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Welcome to our blog, featuring an archive of Matthew's regular "Roundhay Review" articles
Thursday, 25 February, 2010
Tax and By now you’ll have seen that the proposed increase in Council Tax for 2010/11 is 2.5% here in Leeds. For those readers in work or receiving a pension, this may be a disappointing figure if you expect to receive no increase in your income this year. With inflation currently running high, many of us will feel poorer now than a couple of years ago. Many people understandably think that Council Tax is the main element of funding for local government but this isn’t quite the case. In Leeds, in the roughest of terms, around half of the funding for the city comes from a ‘settlement’ from central government (coming out of our general taxation), a quarter from business premises rates and the final quarter from Council Tax. Councils also have income from fund raising powers; this includes everything from parking charges, planning application fees and leasing of buildings to private operators, such as Dine at The Mansion. In Leeds, believe it or not, we are a relatively low charging city for Council Tax. If we lived in Nottingham we’d pay around £200 a year more to live in a typical band D property. In fact, out of the 8 major cities in England, referred to as “Core Cities”, we are the cheapest, bar one. On top of this Leeds is somewhat hampered by the central government settlement which increases next year by just 1.8%, which at less than inflation is a cut in real terms. Liverpool gets a whopping £756 per person, per year in its settlement. We get £403 per person, per year here in Leeds. In fact, were we to get the same settlement as Liverpool, every 4 years or so we’d have an extra £1billion with which to cut Council Tax and improve services. So why has Council Tax gone up again this year and how does this year compare? I remember a few years ago we had a 7.9% increase, albeit not under the current Conservative/Lib-Dem administration but 2.5% is a low increase in historical terms. The Council suffers from the same inflationary pressures as everyone else in terms of fuel we use and items we buy, but things are tough in other ways. Our income from sports centres and planning applications has dropped and we have also seen the end of some significant funding. In the last few years some government funding provided for the poorest areas of the city has come to an end. We want to keep on with some of the more successful aspects of the work which have helped lift people out of poverty, but to plug that gap completely we’d need to find a full £14.9millon which has been cut. As a consequence we’ve had to find money from other areas to keep the very best aspects of these schemes going. In addition, adult social care costs have increased from around £120million in 2003/4, to over £200million this year as our population ages and demands for more personalised services increase. So how much does a 2.5% Council Tax increase add to the pot to pay for all this? Well, I’m afraid it’s only around £6million. As you’ll see, in the grand scheme of things this doesn’t nearly cover all of he additional costs and the loss of income. So how do we balance the books? Well over the last couple of years we’ve made efficiency savings of just short of £60m, and much more before that. It would be easy to simply cut our costs by cutting our services but we want to keep resurfacing the roads and to make sure we keep caring for the people who rely on the Council. You may or may not feel we’ve managed to trim costs in the right places but we have a duty to provide services almost regardless of the financial situation. I suspect coming years will be tougher still. This will no doubt lead to us looking for innovative solutions to problems to keep Council Tax increases low or, I hope, a zero increase in Leeds next year. So I hope having read this you’re not too disappointed with the increase in Council Tax, it is certainly the lowest in a very, very long time but I assure you we’re not resting on our laurels. All the best Matthew Lobley Roundhay Ward Conservative Councillor
Monday, 18 January, 2010
Why I asked to borrow the book I’ll never know but looking back I wish I hadn’t. Ignorance can be bliss. “Crashes” is the non-too-cheery title of the book in question. It was written in 1988 after the famous 1987 ‘Black Monday’ crash and covers this and every major international financial crisis, economic meltdown, depression, recession and failed speculation since the 1600s. The first chapter covers Tupliomania in 17th century Holland. This was a quite phenomenal situation where once-sane people took leave of their senses believing that values of tulip bulbs could only go up. The reason? Well, they had been steadily rising for some time already. People sold their houses to get on the bandwagon and borrowed money to invest. Most importantly they got involved in schemes where they would put down a deposit in order to secure a future investment but at today’s prices. They assumed the value would always increase, so that they could sell this promise-to-buy before the full-payment date was reached and so make a profit. This is known as ‘Futures’ and ‘Options’ in today’s world. An easy way to lose your shirt. The country went mad, letting all other industries go to rack and ruin as people did nothing but get rich from speculating. Ultimately, though, a tulip bulb only has a certain value and it can’t provide you with an investment income, so the market got scared and people started to sell in large numbers. There was a catastrophic collapse in values followed by a lasting collapse of the economy. What was the cause? Human greed and a belief that “prices can only go up”. In Germany before the first world war, one US Dollar would get you around 4 German Marks. By 1923 one US Dollar would get you around 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) Marks. If you had two coffees in a café in 1923, the second of the two could cost twice what the first one cost when you originally ordered it, such was the inflation. There was a tale of someone pinching a wheelbarrow full of cash, but tipping out the money before making their getaway. What was the cause? The Government allowing more money to be put into the economy than was actually required and so as supply outstrips demand the value of the currency drops. There was also little of value backing the currency so it only became worth the paper it was written on. We now call this printing of money “Quantitative easing”. In Miami and Chicago in the late 19th century there was a colossal property boom, People started speculating of land and houses under a misguided belief that “people will always need houses” so again “values can only go up”. When the crash came and the late investors lost their shirts, many of the banks went under crippling their business customers and wrecking the economy. When a home becomes an investment it is liable to the same crashes as any other investment. Finally I’ll tell you about the early 1980s and the gold crash. Gold had been around $200 an ounce for decades. This metal often being the backing for currencies i.e. the money printed technically is a note referring to a value in gold, stopping it simply being printed paper. Speculators had seen the rise in prices and “experts” predicted it could go as high as $5000 a ounce. But again, gold brings you no income, a reason its values are normally steady and so after hitting $900 an ounce in 1981, it crashed. So why am I telling you this? Well let’s take a look at a few things close to home:
These are truly frightening times. We need to bring borrowing down sharply by the equivalent of more than 2 times our largest spend areas – We only spend £100billion on the NHS but need to reduce borrowing by twice this amount. We can’t go on spending more on debt repayments than we do on educating our children. It will take pure financial wizardry to steer us on a path to economic recovery and out of this mess. We need to not frighten the horses along the way but we need some radical changes because what we’re doing now can’t go on. We are in a worse situation than probably all other developed countries because even struggling economies like Greece and Japan have people have personal savings, which we don’t have here. So please do invest wisely and I’m sorry if I’ve dampened your day… All the best Matthew Lobley Roundhay Ward Conservative Councillor
