You can't beat gravity

“ I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody. ” — James Carville.

It's pretty clear to us all now that the market expects a Conservative lead in the next election, but the more uncertain they get about a Conservative victory the more the bond market starts to wobble. And the bond market is the true test of sentiment, it is like gravity, you can't fool it and you can't beat it. That may not be fair, but it is life.

So if the poll lead gets any thinner will there be action by a credit rating agency to downgrade our bond status? I am no expert at all, but in my judgement I would not rule that out as a very real possibility.

That will be bad news for us all, but a pretty fair judgement on the economic management tht this country has seen for the last twelve years....

Council Tax - great news

Got to say that we have great news on the council tax and I am immensely proud to be part of the cabinet team that has delivered this policy. David Burbage (leader) , Alison Knight (deputy) and Richard Kellaway (finance) are pictured above.

We've consistently focused on delivering a better council tax to our residents, for many of them it is their biggest bill and they have little power to do anything about it. So we pledged to keep it below inflation and we did that in 2008 and 2009.

Now we are pleased to announce our proposal for 2010-11 - a cut of 4%.

That is about £40 off a Band D council tax bill. It's possibly the largest cut since Wandsworth in the 80's and it's been welcomed by the Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne:

"Windsor and Maidenhead council is to be congratulated on reducing spending while improving public services. By publishing all pieces of spending over £500 it has introduced a new culture of accountability and transparency. It's a reminder that at all levels of government we need responsible economic policies to get Britain back on her feet. We can't go on like this"

Getting better for less .... by doing things differently

So how is it done?

Resources

Change the way we administer and do our paper work – we have many people doing similar administrative things, we are restructuring using LEAN management techniques so that common tasks and functions are performed by specific teams.

Separate the transactional, commodity functions and the specialist roles. This leads to greater operational efficiency (things get done better, quicker) and cost savings.

Adult Services

Adult social care.

o Better commissioning of residential services to reduce costs and maintain quality.

o Implementation of personal budgets ("Transforming Social Care") to enable users to have more choice and arrange services more cost effectively than if provided by the council.

o In time it is the last point that will have the most dramatic effect.

· Leisure

o Restructure review of fees and charges to be equitable

o Review procurement of Bought in Goods and Services

o Ensure non-statutory services are cost effective. Where they are not, deliver more effective services. Turn the un-used crèche into a gym for teenagers.

When will this happen?

This is our proposal for 2010-11 so people will start seeing the benefits in April/May.

THE FUNDAMENTAL POINT:

We don't need to pay sky high tax bills for better services... we just need change.

Eton and Castle

Is the ward whose residents I represent on the Royal Borough. It's a very green ward because of the huge impact of the castle, but you can see some of the key issues that the area has - as well as important information such as gritting - on the map below....

Click here to send me a message about something in the ward that's bothering you....

View Eton and Castle in a larger map

Transparency

Starting to get a lot more work done on transparency and how we can make lives easier for residents.

A particular gripe: How can we inform people better about bin collections in bad weather?

We're working on it - personalised alerts by text would seem the best idea, as well as clarity as to what bin routes actually are. People understand when things are delayed by the weather, but they also like to plan around our changes and they have every right to do so.

More on this later..... much more I think. Am looking in some awe at Mash the State.....

Supporting George Osborne's Sustainable Financial Strategy

Our Recycling scheme was on the front page of yesterday's Telegraph. George Osborne was making a speech on Conservative approaches to climate change and saving money and of course he mentioned our recycling scheme and our smart metering programme. Both are saving money and therefore tax..... no wonder Ed Milliband didn't like them describing them as "greenwash".

I was also on BBC news supporting the speech and explaining the scheme - and why the bins are blue.

The Windsor & Maidenhead Transparency Initiative

We believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant and we have shown that it works. Our transparency initiative goes straight to the bottom line – and it will help us reduce council tax year on year.

Transparency can make a huge difference in government because it is not just about rooting out wild overspends or endless confrontation about costs, although of course the obvious excesses must be dealt with; rather, it is about giving people an easy ability to see how Government is operating.

But once you have gone through the obvious and straightforward, many of the sustainable cost savings we need to generate come through changing peoples' behaviour: to become more cost effective, to continually recognise and eliminate even small amounts of waste.

That requires personal responsibility and that requires visibility of the problem – hence our push for transparency.

The Transparency Initiative

The Royal Borough Windsor & Maidenhead council has embarked on a process of continuing, increasing transparency and openness. Some of the initiatives are:

• Procurement: every piece of expenditure over £500 is published (except things like individual residents' payments for personal care).
• Smart Metering allows residents to see, in real time, how much power is being used in public buildings - you can see this in action here.
• Tables are published of what meetings Councillors attended and which they missed.
• We've expanded the number of Overview and Scrutiny Committees from 1 to 5 and every Cabinet decision has to be commented on by them.
• Expenses: every expense claim by councillors is published, no matter how small.

While these have been deployed we’ve just signed off an online portal for residents which will launch early in 2010. This will provide a single access point for information for all our residents. Council data, from school catchment areas to planning applications, from viewing nearby licensing applications to being able to report potholes. We’ll put as much information online as we can in an open source platform that will give an unprecedented level of openness to the workings of the Government of the Royal Borough.

Why are we doing this?

We believe that by being open we will receive more open communication back from our residents, which means we can meet their needs more effectively.

When we installed the energy smart meters our consumption went down by 15% overnight. Our colleagues have told us that the transparency of our systems – our energy usage graphs are updated every half hour on the web - helped them remember to turn off equipment every night. Knowing the data is there is enough of an incentive.

When we published every item of expenditure over £500 online we were told that suppliers would walk away. None of them have. We were told it would be very difficult to get the data but our finance team produced it in under an hour. We were told there would be innumerable enquiries to give us an huge administrative burden – there have only been a small number.

At bottom we believe that cost transparency helps all of us eliminate waste – because if we can all see it we can all do something about it. Only the reckless can see waste and do nothing.

There’s a lesson in here for central government spending too. In areas where spending has been chronically opaque – take the huge IT contracts Labour has signed – a dose of transparency would be very welcome. Under a future Conservative government such contracts should not only be smaller, but they should be open and transparent.

And, this should be done retrospectively.

Brocas Actions - almost all done

The list of actions (find it here) that I agreed to undertake following the complaints about the Broacs is now up to date and completed. Pretty much all of the major issues have been addressed and achieved...

• The college have agreed to a number of changes including

listing any future events, paying for litter picking, installing signs and supporting the classification of the Brocas as a "designated area" to reduce Anti Social behaviour

• The police have agreed to extra patrols on the Eton side of the bridge late at night at weekends

We will be reconstituting a committee that will work to make the Brocas, common land and open fields of Eton stay in good shape and free of Anti Social behaviour and litter. If you would like to join please contact me.