opprobrium lighted upon this individual, his crazy schemes and disgraceful neglect of residents; but Croydon looks demographically fairly safe for Labour, not least because Tory voters are fairly widely spread across the vast borough, whereas Labour votes are nicely concentrated geographically, sufficient to hold the council and 2 of the 3 parliamentary constituencies.

Meanwhile in Croydon South, the only constituency held by the Tories, the hyperactive and "creative" MP Chris Philp came up with a wizard wheeze to solve his perennial local problem.  The Labour council was forever approving planning applications his core voters hate.  So, reckoning that a borough-wide elected-mayoral system would be a lot less wasteful of Tory votes, and might conceivably come up with a Tory majority, he organised a campaign + referendum to switch to the executive mayoral system (the same system just cancelled by Bristol voters: these enthusiasms come and go).   Philp's Croydon referendum campaign, bitterly opposed by Labour - despite official Labour policy being in favour of elected mayors -  succeeded by a huge majority.  Hardly surprising: the Borough was by then bankrupt and the scandals had achieved unusually wide currency, local and national.

However.

The Tories then selected their current leader - i.e. leader of the Minority on the council - as Mayoral candidate, simply on Buggin's Turn.  He's a nice enough chap (always the most damning thing you can say about a person) but has the charisma of a potato, and no more than the usual local profile enjoyed by a councillor, i.e. virtually zero outside his own patch.

Labour, having recovered their wits after the crushing referendum result, suddenly discovered they were, after all, in favour of elected mayors, and pulled a serious stroke by selecting a genuinely well-known and genuinely local candidate: career politician Valerie Shawcross.  She'd been Leader of the Council many years ago; a Deputy Mayor in the GLA for many subsequent years; has a superb grasp of London politics; is fairly moderate and well liked, as these things go; and has completely clean hands as regards the recent Croydon Labour scandals.  Her campaign (notable for a complete absence of the colour red!) was excellent and of course Boris is a gigantic ball-and-chain just now.  What made her prospects even better was that Mr Potato and the Tories ran a very poor campaign, with truly lame leaflets etc.

But she lost!  In an election-night count that went on for 36 hours(!), with recounts, the Tory won by less than 2%.  As they say around here, inability to count is what got Croydon in this mess in the first place ...

Philp's gamble, which must have seemed like a slam-dunk only a year ago, will have cost him some sleep over the past three weeks.  But it's come off.  Couldn't happen to a nicer chancer.

(Sorry, that's, errrr, chap )

ND 

The Limits to Financial Responsibility

Every capitalist is in favour of financial freedoms: it's fundamental.  Every conservative is realistic about human failings.  Both statements need qualifying; but they are not irreconcilable.  They do, however, add up to limits at the 'freedom' end of the continuum.  Bracing and salutary as it may be to give financial responsibilities to as many people "as possible", there is little point in conferring freedoms where they will inevitably be abused on a scale to be of general disbenefit.  

It's a scalar matter, and there is no merit in striking purist, polar attitudes.  We don't, for example, allow people to sink their pensions into the shares of the company that employs them; nor drive cars without insurance.  There are all manner of constraints on banks etc.  

Another very sensible restriction is that placed on local authorities before 2012, preventing them from getting into commercial ventures (beyond some very tightly limited, essentially de minimis cases).  Heaven knows, I was a local councillor for a number of years and saw at first hand the limitations of a large proportion of my fellow elected representatives - and indeed those of full-time council officers, notwithstanding the genuine specialist skills many of them possessed.

Then along comes G. Osborne - complete with his student-politics talent and deeply unrealistic political attitudes - with his Localism Act, which turned LAs free to enter more or less any contract they fancied.  And away they went, not least in my own home town of Croydon, bankrupt thanks to crazy commercial schemes (mostly in property, in that case).  Croydon, however, is not the subject of today's story.

It's Warrington, another council I've written about before which, in 2019, bet the farm on shares in a distinctly ropey-looking small energy company, "Together Energy".  (How the Together management pulled that one off, one can only speculate: but the words "due diligence" don't quickly come to mind.)  Remember that by that time, Nottingham and Bristol city councils were very publicly staring disaster in the face with their own hopeless energy ventures, "Robin Hood Energy" and the less imaginative "Bristol Energy", so it was already pretty well understood that there was many a deep pitfall down that path.

But no, Warrington Council parted with £18 million of its residents' money for the shares, plus more in loans and guarantees, and then more loans and more guarantees ... and still Together went bust, just this week, when Warrington wasn't willing to allow matters to go even further - as was obviously always going to be the case eventually.  To make matters even more poignant, Together Energy even bought (with hard cash) the residential customer portfolio of Bristol Energy along the way.