Monday, 21 December, 2009
A very happy New Year to your all! I was racking my brain the other day trying to remember the name of a biblical tale of a man giving his three sons an equal amount of money before embarking on a journey. 20 minutes of Google searching later I found the ‘Parable of the Talents’ about three servants being given unequal amounts of money – should my memory be this bad at 34? To paraphrase the tale, the returning master is less than pleased with the one servant who does not take a risk with the opportunity he is given, but simply buries his share of the money for safekeeping. Life’s full of risk-takers and the risk-averse. I worry greatly though, that over the last two decades, the risk-averse have won every major battle. In 1995 “No-win, No-fee” was introduced in the UK as a way of reducing the legal aid bill. The idea must have seemed like a winning one at the time. Cut costs to taxpayers, open up access to the legal system for people on low or no income – everyone wins. The reality though is one of an unintended consequence. That consequence being that it became too easy to sue people with seemingly no downside to doing so. This is reward without any risk. This was a very bad precedent. There should always be a potential downside, however minor. We saw in Leeds City Council the true scale of these problems when we changed administration in 2004. If memory serves me right there was a figure of around £4m in outstanding claims against the Council for trips and damage caused by the state of the roads and pavements – and back then the roads were very bad. We set about reviewing the cases. In one, several members of the same household claimed to have all tripped over the same pothole, on the same day and put claims in via different solicitors. What an unlucky family… the same pothole… 6 times over… on the same day…what are the chances?! We stood up to them and they didn’t get a bean, but a few years back they would have done. All no-win-no-fee though, so again, no downside to them trying it on. Schools and even parents no longer allow children to take any risks and to learn from their mistakes. If a child falls out of a tree and breaks their arm, they learn the dangers. It’s part of life. We can’t just ban children from climbing trees. Teachers are rightly terrified of being sued as parents assume no harm must ever come to their child and if it does, then someone must be to blame…other than the parents themselves of course. I remember having a ‘discussion’ with our Forestry Department after they initially refused to plant horse chestnut trees on a street, because children might climb them to collect conkers and be injured. I am not joking… after all in 2004 South Tyneside Borough Council chopped down chestnut trees to stop kids hurting themselves while gathering conkers. In Roundhay we’re working now on a scheme of which I hope to be very proud. The Bumps at the end of West Park Ave is going to be transformed, not with oodles of brightly coloured play equipment (although there will be new swings) but instead with landscaping, new ‘bumps’ added and a dry river bed rising to a mound of boulders for children to clamber over and play on. This scheme has not been without it’s problems. I sent officers away to find a way around a ruling that dictated anything over 80cm high should have expensive ‘safety surfacing’ under it – not practical for large boulders. As a child I played in Hetchell Woods around Hetchell Crag with it’s 40ft drop and, believe it or not, NO SAFETY SURFACING AT ALL! How did I ever survive? Through learning to take responsibility for my actions and not going too close the edge. That’s how. We need to have a transformation in this country where we realise that life isn’t necessarily fair. We need to understand that there is no reward in life without risk (you’re talking to a man who in the middle of a recession has gambled taking redundancy from work to pursue his political career!). We also need to understand that given equal opportunities, not everyone will do equally well. We are not all the same. You could give someone like Richard Branson £100 and he’d turn it into £9.7m and you can give Michael Carroll £9.7m in Lottery winnings and he will turn it into a prison sentence. The sooner we have a responsibility-revolution in this country the sooner we’ll get back to having dynamic businesses, lower unemployment, stronger economy and better prospects for us all. We owe it to our great country to return to taking responsibility, so I say to you: Let’s pick up our feet Let’s look where we are going Let’s plan ahead that a wet floor may be slippy Let’s accept that sometimes there is no one to blame but ourselves. Have a great 2010, and mind how you go! Matthew Lobley Roundhay Ward Conservative Councillor
Monday, 09 November, 2009
We are all familiar with British traits. We’re the only European nation which enforces EU regulations. We queue for buses and cash machines. We drink a lot of tea. We value our freedom to do and say as we wish, within the laws we agree. I’ve been asked a few times recently what my views are on ID cards. It’s an important subject and I often hear people say “I wouldn’t mind having one. What harm could having a piece of plastic in your wallet possibly cause?” Here are my thoughts….. A good friend of mine was going on holiday through Leeds Bradford Airport with his wife and baby daughter. Martyn doesn’t look like much of a threat, nor his lovely wife or 6 month old daughter. On arrival at the security gate, the UK Border Agency official made him empty the baby’s bag so he could take a look through. Martyn lined up the 4 small beakers of flavoured sterilised water. Nothing too unusual in that. “No, No, Yes, Yes,” said the official in a very self important way pointing at each small bottle in turn. “What will my baby drink on the flight if we have to throw these two away?” asked Martyn. “Not my problem” said the official. “It will be if my baby ends up dehydrated in hospital,” replied Martyn. For this my friend ended up with all of the family belongings being tested on a drug scanner, presumably as punishment for daring to question this official’s judgement. Naturally the scanner found nothing. At this point my friend rightly expressed his dissatisfaction with the way he, his wife and baby had been treated. It turns out that my friend had read the latest rules about what can be taken on a plane, but the official had not. Could Martyn challenge the decision? No. Could he escalate the issue to this man’s superior? No, this chap was the supervisor. My friend had to simply give in, if the family were to take the flight. Safety mindedness is important. But small mindedness is a growing British disease. It doesn’t seem to matter where we are, we see this more and more: “I have a uniform and a clipboard and I’m not afraid to use it”. Whether we’re on the motorway watching those Highway Agency people needlessly cone off two lanes because there’s a ‘Health and Safety’ issue with a dropped hairbrush on the outside lane, or a Civil Enforcement Officer (traffic warden) telling a mother, who’s run back to the car with her child and heavy bag, that “I’ve started issuing the ticket and I cannot stop, and you are 3 minutes over the limit.” So why am I going on about this? Am I not meant to be telling you if I’m for or against ID cards? Well, I’m against and here’s why… The issue is only in part the card and the associated database. Having worked 12 years in an IT firm I can tell you this: No database is really secure. Someone always has access and someone can always have an agenda to take a copy of your personal data. Anyone who tells you a national ID card will help prevent identity theft is living in cloud cuckoo land. Another database with your details on means another opportunity for your data to be accessed by more people. “Don’t the companies responsible have security safeguards?” I hear you ask. Well, yes, but we humans are always the weak link. Most UK based IT firms also use foreign software developers as they