Business Rates

Council tax is, unsurprisingly, set by the council. However business rates for local firms are set by central government.

This is a shame as reducing business rates is the first tool in the box when it comes to supporting the growth of small businesses in the area. This is something that we'd like to do in Cheshire East right now, but we find ourselves unable to because we are at the mercy of the government.

And unfortunately they do not want to reduce rates. In fact, they're putting them up - by a whopping 5%.

At a time when we're trying to keep council tax rises to a minimum and businesses are struggling everywhere this seems like a crazy thing to do. However it's clear that our government does not care about small businesses - something I have found as a small business owner every year when I see my corporation tax liabilities rise.

Last Tuesday the council moved the following, bought by Cllr Keegan:

"That this council deprecates the government's proposed five percent rise in the business rate for the year 2009/10, made while calling for Council Tax rises substaintially below five percent.

Further, that this Council regrets that it's efforts to consult with local businesses on ways to mitigate the effects of the current harsh recession are thereby undermined.

And further, that the Chief Executive be directed to write to the Minister to express our concerns and urge that the matter be reconsidered."

I know that a strongly worded letter might not seem like much - but we have no other control over business rates.

Comments Policy

I never thought I'd have a problem with this (ie, I never thought that people would want to comment on my grumblings) but it's become necessary to clarify a few points following several messages over the last few days.

The comments on this blog are moderated. This means that I approve them before they become visible. Before you complain about an Orwellian police state, etc. etc., my policy is that all comments will be posted unless they:

* Contain excessive bad language
* Are hugely offensive to anyone including me and other local or national politicians.
* Are moderately offensive to anyone other than me and other local or national politicians.
* Are completely off topic
* Are link fodder to your own website with no useful comment made

It has nothing to do with whether I agree with your point or not.

If something breaks these rules but is highly funny or entertaining then it's still likely to get posted. It's all a bit of common sense really. Anonymous comments are no more or less likely to get published, however I am less likely to reply to anonymous comments.

And if you're the chap from the last few days that keeps complaining that your comments are not getting posted, please be aware that they are defamatory towards someone other than me, they link to your site, and are completely off topic. Fail x3. Make your point in another way and it'll get posted. I hope you understand.

Budget and Parking

So I'm sure no-one has missed the fact that at the budget making meeting on Tuesday your new Cheshire East council voted for a budget which provided a 0% increase in Council Tax. I think I may have mentioned it once before.

Interestingly, the Labour members of the council voted against the budget. I assume that were incensed that we could have the audacity to not make the people of Cheshire pay more tax at a time when people are struggling to pay the bills.

Those socialists really are heartless, you know.

The Lib Dems abstained, obviously not sure if we should tax people more or not. I'm told that all of this petty politics is par for the course, although as a new Councillor I still found it a tremendous disappointment.

However the Lib Dems raised an interesting amendment which I spoke to before voting against, and I feel I should explain myself.

The amendment was to delay the proposed inflationary increase to parking fees in Macclesfield.

I immediately saw the benefit in this. It's my view that parking charges are killing the town centre and that one of the things we could do to help traders out is to review parking. This was the reason the Lib dems gave for this amendment.

So given my views, voting against it must be quite hypocritcal?

When you consider it, 10 pence on parking here and there will make no difference. It's having to pay at all that is the deterrent - and that's what I said to the Council. I don't want the cabinet to believe they have dealt with the parking vs shoppers problem by delaying at 10 pence increase.

I then pointed out what the increases actually were. An example:
Current Future
0-1 hours .50 .50
1-2 hours .90 .90
2-3 hours 2.00 2.00
3-4 hours 2.60 2.70

How many shoppers spend over 3 hours in Macc? Even my wife can't manage that...and if she could 3.3 pence extra per hour isn't going to put her off.

A committee has been formed to review the parking charges, and I've now asked that I be co-opted onto it. Hopefully I can make a difference.

Town centre development

For 6 weeks now I've been having discussions via the Macclesfield Forum about what was wrong with the town centre. In addition to this there is a petition doing the rounds, calling for more appropriate and quicker action to be taken with regards to the Macclesfield Town Centre which has gained a good number of signatures, but not what I'd call a groundswell.

Therefore I'd started to think that the group that had formed around this website were alone on the issue. Why had no-one else from the Town thought that there might be another way?

Yesterday it turned out that there was. This story details a group of people, including a couple of architects, that have been coming up with a "Plan B" for Macclesfield. This really is excellent news as they've taken the same positive approach as us. We know this is wrong, but we're going to work to show what's better rather than just being a negative complainer.

I've scheduled a meeting with them early next week to talk about how we bring the two streams of thought together and get more publicity for the new scheme. It's still not too late.

I know that a lot of residents agree that something needs to be done, but they leave their involvement at that. After all, if MBC think that Debenhams is the best bet to renew our public space then why disagree with them? But I urge all of you to consider if a plastic, reproduction town centre is really what is right - and if by the time it's delivered in 6 years time when the town is dead it'll be any use.