Now tell me, Osborne, what possible contribution to the Public Good is represented by allowing such things to happen, as they inevitably have.  Does it teach other councillors a lesson?  Evidently not: Bristol and Nottingham were foundering in the full glare of publicity when Warrington got started.  Fact is, councillors and council officers are proven wholly unfit to be allowed to embark on commercial ventures: and that's a fairly restrained way of putting it.

The challenge of striking intelligent balance in policy-making is endless.  Right now, this one is badly out of kilter.

ND

The Tory Insurgents March On!

"the push for a mayoral putsch, which has aroused passions amongst those in favour but barely any other reaction at all, seems quite exciting and, well, insurgent. I can easily see it succeeding: probably a low turnout with 80% in favour of a mayor, or something bizarre like that."

Well, that was my prediction ten days ago for the Croydon Mayoral referendum, and lo!   

• Turnout: 21%
• In favour: 80.4%

Every single ward voted in favour of switching to the elected-mayoral system, which gives the Left pause for thought: they thought their client minorities (who are in fact the majority in the north of the borough) could be persuaded otherwise.  Now the serious politicking starts, in particular within the People's Party, which having inevitably campaigned for the status quo (hence the original blog post) now have to scramble together a position for May's election.  They are posting tweets asking for forgiveness for things they said in the anti campaign (e.g. it was white middle-class men who wanted to switch to the mayoral system).  I won't bore you with the Toytown minutiae, but there are several amusing aspects:

• the Croydon North MP Steve Reed (Lab) was prominent in the anti-campaign: but he's Starmer's Shadow SoS for Communities and Local Government and his official policy for the nation as a whole is, ahem, pro elected mayors!
• he and the rest of his crew campaigned on the slogan "No Fat-Cat Mayor".  The lefties are now attacking, errr, themselves - for "fattist sloganeering" (sic) (!)  You couldn't make it up, and indeed I haven't.
• the famous local turncoat Andrew Pelling, once Tory MP for Croydon Central, deprived of the whip over allegations of wife beating, whereupon he switched first to run again (unsuccessfully) as an Independent, then as Labour (for whom he now holds a Council seat) ... having campaigned for the anti-mayor cause, now proclaims that this was only because the nasty folks in his new-chosen Party twisted his arm, and of course he's really very keen on elected mayors, particularly ones whose first name is Andrew and second name is Pelling.

And people wonder why Labour languishes in the polls, even in today's dire circumstances.  Well actually, no, they don't.

ND

Insurgency in British Politics

A while ago in Parliament, when Corbyn was still leader, he accused Boris of being a "phoney outsider" - an odd, Westminster-bubble insult as we noted at the time.  Goes to show, though, how much of an advantage being an insurgent is nowadays deemed to be.   Corbs, of course, had been told that being a genuine outsider was his USP, and he wanted to see off any pretenders to this crown.

This was brought to mind as I found myself pondering how to vote in next week's local referendum on whether Croydon should switch from the Leader/Cabinet system of local government to the Elected Mayor variant instead.  (Sadly, the old Committee System is no longer on offer.)

How does this referendum arise?  Well, enough people signed a petition: but why?

Because the local Conservatives, who always used to hold the borough council (and, at one time, all 4 parliamentary seats, as we had in them days**).  But demographics have worked against us and it's been Labour for nearly 8 years (and they also have two out of three MPs now).  But the popular vote is still majority Conservative across the borough as a whole, the ward boundary arrangements not favouring us at all.  So the Elected Mayor wheeze is designed to keep Labour out of power, because they may still command a majority of council seats after the next elections in 2022.    

Given that in their 8 years of control Labour have literally bankrupted the town with their self-aggrandising Toytown politics, you might might think that's a bit pessimistic about the good sense of the Croydon electorate; and maybe it is - though fewer people seem to care about the bankruptcy, the blatant corruption++ and even the squalor of the council properties than you'd imagine.

But equally there's huge, sluggish apathy in all directions.  So the push for a mayoral putsch, which has aroused passions amongst those in favour but barely any other reaction at all, seems quite exciting and, well, insurgent.  I can easily see it succeeding: probably a low turnout with 80% in favour of a mayor, or something bizarre like that.

This is what the left hates about the Tories: endless flexibility when it comes to policies & ways & means.   They hate Boris, too, but seem unable to do anything about him.  They wish they were the populist revolutionaries but in many senses the permanent revolution is on the right.  