are cheaper. Answer me this – how much faith should I have that people working half way around the world are security vetted to the same standard as people here? What if all the UK IT firm has is a declaration that the foreign software developers promise not to do anything they shouldn’t, as is so often the case? How confident do I feel? Not in the slightest bit confident. This is one reason I’ll consider opting out of having my records on the NHS central database when the time comes. I don’t want my medical records being left on a disk on a train somewhere. And this is before we get to the other part of the argument. If we were all to have ID cards, how long would it be before there was justification to make it illegal to not carry it with you? Of course this would have to be enforced and the police are quite busy enough. Perhaps we would have some ‘Identity Enforcement Officers’ randomly stopping us to make sure we can prove our identity? Personally, I do not want to be held up by someone with a high visibility jacket, a clipboard, a sense of self righteousness and a penchant for pedantry, asking me to prove who I am. I know who I am, I’m a British citizen, leave me alone unless you have very good reason to stop me. If we want to, most of us have no problem proving who we are without another plastic card. It’s absolutely right that we should be checked in and out of the country so we know who is residing here and yes, I’m sure we have a huge number of people living here that we have no idea about. But that doesn’t mean that British citizens should be made to prove their right to be here because we’ve failed to keep check on those with no right to be here. What would we do anyway? Arrest everyone who can’t immediately prove who they are? Ask these unidentified people to turn up to the nearest police station the next day to prove who they are? I’m sure people with no right to live here may decide not to bother presenting themselves to the police station the next day. I hope we won’t end up with a national ID card scheme. It would achieve very little, cost a lot and would be a freedom we’d give away that we’d never get back. On a lighter note I’d like to thank you very much for reading my articles over the year and wish you a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Happy Al-Hijira and Happy New Year. All the best Matthew Lobley Roundhay Ward Conservative Councillor
Friday, 09 October, 2009
I now receive a report which details intelligence on criminal behaviour through the CCTV systems in the city. These cameras pick up on the activities of known criminals and help the police catch them. These are often deeply unpleasant people, frankly the sort I like to see behind bars. As a politician, there is always an easy answer to a problem. Usually it involves spending some public money, sorting out the symptom of the problem rather than the cause, photo opportunity and happy residents. But the problem remains unsolved. There are times where a quick fix is needed but what if the combination of these quick fixes takes us somewhere we don’t want to be? Gledhow Towers in the Brackenwood estate on the Roundhay/Moortown border was a problem hot spot a few years back. Despite the good efforts of the police there was a serious anti-social behaviour problem. The police could not be there 24 hours a day. Residents felt unsafe and my colleagues and I reacted. We spent a long time scraping together funds and eventually got the residents what they wanted – a CCTV system. Anecdotal evidence suggests a drop in crime, if not a complete solution, We successfully dealt with the problem. Or did we? What could we have done instead? A short term fix: Perhaps we could ask the police to add the known trouble makers to their list of prolific offenders, managed by the Offender Management Team to check up on their whereabouts daily and encourage them to make steps to a more positive life - A great idea but the cost would be astronomical and it takes around a dozen people to monitor 80 serious, prolific offenders in the area surrounding us at the moment. The cost would be astronomical. A medium term fix: We know who most of the trouble makers are, so we could get a ‘Family Intervention Project’ set up to try to see why the family are behaving as they are and to try to correct the behaviour – sounds fair, but some would say it’s the state controlling the family (and what would the state know?). It could probably only be voluntary unless there was a court order, and therefore a conviction of that trouble causer, in which case why are they out of prison anyway? We’re dealing with cause and symptom here but again it’s expensive and may not be effective on it own. A long term fix: This is where we really look at the cause, not the symptom. This could be programmes to get young people into work, and therefore stop them hanging around all day – but where are the jobs? We can pass legislation to make it financially beneficial for families to stay together as money can be a real cause of tension in relationships. We could change the education system to find those at risk, let them off studying history and art to see if we can interest them in setting up on their own as a maybe a window cleaner or a more skilled job such as hairdresser or mechanic. We could change the criminal justice system to discourage criminal behaviour through tougher punishments – Ultimately all this would work nicely, and might even help create additional jobs…and we can see the results in 15 years time…. when the politicians have been voted out and the local people have suffered for 15 years. So we have a problem. Quick and ineffective in the long run, or expensive and no help in the first 15 years. So you can see the appeal of the CCTV system as an instant ‘fix’ but hopefully the weakness of it in the long run. We in Britain have 150% more cameras that Communist China with a tiny fraction of the population – 4.2 million cameras in the UK. One for every 14 people. Yes, you read that right. No nation is more watched than us. A trip through London would see you watched around 300 times. But don’t worry, we have nothing to hide and these cameras make us safer don’t they?….but this is an unpleasant situation. I have nothing to hide, but I value my privacy. If someone monitored my conversations at home the worst thing they’d find is how boring I can be (just ask my wife), so why don’t I let them monitor my conversations? Just in case. After all if we all did this we might catch terrorists (excuse my flippancy). Ultimately this argument of ‘nothing to hide’ gives no defence against further intrusion in our lives. Who is to say the individual monitoring us is so squeaky clean that they have no agenda? They are just people like us. And who is to say we’ll always control the data in this country under our own laws? What if Brussels decides differently, will we be powerless to stop them as we always seem to be? Am I being melodramatic? Well, what if 10 years ago someone said to me that in Britain we’d have 4.2 million CCTV cameras? I know I’d have been horrified. So a decade from now what will it be? Discrete microphones in houses? Vans driving around with listening equipment “to catch terrorists”? You may mock but remember how crazy it would sound to say we would be the most watched nation on earth ten years ago. This is law abiding Britain, not the wild west. In the long run CCTV won’t protect us much. These expensive systems simply deal with the symptom. The cause of the problems: family breakdown; multiple generations who have never worked; unaddressed mental health issues; low aspirations in children; a decreasing number of available jobs, lax checks on who we allow into the country. None of these can be fixed with cameras. When our freedom is gone, it’s gone. We must be careful and this might just involve saying ‘no’ to the demands for some of the quick fixes. And less photo opportunities for politicians of course. All the best Matthew Lobley Roundhay Ward Conservative Councillor Thanks go to a gentleman who works at Leeds University who has kindly invited me in to give me his views on climate change. Sadly he was the only one who thought they could answer the questions I posed in my last column so he gets the fiver, regardless.