Furthermore, why are we not considering our town centre as a place for social activity? Why do we only consider it somewhere we go if we want to be a consumer (ie, spend money eating, drinking, or shopping?) We say that we want to have a european style culture, but how many people are willing to pay to park just for a quick game of chess or petanque in the town square?

And so, predictably, I'm back to parking again. Some interesting news on this from the Council meeting on Tuesday - which I'll save for tomorrow.

Invisible press

I've got plenty to tell about yesterday's council meeting which saw Cheshire East council pass it's very first budget and it's very first constitution.

It also resulted in Council Tax being frozen for Macclesfield residents - excellent news in these uncertain times.

However I'm putting all that aside to have a quick laugh at Barlow's latest moan in the 'express.

He berates the leader of our council, suggesting that he's never around. Strange that...considering that he's leading the biggest local government reorganisation this county has ever seen.

But this hides a bigger problem...and it's not with Councillors doing their job properly, it's with the press not doing theirs.

Wesley attends a lot of meetings. We all do, but Wesley more than most. So if Barlow wants to find Wesley I would suggest that they would be a good place to start. They are all open to the public (with very few exceptions) and most are very interesting.

How many members of the press were at the full council meeting yesterday? How many from the Macclesfield Express? Was Barlow there?

I'm sure you can guess the answers....

Hot off the press...

Council meeting will begin in just over an hour where we will vote to set council tax for the next year.

Cheshire East has worked hard to provide a 0% increase for the ward this year.

However, the police authority decided this morning to increase what we pay them by 3.65%. Therefore we will all see our bills go up.

They had previously promised no more than 3%.
I suppose it's better than the 17% last year. But still, it's not really on, is it?

Primary Education

Firstly - apologies if it's a bit quiet over the next few days. Yesterday saw the delivery of the latest papers for the Cheshire East meeting this coming Tuesday, of which there's about 700 pages. It's going to take up a bit of my time over the next few days...

The news is dominated this morning by stories that we're killing the chances of kids getting a good, broad, education because schools are focusing too much on Maths, English and testing. The BBC has it here.

I suppose my first comment should be an apology - as I think this report is a load of tripe.

We *should* set a central measure of what we expect our schools to deliver and this *must* be centered around basic English and basic Maths. It's not beyond anybody, and you can't do without it - it's a pre-requisite for life. This also needs to be tested, as the public need to be assured that schools are delivering what they should at this basic level.

Beyond that there already *is* plenty of room for flexibility. What differentiates between a good school and an excellent school isn't the core teaching - this will be the same. It'll be in the fact that the school wraps a broad range of things around this, both taught in the classroom and as outside clubs and groups that often seek to involve the wider community as well.

Some schools are good at this, and some are bad. And that brings us back to the postcode lottery - which is something that we should embrace and accept as a by product of having individuality and less central control.

But what really strikes me is that we think it's up to schools to provide variety and wellbeing in a child's life. In my view less than half of a child's education takes place at school. The rest is down to the parents and the community at large.

Someone told me that other night that he thought it was terrible that his son didn't know how to fix a puncture on his bike, and that something should be done about the school which hadn't taught him this. I seem to remember it was my Dad who taught me, and not the school.

New feature

There's a new feature that I've put on the right hand side of this site a few days back - a Google map which shows what I've been doing, where I've been going, and what projects I've been supporting as a Councillor.

At the moment I'm just trying to get pins on there, but later I hope to link to blog posts with much more information.

The concept is that it's easier to understand what I've been up to when presented in graphical form, rather than trawling through a list of blog posts about where I've been.

I look forward to hearing any comments...

Cheers,
Darryl

Honest food, and honest shopping

There's a great new campaign being run by the party to improve labeling on the food that we buy:



I really support this. I'm a huge believer in ethical shopping - which doesn't mean you have to shop like a tree-hugger (unless you actually are a tree-hugger). It just means that where, how and when you shop should reflect what you believe in.

For example, I'm not too chuffed with the way Tesco treat other businesses. I'm not too chuffed with the way they build roundabouts, and I'm not too chuffed with the way they treated Hugh F-W. Therefore, I don't set foot inside Tesco's at all.

Every time you spend money it's a democractic decision - just like voting for the supplier and the producer. When every day becomes polling day, life is a lot more fun and a lot more fair.

In defence of the postcode lottery

I've never really understood why people complain about postcode lotteries. Unless we want to have everything centrally controlled by Whitehall then this is how things will be. Some councils/police forces/NHS trusts will prioritise their funds in different ways which is why some people pay less tax, and some people have different services.

As long as the people that make these decisiosn are democractically accountable then there's no problem. If you don't like it, then you can either vote them out next time or you can move house.

Personally, I don't believe there is enough of this "postcode lottery" business. There's not sufficient room for local councils to run crazy initiatives and try and do things radically different (and radically better). This is because the rules we operate within are tight, and a lot of our funding from central government dictates the way that we behave.

The Conservatives are to launch a paper on decentralisation today - I hope it gives more license for lotteries.