More Croydon Referendum news in due course.

ND

__________

** To be fair, it was a bit aberrational: Croydon Central has been a genuine marginal for 60 years, and the two northern constituencies were natural Labour territory, more akin to neighbouring Lambeth and Lewisham.  But they were held by strong Tory personalities: a much loved local worthy (a hanger-and-flogger); and the saintly Bernard Weatherill (who, as an old India hand, could converse with his electorate in their own tongues).  It was never going to last - and it didn't.

++ Space doesn't permit me to recount the stories, but the redoubtable Inside Croydon is chock full of them, as is Private Eye.

Croydon is Bankrupt: The Excuse is Revealing

Newman: Toytown oaf 

No, not a statement of moral or aesthetic judgement on the borough - just financial.  As has been on the cards for months (see several recent posts), Croydon has run up the white flag of a Section 114 Notice, replacing the Red Flag under which this nonsense has occurred over a 6-year period of relentless Labour misrule.  All led by this Toytown oaf, who inherited healthy financial reserves from his Tory predecessor but has pissed them all up the wall on a variety of pet projects and ill-conceived schemes of various kinds, plus unapologetic gross mismanagement and outright waste.   His Labour Group on the council has been bollocked collectively at a meeting, harangued by senior Labour worthies from other London boroughs who told them they are a disgrace to the Party!  So you can guess, it's pretty bad.

Funnily enough, although some of their schemes have been a bit ideological, mostly it has been just the result of a bunch of utter incompetents left in charge of the sweet-shop and determined to have a good time for themselves and their client-groups.  This is not some Momentum-contrived confrontation with central government, Red-Ted style.  They've tried to hint it's the fault of Austerity and Covid, but they daren't push this line too much because many other authorities have suffered worse from both causes, as well they know.

Tony Newman is a droll cove but totally autocratic, and has brooked no challenge from anyone, be they politician, public or council officer; nor even gentle enquiry by councillors in his own party.  The 'cabinet' model of local government very much facilitates this nonsense (more, I think, than the mayoral model - and much more than the committee model) and he duly packed his cabinet with place(wo)men non-entities, and picked a totally supine and ridiculously over-promoted chief executive who fled earlier this year with a £440,000 (sic) payoff, courtesy of Newman's personal intervention.  I won't bore you with a list of the nonsenses this calamitous crew has perpetrated.

What I find really interesting is the generic excuse, which strongly echoes what is coming from Nottingham Council with their own outrage to lament, the financial debacle that was "Robin Hood Energy".  What you do is blub a bit (quite literally in the case of one Nottingham woman councillor, live on youtube), say you meant well - the old Tony Blair excuse - AND ... I didn't have the training. 

You can see how this goes.  In the name of loyalty to the leader, or diversity or whatever it may be, all manner of people find themselves holding Cabinet posts that are wildly beyond their capabilities.  But: all have won, and all must have prizes: as we know, literally everyone is equal - provided they've Had the Training.  And when their incompetence catches up with them, well, it can't possibly be their fault, or any personal shortcoming, so - if only I'd had the proper training!  Simples.  A couple of days' "workshop" at the hands of some costly consultant (with lots of plump pastries on the table, and lengthy lunch-breaks), and they'd have been just fine - but somehow, they all missed the class.  What else could possibly explain their abject failure?

I look forward to the Liverpool FC 1st Eleven being selected on the same basis, and trying the same excuse upon being thrashed.  Meanwhile: will my wheeliebin be emptied next week?

ND

Burnham in "Blazing Saddles" Covid Revolt: What's Going On?

With a government as bad as Boris Johnson's, piecemeal stuff going badly wrong in random places is pretty inevitable.  But the whole Manchester fiasco is pretty strange.

What are we to make of Andy Burnham?  Compare and contrast with Sadiq Khan (always a 'transactional' politician) who has quite graciously praised the collaboration he's been getting from central government and is evidently in daily, and broadly constructive, dealings with HMG.  Burnham, though, is threatening the equivalent of a hunger strike and inviting the authorities to force-feed him.  Which they are doing.  He's an unlikely leftwing firebrand-hero, and comes across as just a sad, angry, frustrated individual which - given his responsibilities - he can be forgiven for on every count, at the purely human level, even if Not Very Statesmanlike.  But even some of his neighbouring council leaders seem to think he's gone too far in playing hostage games with his constituents' (short-term) well-being. 

And we're not hearing quite so much from Sturgeon just lately.  Maybe the rigours of winter will make everyone just retreat into a huddle of confusion, aimless resentment and slow economic disintegration.  