Monday, 28 September, 2009
In almost all of the meetings I’m invited to, the subject of Climate Change is raised. I have recently attended a couple of regional boards on behalf of the City relating to housing and regeneration and ‘zero carbon homes’ have been mentioned repeatedly. The idea of a home requiring no net power use over the year seems quite appealing as long as the houses are good to live in and good to look at.
It’s worth me stating here, for the record, that many of the ideas originating from the ‘green lobby’ meet with my approval. Helping people cut their heating bills with better home insulation? Common sense. More efficient cars? Good for the pocket and air quality. Switching to ‘clean’ energy sources and ending our reliance on unstable middle eastern oil producers? Wise. Solar roof panels on new houses to part heat your water? Logical.
There are some though who seem to delight in telling me how we must go back to a bygone era: giving up cars and taking the bus; no more foreign holidays; no more barbeques….we simply must be less comfortable than we are now, especially if we’re to feel good about ourselves that we’re doing something to help.
The problem is that this is misjudging public appetite. When it comes to it, no one I meet will accept much of a regression in the living standards. Human nature means we become accustomed better things in life than the last generation. Better housing, personal cars, bigger TVs, cheaper clothes shipped from abroad…
So how do we address this conflicting situation of a cleaner future environment and rising living standards? Personally, I think the future lies in technological solutions to problems. It’s incredible to think that a modern Ford Fiesta is safer, more economical, better equipped and larger than its 1976 original and emits less than 5% of the toxic pollutants of this forebear, so I’m told. That to me is a solution brought about by legislation challenging industry and leading to technological innovation.
The interesting subject is carbon dioxide (CO2). This gas, regularly referred to as a ‘pollutant’ is, of course, the stuff that makes our plants grow. The concern held by many scientists is when it becomes more predominant in our atmosphere.
The issue seems to be that many scientists, but not all, say that the increase in this gas in the atmosphere is leading to global warming. I’ve read a great number of articles on the subject and the more I read, the more questions I have. I suspect changes in climate are actually down to potentially a multitude of factors (see www.climatedebatedaily.com for interesting opinion on causes). Below I’ve written a few questions. The person who sends me what I consider to be the most convincing answers to these questions gets a clean crisp fiver from my bank account, and will make me a better informed chap:
I don’t know the answer to these questions and I hear conflicting views, but they’re worth asking so we know what we’re trying to address here. We need to be in receipt of all the information so we can make the right decisions on protecting the environment. One action we hear of is the bulldozing our precious rainforests to plant bio-fuel crops for ‘environmentally friendly’ fuels – this is surely complete insanity. Or what about some of the crazy schemes of putting giant mirrors in space to reflect sunlight?
We need to look to the future of powering our way of life with more environmentally friendly sources of energy but be mature and acknowledge that it’ll have to be a more sophisticated solution than just windturbines.
We’re living in an exciting age. I believe we will inevitably move to a ‘lower carbon’ in this country for a whole host of reasons, probably driven by economic and security factors as much as environmental ones.
All the best
Matthew Lobley Roundhay Ward Councillor
Sunday, 09 August, 2009
Asylum has always been a topic which people say is ‘sensitive’ - often too sensitive to discuss. People should always debate important matters. I will receive angry letters from people who have read this article seeking, unsuccessfully, to stop me raising these points in the future.
With my Deputy Executive Board Member for Neighbourhoods and Housing hat on I recently visited one of three centres for Yorkshire and the Humber region which ‘process’ asylum seekers as they are dispersed throughout the country after arrival. This centre is in Leeds, there is a second centre is in Barnsley and a third in Wakefield, this last one being run by a private firm rather than a Council.
It’s worth just explaining some of the terms in as straightforward a way as I can just to avoid confusion:
Yorkshire and the Humber region takes around 20% of the UK’s asylum seekers whilst their claims are processed and the share for Leeds equates to 1500 asylum seekers resident at any time – around one fifth of one percent of the population. Asylum seekers are delivered to these three regional centres whereupon they are interviewed by the UKBA and checked by a doctor for general health/TB etc. The largest group of applicants are young adult single men but many are unaccompanied asylum seeking children (under 18s) and some are families.
At any time people arrive from all across the world, often through many European countries before arriving here, a very thorny point, and many are believed to destroy their documentation upon arrival making it hard for the UKBA to decide if they have fled with no documents, or are hiding their true identity to deliberately mislead. Not all countries have responsive civil services to help confirm the identity of individuals and so the UKBA must often make a judgement call. The proportion allowed to stay has risen to around 34% of applicants now. In 2008 around 19,500 applied in the UK with around 13,500 initially refused, before any appeals. There is currently a huge backlog of hundreds of thousands of cases, many years old, being worked through. In many cases little can be done once a decision is made, as often no one knows where the individual lives to tell them if they are entitled to stay here or not.
People arriving at the Leeds centre are usually there for less than 28 days whilst they are found accommodation across the region usually, but not always, in private rented housing. Whilst they are at the centre they must sign-in once a day to show their presence but the place is largely open for people to come and go as they wish. Most people don’t wander off as they want to follow through the process in the hope of being allowed to stay in the UK. If they disappear, it’s usually after the decision is taken if it doesn’t go their way. In 2008 there were less people removed by the UKBA than the number turned down and so the backlog of people with no legal right to live in the UK grows. The Home Office figures bundle together “Enforced removal and voluntary departure” which in 2008 accounted for just over half of the failed asylum seekers. Some more leave via “Assisted voluntary returns” but no one knows accurately where the rest are.
I spoke to staff at the Leeds centre and one problem really got me thinking. There are three nationalities in particular where the staff at the centres know that more often than not, the individuals will simply disappear before they can meet the UKBA rep or a doctor the next day. These are people who are believed to be trafficked and on arrival know they must report to a gang-master to pay of their debt.
We only have to remember the tragedy of the 18 Chinese cockle pickers in 2004 to see the dangers. It’s terrible that people are still being forced into slavery in a country which has a proud history of being at the forefront of outlawing slavery (you may remember we celebrated the 200 year anniversary of abolishing slavery in 2007). For me though, the true tragedy comes when asylum seekers who go missing are young Chinese girls. Some who might even be under 16. They tend to return to the centre 8 months later, heavily pregnant, when one assumes the gang-masters have deemed them no longer of use. How can we be in a situation in 2009 where we suspect some of these children are forced into prostitution only to be discarded when their usefulness has passed? It’s outrageous. Having a baby in this country does not mean an asylum seeker has any legal right to stay here and I’m told these pregnancies are not usually a deliberate act.
This is one of those cases where I worry that fear of singling out a few nationalities, and ensuring they are not allowed to roam on arrival, is outweighing the need to protect people from the traffickers. One assumes the fear is that someone might shout ‘racist’ if some nations are singled out. Surely we cannot let this go on when we know it’s happening? The whole system appears to be in chaos.
Where people are fleeing for their lives, I would hope Britain would always welcome and support a fair share of people seeking a safe haven. What I am frightened of is that political correctness may be allowing exploitation of people by traffickers and the broken system is open to abuse.
Anyone seeking refuge deserves not to be exploited, and the British public should expect better than for this to go on around us. What will I do about this? Well I am asking a region wide immigration body, which I have just been appointed to, to investigate this matter and report findings to the Home Office Minister in the hope of making some changes.
Which ever way you look at it, the whole process needs toughening up to for everyone’s benefit at home and abroad.
All the best
Matthew Lobley Roundhay Ward Conservative Councillor
Thursday, 09 July, 2009
Housing is one of my main interests as a Leeds Councillor. For the last year I have held the role of Deputy Executive Board Member for Neighbourhoods and Housing, which has given me the opportunity to get more involved and represent Leeds at regional meetings. We have an issue in the city. At the last count, 30,000 individuals and families were on the council housing waiting list in Leeds. Fortunately this isn’t 30,000 homeless families. There is a culture of people turning 16 and getting their name down, just in case (around 12,000) but there are actively around 16,000 - 18,000 bidding every week to try to find a new home. The number of homeless people, usually in temporary accommodation, is around 540 which is the lowest in years but still too high. The 30,000 applicants are waiting for a first council home or to move. The Council has a stock of 58,000 homes in the city, there are around 15,000 housing association homes and an estimated 45,000 private rented homes, making up near enough half of the city’s houses. The problem here is a lack of affordable housing. The last council houses built in Leeds were completed in the mid-1990s. Why have none been built since I hear you ask? Well, there has been a problem which is long overdue for fixing. The Right-to-Buy scheme which started in the 1980s meant that many people had the opportunity to buy their own council home, something of which I am a big supporter. Around 29,000 houses in the city were bought and are now filled with (hopefully) happy owner-occupiers. The problem arises because 75% of the money from the sale of each council house currently goes to the Treasury and not Leeds Council, meaning that the money to buy land and replenish the stock is difficult. In addition, we don’t get to collect rent directly like a housing association would. It goes into something called a Housing Revenue Account. This account then receives a subsidy from the Treasury, or more accurately a ‘negative subsidy’ (I jest not, this is what they actually call it) meaning around a quarter of all rent is top sliced by the Treasury and Leeds gets three quarters back. Thanks. This means we lose around £46million a year, probably enough to build another 400 affordable rented homes every year which would be very handy indeed. So enough moaning… what are we doing about it in Leeds? Well, we’ve started building the first council houses in over 15 years in the city in Armley, Wortley and Pudsey. We’re purchasing some houses as part of a major regeneration programme across east and south-east Leeds. We have a very successful scheme to support people who are willing to downsize to switch houses with those families needing a bigger