Of course, it all feeds into one of our current themes, namely, what next for bankrupt local authorities?  I can report another developent in my local Croydon saga: the (Labour) leader of the Council has gone the way of the Chief Exec and others.  The incomer is Sturgeon to his Salmond, as Sturgeon would have been viewed when she first took over, i.e. just an acolyte.  Is she any good?  We may find out quite rapidly.  The council has requested permission from the government to use capital resources to plug the gaping hole in the revenue account - the 'Northampton' solution - and there's an enquiry being held into the really outrageous conduct of the council's wholly-owned housebuilding company, a blatantly political and thoroughly incompetent project the details of which I won't bore you with.  Unhappily, the council's other vast "investments" are mostly in commercial property ...

Finally, what are we to make of Kier Starmer?  His '100% Sniper' strategy of never engaging with the enemy on the field of battle is strikingly clear and ruthlessly disciplined.  He is obviously betting everything on it.  Where is his support for Burnham and a general anti-government upsurge?  Will his sullen and increasingly rebellious troops stay in line?   Is Transactional Khan mapping out a clever central course of constructive engagement with reality that will serve his own long-term plans?  Is Angry Andy Burnham exactly the "everyman" leader Labour needs?  Questions, questions.

ND  

Dissolution of the Monasteries, 2020-style

What is going to happen when the wave of local authority bankruptcies hits? 

... as, in the coming months, must surely be highly likely.  We've raised this before, and I remain extremely interested in it.   As well as serious general political interest there's a local angle for me: after 6 years of Labour excesses, mismanagement and all-round failure, my borough (Croydon) is well up there with the most indebted, over-extended councils in the land.  Others said to be near the brink are Luton, Oxford, Birmingham (!), Woking and Peterborough: and that's by no means the end of the watch-list.

There are a couple of clues as to what happens next.  This month the government imposed a new Chief Executive  - a turnaround specialist - on Croydon as the price for being willing to continue in dialogue with the Labour leadership.  There must, though, surely be a very finite pool of genuinely competent *turnaround* merchants available at short notice.  (I'd offer myself but I don't think t'unions would relish my management style ...)

The other massive clue is what happened in Northants, where the fateful day of the Section 114 Notice has come and gone.  As well as the government dividing up the old responsibilities into newly-minted authorities with revised boundaries (which sounds like doing something radical just to make the point), rather than bailing them out the government gave them approval to sell capital assets until they'd filled the hole in the ordinary accounts.  Generally speaking, a council's ability to do that is very heavily circumscribed, for obvious reasons.

So here's the vision.  Council after council goes bust.  If they couldn't contemplate rescuing Northants (Tory-held) in 2018, there's no way on earth the government is going to bail them all out: so massive, nationwide asset sales are mandated.  There's been nothing like this since the Dissolution of the Monasteries, supervised by that outright genius of an administrator, Thomas Cromwell.  And before that, the shakeout of labour relations following the Black Death.

This might actually be a major component in the dynamics of a post-Brexit, ongoing-Covid UK.  Sadly, there's no obvious likelihood of a latter-day Cromwell to execute the same highly diligent job he made of the 16th Century version.  (Cummings?  Don't make us laugh.)  Mostly, Cromwell ensured Henry got top dollar for the assets seized.  Even under his distinctly hands-on guidance, however, there was plenty of dubious cronyism involved.  We may be sure all manner of *bargains* will fall into undeserving hands at ridiculous prices - less Henry VIII, more Boris Yeltsin, I'm guessing.  Which will be depressing.

If anyone truly relishes the idea of all the pieces being thrown up into the air ... I know what you mean, but be careful what you wish for.  If Brum goes under, that'll be quite a crash.

ND

Local Authorities - The Day of Reckoning

So now Bristol Energy has gone under, joining Nottingham Council's Robin Hood Energy in ignominious retreat from its untenable market position.  Easily foreseen.  Though the details are slightly different**, the basic principle remains the same.  There's no easy way to enter a complex market as amateurs, despite "good intentions", "social objectives", and the backing of a Local Authority's all-too-accessible balance sheet.  The supposed rationale for being able to "undercut the Big 6++" - that you won't need to pay dividends and can thereby "pass on the savings" - is inane.  (How would that help me set up a supermarket, for example?)

Bizarrely, Bristol Energy has been bought by another Local Authority set-up!  Together Energy, a very peculiar little Scottish outfit, somehow persuaded Warrington Council last year to buy a 50% stake for a ridiculously large sum, plus a loan.  It's not clear (and probably won't be) how good or bad a deal they got for taking over Bristol's customers + staff.  But the point remains: LA's have no business doing this stuff.