home. This is all fairly small scale in comparison to the problem but it’s a start. There are bigger and more exciting schemes we’re working on…but I can’t tell you just yet so keep an eyes on the newspapers! Working with Harrogate, York and across North Leeds we have created the Golden Triangle Partnership which I have recently taken over chairing. The aim is to help people who need to live in this area to afford to be able to do so. It has several schemes, one is a shared equity scheme to help people buy a home, and another is called ‘Homesave Plus’ which provides an equity loan for people whose circumstances have changed and need help to avoid losing their house. If you know anyone who may need help, please get them to contact the Council’s Housing Options Centre on Great George Street who can advise on this and other schemes (0113 2224412). So what of Government help? Well, the new Homes and Communities Agency has just announced £1.5billion for providing more housing across the country. I asked, naturally, if this was new money for housing or a re-announcement, but I have been told it is new (although I’m told a fair chunk has been diverted from an education budget!). Leeds has just secured funds from this for a scheme to develop new affordable housing and to increase the city’s provision for sheltered and retirement housing. This includes over 500 ‘lifetime homes’ which can flex and adapt to need as residents get older. Other help includes the Government’s £235m mortgage rescue scheme which has been going for a year or so. Sadly up to July this year it had only helped 7 takers. And that’s nationally. What would I like to see into the future? I’m not precious about whether houses are council homes or housing association, but we need more affordable rented housing for people on lower incomes. Strangely, for those on housing benefit, the amounts available are relatively generous, it’s for those in work that it’s tough and these people deserve some support. Lower house prices over the course of the next year could make it feasible for housing associations to buy unwanted new and old housing stock to rent out affordably – I’d like to see this actively encouraged by cutting regulation for housing associations. Also when house prices have finished dropping, more shared equity schemes to help people buy an affordable home would relieve pressure on rented housing stock. Whichever way you look at it, we need to get this 30,000 figure down. It’s a national problem with record high of 1.8million families on waiting lists. Most of us are very lucky to feel secure in our rented or owned homes, but we need to let many more people get a place they can call home. All the best Matthew Lobley Roundhay Ward Conservative Councillor
Friday, 26 June, 2009
Paddy Clarke is a man with a long history in customer service. He worked at Yorkshire Electricity and then NPower before moving to Leeds City Council 5 years ago. When Paddy arrived to take over the organisational mess which constituted the Council’s customer service helpdesks, he had a huge job on his hands. I met with him in Seacroft shortly after he joined at one of the Council’s many little helpdesks scattered across the city, none of which had an idea of the level of service they provided. The Council had an appalling record for the speed of answering calls and even answering them at all. At one point it was thought that around ¾ of all calls were abandoned by customers before getting through. This was not the fault of the staff but the organisation and management. Paddy was at the heart of the plans to create a 21st century, first class ‘contact centre’ to handle all customer calls, letters, e-mails and latterly even text messages. I met up with Paddy recently to have a tour of the facility I’d visited a couple of years ago after it first opened. For several years at BT I managed a project with a customer helpdesk and so I have a fair idea about some of the myths and truths about running contact centres. Leeds City Council is at the very forefront in its use of technology in this field and this is not one of those “In the future we will…” type claims, nope, this is a case of “Look at what we do now.” The Council receives many hundreds of thousands of calls each year and any major problem can have the phone lines running wild, such as a flash flood. Some time back Paddy introduced ten or so ‘Silver Numbers’. These are phone numbers which get customers directly to people skilled in answering them, taking the right details and hopefully sorting problems right away with no hanging around. More latterly we have the new ‘Golden Number’ – 0113 2224444 - which gets callers through to a team of skilled staff who can deal with 90% of queries right away but naturally to a lesser depth. Each day a small team of planners use a clever computer system called Blue Pumpkin (who comes up with these names?). It uses real data about call volumes, the skills of each member of staff, even their planned holidays, lunch breaks and team meetings to make sure the contact centre can answer calls coming in with the minimum customer wait. Furthermore, if there was a big delay in answering calls for customers at some point, managers can even run scenarios to see if they could have avoided it by training a few staff members in a different area of Council services. As a result, the number of calls answered within 20 or so seconds is consistently well over 90%, better than most utilities companies I’d bet. Why is it not 100% in 20 seconds? Well, the cost of staffing-up to deal with that would not be value for money for Council Tax payers. So what about the staff, stuck in a job, monitored and measured all the time? Well it doesn’t quite work like that. For a start this is no dead-end job as many people promoted up the chain will tell you. The environment is a state of the art, airy, air conditioned centre with places for staff to take breaks. Many staff are on ‘flexitime’ contracts and so if the day seems quiet, they can ask their team leader if they can leave early or book a day off in advance. Assuming Blue Pumpkin predicts there will not be enough calls to worry that team at that time, off our worker goes to take up any overtime he or she has built up. They are also able to offer part-time hours suiting both the demands of customers calling in as well as the wishes of the staff around family ties. Another real positive is the ‘Academy’ scheme Paddy introduced around 4 years ago. This takes people with either different skills, maybe no customer service experience or computer experience, or people who have been out of work for a while and it trains them up from scratch. In return, the number of staff who have left has been just two out of over 40 graduates of the scheme in 4 years. This shows the investment pays off and staff must like their jobs. For the future we will see customers given the option of talking to an automated service that understands people’s voices if the staff are all busy. There is also a huge amount of work going on to improve customer service in the rest of the Council so that the people picking up the customer requests or problems have the same customer service attitude that the contact centre does, which will massively reduce the number of chase up calls from customers and complaints. It’s great to see the many innovations, too many to discuss here, and the improvements made over the years. It’s also great to see a genuinely enthused workforce which is down to Paddy and his team of impressive managers, support staff, planners, team leaders and Customer Support Operators. In my previous line of work, I have not come across a centre of this calibre in the public or private sector. I wish them every success in their plan of continual improvement. Don’t believe me? Try giving them a call next time you have problem, I hope you’ll be more than satisfied with your experience. All the best Matthew Lobley Roundhay Ward Conservative Councillor
Thursday, 28 May, 2009
It’s always a good feeling when something you’ve worked on comes to fruition. Especially when it has taken a few years. Anyone who has ever really got to know a local Councillor knows that they never truly go on holiday. To let you into a secret, I was once chastised by my wife for taking a photograph of an unusual shaped kerb on holiday which stopped drivers mounting the pavement. I’m now banned from saying to Amy “We could use something like that in Leeds”. The other day I took my usual route home from Leeds along Roundhay Road through Harehills and to the bottom end of Roundhay Ward. I started thinking about my job as a Councillor over the last six years and all the work my Roundhay Ward Councillor colleagues Valerie Kendall, Paul Wadsworth and I had been involved in. Travelling the length of Roundhay Road we have:
Thinking it through reminds me what a thoroughly enjoyable job being a Ward Councillor is. It’s a job where you can get job satisfaction. Roundhay Road is, of course, just one road out of nearly 400 in Roundhay but there is more we’d like to do including:
If you have any suggestions for this or any other street in Roundhay we’d be glad to hear about them. Times are tough financially which means that now, more than ever, we have to find new and innovative ways to attract funding for Roundhay which do not involve spending lots of Leeds Council Tax payer’s money. Politics is not always an easy job and for every few people who you please, you upset another. The scandals over MP’s expenses may put people off getting involved in local politics but please don’t assume all politicians are the same. Across Leeds, most Councillors have claimed either nothing or next to nothing on expenses for years. We receive a salary referred to as an ‘allowance’ because it is there to cover many expenses as well as pay us a salary and, crucially, all of it is taxed the same as a salary. All this information is on the Council’s website, please do scrutinise it, we have nothing to hide. All the best Matthew Lobley Roundhay Ward Conservative Councillor
Friday, 24 April, 2009
Tuesday, 17 March, 2009
Fed up as I am with the daily stories of bankruptcy and job losses, I thought I might take the opportunity to explain a little about how local democracy works in Leeds. For those in the know, I apologise if I’m giving pointers on egg sucking, but I do often find there’s confusion so I thought this might be a welcome distraction. Especially if your telly has just been repossessed. Leeds City Council is the local government of the City of Leeds metropolitan district which had 761,000 residents at the last census. It is made up of 33 ‘wards’, each of around 23,000 people of whom roughly 17,000 are of voting age. Each ward in Leeds has three Councillors who, after winning a seat on the Council in a local election, are in place for a term of 4 years. The reason only one seat at a time is usually contested is because it’s staggered. For this ward of Roundhay, Cllr Paul Wadsworth was re-elected in 2006, Cllr Valerie Kendall in 2007 and I was re-elected in 2008. There are therefore no local elections in 2009 and Paul will, I hope, want to put himself forward as the Conservative candidate for the 2010 local election. Local elections are usually held on the first Thursday in May. In order to stand as a candidate in the local elections, you would need ten residents to nominate you who must all be registered voters in your ward. Unlike General Elections, there is no ‘deposit’ to lose if you don’t get many votes. You must also be 18 or older and either live or work in Leeds. The size and shape each of the wards in the city are specified by the Boundary Commission for England based on proposals from the political parties and local psephologists (experts on elections). Every twenty years or so the boundaries can change to take into account changes in the area. For example, if a lot of house building had taken place in one ward, there may be a reduction in its size to keep numbers of electors down to an average. The Boundary Commission tries to remain independent and avoid too much political interference. Where a ruling administration on a council campaigns to change boundaries for their own benefit to stay in power, it is often referred to as ’Gerrymandering’. This term originated in the early 19th century after Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry changed the shape of his county until it almost resembled a salamander in order to stay in power. All the ward boundaries changed in 2004 in Leeds. In Roundhay Ward, Shadwell village moved into the newly created Harewood Ward and Roundhay gained the Brackenwood estate from Moortown. When the boundaries change, the city has an ‘all-out’ election where even Councillors with time to run in their term must stand again. In Leeds no one party has more than half of the 99 seats required to completely control the Council. For this reason political parties will often join together to form either an alliance or coalition. In 2004 an alliance of Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Greens took over from Labour who had run the city since 1980. Five years on it is now a Conservative-Liberal Democrat alliance. In Leeds we consider the term ‘coalition’ to be similar to ‘alliance’, but under a coalition Councillors of controlling parties are more likely to work under one leader. In Leeds the two parties take turns every six months in holding the leadership of the Council. There can also be a minority administration when parties can’t agree to work together and so the largest party tries to run the council with no majority – this is not easy as almost any policy could be out-voted at a full meeting of the council. A common question about local Government is whether we should have Proportional Representation (PR). Certainly in Leeds, this could have a major effect on the allocation of seats to parties. The results of the last election in 2008 are below. Under a PR system 1% of the vote could equate to roughly one seat on the Council if we retained 99 seats. The biggest changes of moving to such a system could be the British National Party gaining around 10 seats, Conservatives gaining around 10 seats and Labour losing 14 seats.