There's more LA fallout to come.  On the energy front,

(1) Together Energy - must be a candidate for failure down the road, when Warrington is no longer willing to bankroll the show

(2) Thurrock - we've discussed their immense punt on solar farms (using cheap, short-term borrowed money, Northern Rock-style) before (BTL here)

(3) a plethora of smaller LA punts on solar farms and other trendy green "investments", not all of which are as low-risk as the developers tell you

Plus of course the vast sums LAs have staked on property of all kinds, racking up substantial debt to do so.  (My own LA, Croydon, is one of the biggest; the Chief Executive is walking; and word on the street is that a Section 114 Notice is imminent.)

Also interesting is FCA-registered Abundance Investment Ltd: "makes it easy for you to invest in businesses and councils that are developing the green infrastructure of tomorrow — while generating fair returns for your money".  They'd like you to believe LAs are an ultra low-risk punt.  Let's see how that looks by Xmas, eh?

ND

_____________

** Bristol aspired to make a (small) profit, stuck to organic growth, didn't have too much doctrinaire political interference, and has been "sold" together with staff.  Robin Hood was a "not-for-profit"; had a lot of leftist political interference;  grew via loss-leaders and white-label marketing via other lefty councils; and, ironically as a leftie enterprise, has made all its staff redundant.  Both were secretive, badly governed, and burned their way through tens of millions of loca l taxpayers' money - all too easily done, keeping the show on the road long after it should have been wound up. 

++ the appellation "Big 6" ceased to be relevant some while ago: the retail market is much more complex these days.

How much leisure do we need ?

I've been to a dozen local planning meetings recently. Pity the poor, overworked, MP. Sitting in a draughty hall of an evening, listening to residents all saying "I'm not against development...I'm not a NIMBY!..But we don't need anymore houses..and think of the traffic going past my house..!" etc.

Something strikes me that should be changed about our planning regulations.
Firstly, the 106 money. This is money that  local councils insists that any housing development over a certain size needs to give to the council, to secure planning permission. Some of which is then passed onto the local area where the development takes place. These sums can be very large. A 25 house development might have contributed up to £100,000 to the local parish.

The problem is, by the rules of my district and county council, this money can only be used for leisure.
Leisure means leisure. Playing fields. BMX Tracks. Swimming pools. Toddler running laness and such.
There is no provision to use the cash for roads, toilets, transport, schools, parking or anything of a non sporting activity.

This issue has annoyed me for years, and now the big building surge is coming. {Due to changes made by this much maligned 'government of inactivity.' Its takes years to get anything moving from minister's announcement to the first change in the legal documents.}

In one village of 1,000 homes two developments totaling 100 houses have been built. This village has had a brand new recreation ground. Brand new multi-use all weather soccer pitch. Brand new changing rooms for its below non league, under 11's, soccer team. A cycling track. Tennis courts. Bowling green. Cricket pitch. Electronic scoreboard. And even more.

There are currently development plans for 2 more builds, making another 100 houses and another £150k of ...Leisure money!

At the same meeting the parish council voted to close the local toilets as the council won't fund them anymore and they cost 8-15k a year to run. And on the agenda  the doctors surgery and hospital, {another brand new, just completed, £80 million NHS development, pushed through under the dying days of the Brown splurge,} is having the local bus service changed from hourly to a two-three service gap due to funding cuts.
The library, one of the smallest in the land, is on closure watch. 
A scheme for a minibus to be used for the elderly to go to the new supermarkets, serve the surgery,  could not be approved because of costs. {This is in the country for you metro types. Instead of one supermarket every 2000yds, its one medium sized supermarket every 10 miles.}
The two schools are both at capacity, by virtue of the previous developments. Once the new houses go up  4+5 beds mostly, the parents may need to bus the kids to another school in another town, as is already the case for ALL the secondary school kids.

Interestingly the figures used to calculate numbers for children/ household is 1.3 children per home. That seems ridiculously low for 3/4 bed homes. That might be the national average figure, taking in all those grandparents still living in their 4 bed family homes once the chicks have fled, but for new builds it must be higher ? Who is buying a New Build, 4 or 5 bed for themselves ?

It seems absurd that a village/small town  about to be denuded of amenities is seriously considering an all weather, floodlit, hockey pitch, that they don't want, need and probably will never see much use and that will increase the current costs in upkeep and maintenance of the already extensive leisure facilities.

Barmy!