The reason for the mismatch of votes to seats won is twofold. Firstly the turnout in each ward is very mixed. For example, I was elected with 3337 votes in Roundhay and there was a 41% turnout of residents voting, the winner in Headingley did so with just 1021 votes, possible because only 18% of registered electors turned out to vote. The second factor is that if a large number of all the voters from one party end up shoehorned into a small number of wards because of the areas covered by those wards, that party will win a small number of seats with a huge majority. Wetherby and Harewood wards are good examples of these the latter of which has a Councillor with a majority of over 4000 votes. PR is ultimately a principle rather than a method of running elections. There are various types with strengths and weaknesses, but ultimately most make it hard for an elector to cast a vote for their favourite candidate. Most politicians rely on building their ‘personal vote’. This comes from helping people and in return hoping that the elector will put aside any feelings about party-politics and vote for that politician who has proven themselves as being effective. I apologise if this has been a bit of a dry read, but I hope it has been of some interest. If there is any desire for it, in the future I am happy to cover some of the workings of the Councils boards and structure or any other topic which people are interested in. Do let me know. All the best Matthew Lobley Roundhay Ward Conservative Councillor
Sunday, 01 March, 2009
Sunday, 01 February, 2009
Interesting meeting with Ian Billyard the other week. Ian is Principle at the very successful Leeds College of Building providing skills and qualifications for thousands of students wishing to become plumbers, plasterers, builders, roofers and more. Ian told me how a small but significant number of his students arrive having hated school, achieved no academic qualifications and how he and his team encourage them with bite sized starter courses to get them used to achieving and succeeding What makes this interesting to me is how it dovetails with the work of a small organisation with which I have involvement. I am currently Chairman of the board of a not-for-profit city regeneration company in Leeds called Re’new, which includes an excellent organisation called Leeds Re’build. Re’build supports people, mainly up to the age of 25, who have in many cases simply dropped out of society as we know it. These are often people who have, for whatever reasons, ended up with no qualifications or prospects and are destined for an unfulfilling life of underachievement So how does Re’build work? Well, the team start to focus on the basics, and I mean basics, by getting their new clients to practice turning up to a place on time, looking people in the eye and starting to develop a work ethic. When the client’s confidence is built and they are ready to look at training, with the support of Leeds College of Building, they are enrolled. A member of the Re’build team will often start off by hammering on the door of the client to make sure they are out of bed, dressed and attending until they become reliable. Re’build provides the moral support and advice that most of us would get from our parents but for which these clients’ parents are unable, unavailable or incapable of doing. After the course is completed, working with some supportive employers, clients are assisted in getting through interviews and starting work. From here the service is available for ad hoc advice to try to keep these successful individuals in gainful employment I was told by Re’build of a case of a young man, who we’ll call John, who had been through this process. Initially John’s manager was delighted with his work, the enthusiastic new joiner volunteering for extra work. However, after a while he became unreliable, arriving late and leaving early. The boss rang Re’build to let them know of his intention to sack John. Re’build contacted John to ask what was happening. It seems John’s dad was less than pleased when he had found that John had a job. This, he reckoned, had “brought shame on the family” who had lived happily on benefits for several generations and it risked their way of life. John had been threatened with being kicked out of his home. Worried about being homeless, John would get up on a morning, tell his dad he was going to his mate’s house to play computer games or smoke dope and sneak into work. He couldn’t leave at the same time every day as he’d be rumbled. Re’build helped to negotiate a deal with the employer to be flexible on John’s hours until they could help him find somewhere to live. John kept his job This brings up more questions that one can discuss in a short article, but the point here is that getting every ‘John’ in this city into work requires one to one support and it’s not a cheap option, but it is crucial. The fact is that John, unlike his dad will lift himself up. He’ll probably find a nice girl, maybe get married, have some kids and instil a work ethic in them. He’ll hold his head high throughout his life. His father, however, will not only be a burden, but will waste his potential But how can we afford this intensive one to one support? Easy, it’s the cheapest option going. Let’s say John works hard and gets earns the average wage in the UK. That means he’ll be paying £6100 in tax and National Insurance. His dad will be paying none. His dad’s house will cost taxpayers £3020 per year, Council tax benefit - £825, Jobseekers (no laughing please) Allowance - £3150 and more besides. So the difference between John’s contribution to society and his dad’s expense to taxpayers, like his son, is a staggering £13,100 each year, every year At that rate, if we could get John’s dad into a job, any job, even on half of John’s salary, it would be great value for money even if it took someone in an organisation like Re’build their full time job for six months to get him into work, we’d be seeing benefits in year two I appreciate we are now entering a fairly grim economic time and there will be many more job seekers than jobs, but in Leeds over the last 10 years when 10,000 new jobs were created, it simply passed people like John’s dad by. In simple economic terms this intense work is value for money. In social terms, I believe the most powerful force for regeneration is to support people into work, we won’t do it by building community centres. In the next boom, we cannot let people like John’s dad sit by on the sidelines, we need to get them ready for work now
All the best
Matthew Lobley Roundhay Ward Conservative Councillor
Monday, 29 December, 2008
Have you ever met someone who has restored your faith? I had this very experience when I met the Head Teacher at the new David Young Academy School in Gipton, Ros McMullen. Years back the east side of Roundhay and Gipton were served by Brain Wood High School and Agnes Stewart High which churned out children with low levels of academic achievement. Poor discipline, standards and management meant that the pupils had a low chance of achieving their potential. With the closing of the two schools in 2006, came the opening of the David Young Academy School on the outskirts of Gipton, part funded by the Diocese of Leeds and Ripon but open to all. The recent Ofsted inspection showed that academic achievement had improved over the predecessor schools and noted that three quarters of students got 5 GCSEs at A-G, a notable improvement. “Lobley – why are you so taken with this school?” I hear you ask. Well, seeing is believing. This is a school from which over 90% of the kids come from the poorest 3% of the population statistically. Detractors will tell you that this Academy school discriminates in its access policy. Nonsense. In fact it uses results of the ‘Fair Banding’ aptitude test and proportionally takes a cross-section of pupils matching the Leeds average. The test does not take into account the ability to read or speak English – so poor primary schooling will not drag kids down. Anyone who suggests this discriminates against local pupils should bear in mind that unlike many other schools 95% of the kids come from within a mile of the school and within the cleverest banding of the intake you’ll find pupils from the very poorest areas of the city. Why am I so impressed with the school?
This school demonstrates how we need to stop patronising kids from ‘poor backgrounds’ and give them a school environment in which they can flourish. This does not just mean a new building. The removal of interference by the education authority works very well indeed allowing a Head to inspire and retain staff. Discipline and diet are crucial in getting kids the education they deserve. They need boundaries and discipline but they also need inspiring, In a couple of years when pupils have been schooled at David Young for more of their academic life, I am confident we’ll see some exceptional academic results for an area where children are all too easily written off. I firmly believe, more than any other initiative of the last 15 years, these schools are the key to ending a downward spiral of welfare dependency and failure in inner city areas. It will be many years before it becomes apparent, but giving these kids aspiration missing in many of their parents will be good for the individual and society as a whole. I take my hat off to Ros McMullen and her team of dedicated staff. They are an inspiration. Happy New Year Matthew Lobley Roundhay Ward Conservative Councillor
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