Hayling Town Council, Where Next?

- Tue 22nd Jan 2008

At HIRA’s January open meeting on 17th January the perceived benefits of a Town or Parish Council were presented by Steven Lugg, Hampshire Association of Local Councils and Colin Mercer, Chairman of Botley Parish Council, part of Eastleigh Borough and now also the Hampshire representative on the National Association of Local Councils. A statement from Eastleigh Borough Council was also presented. During the meeting the relationship between Eastleigh Borough Council and Botley Parish Council was used as an exemplar.

After Paul Fisher’s introduction Steven Lugg explained his role. He is 50% funded by Hampshire CC to coordinate Parish and Town Councils in Hampshire, of which there at present some 250. As at this level councillors are unpaid volunteer, so his organisation exists to provide the necessary support, to ensure that those Councils operate effectively and correctly.

He stated that such Councils, by their increased efficiency, can operate in a more economical manner that those at a higher level and are much more responsive on a day to day basis. The only necessary cost is that of the Council’s clerk, but in an organisation of any size there would normally be other directly employed staff. One of the Clerk’s primary tasks is to buy in the additional services that are needed,(sometimes from the Borough). In addition he must work to bring in funding from a wide range of sources, for the benefit of the community that are not provided directly from the higher level Councils.

This level of Council activity provides ‘grass-roots’ community democracy and has been a major thrust of Government policy for many years and 150 new Councils have been created in the last ten years, with only 4 known to have foundered.

Councils can be established by direct action of a higher level Council, by the Secretary of State via the `Local Government Commission, or by local petition. The last is the most normal and requires the signatures of 10% of the electors concerned. Should this happen, the higher level Council is obliged to submit it to the Secretary of State, with comments if it so wishes.

Should the petition be successful the existing borough councillors preside over an inter-regnum and must set up the new Council, being subject to significant sanctions if they fail to do so. Any such change of Council management clearly would take quite some time to establish and is basically the result of a process of negotiation with the higher-level councils to determine which and how individual programs are transferred.

Once established, Councils have a statutory right to comment formally on planning applications and negotiate if needed, manage open spaces, car parks, community buildings, lighting, recreation areas, allotments and, in conjunction with appropriate organisations, implement schemes for which they can raise the money. (In principle, Hayling could run Beachlands and the Billy trail subject to suitable negotiation).

Colin Mercer now took the floor. Colin Mercer is chairman of the Botley Parish Council and stated he was a fervent supporter of this approach to local government, to which he said the government is becoming more committed. He has 30 years of experience in parish roles. He said he believes it is more cost-effective, flexible and conducive to producing a greater sense of community and is, and must remain, non-political.

Botley has about 6000 residents and a budget of about £140K to be determined and spent on locally agreed tasks (pro-rata, Hayling would have, say, £420K).The members of such a council are part-time, as opposed to other levels of councillor, who are subject to much more extended demands. This means it is much easier to engage members of the community having the wide range of professional skills needed to run such a Council management team effectively. Botley has senior members of local firms on the council as well as its two Borough Councillors and County Councillor, all working together for the benefit of its residents. Amongst other things this enables them to do is have a much harder approach to the Borough on planning matters, as well as the extraction of the resultant funds often paid to the Borough by developers.

Eastleigh as an ex-railway town and Botley as an attractive old market town means that the perception of each by the other needs serious negotiation, to allow each to develop in the way each sees best. Without that formal relationship between the two councils, neither would be able to operate in a way each would find satisfactory.

Botley is now embarking on a number of projects running into hundreds of thousands and has, for instance, negotiated a £50K grant from BP to upgrade a recreation area, as a quid-pro-quo for causing upheaval due to the company’s need to refurbish a pipeline that crosses the village.

A current major project is for a new civic building that will provide an office for the clerk, tourist centre and drop-in centre for residents, including a meeting point for the local police, with whom the clerk has a meeting every week. This is a very modern building involving green design principles such as grass roof, water collection and management, solar heating etc. This has been designed in conjunction with the Borough.

(Hayling already has several of the type of projects that were mentioned, under our present structure, so it would not be true to say all the changes are entirely due to the existence of Botley’s own Council).

Colin then made a number of general comments. He emphasised that ALL parties wish to achieve the best for their residents, Borough and Parish alike. The secret is to establish a mutual relationship that allows all parties to feel that they are working to achieve that aim. The clerk is effectively the company secretary and is required to operate under Council instruction, though he has day-to-day freedom to work within has required tasks. (People dealing with Havant also feel that everyone wishes to achieve the best, but it is not clear this is always achieved, as most of these dealings are on an ad-hoc basis and have no formal structure)

He said that, contrary to much of the perceived objection to this ‘extra’ layer of government and its supposed cost, those parishes with the highest spend have the highest satisfaction rating amongst their residents. The aim of this level of government must be to achieve a performance level that enables them to acquire “Quality’ status.

At this point Paul Fisher read the statement prepared by Eastleigh. For ‘political’ reasons it was felt inappropriate to send an outsider into the area of another organisation so no Eastleigh representative came to the meeting. The essence of the statement is as follows.

“Eastleigh BC is enthusiastic about working with its local parish and town councils; the third tier allows residents to be closer to local service provision and decisions. Town and parish councils provide for local consultation and act as cohesive and efficient advocates for their communities. We have developed a strong mutual respect for each other.

‘Quality’ parish Councils should be encouraged. They are cost effective and accountable for precepts and funding decisions. Financial decisions taken at the nearest level to the community are often the best decisions and are therefore likely to be “best value”.

We devolved assets and responsibility to parish councils, as encouraged by central government policy. These assets can be just as efficiently managed by the Parishes as they can by district councils, if not more so, thus generating “local ownership and pride”. We welcome devolution to PCs.

Parish Councils are at their very best in defined communities. Parishes have a bright future in as much as their value is recognized in Government, Regional and County policies. They can contribute to emerging agendas such as climate change, sustainability and local planning frameworks.”

At this point there was an interval after which questions were asked and discussion took place. Several questions on costs were raised, but not always entirely resolved. In the case of Eastleigh the non-parished areas were charged a higher council tax because of the functions still provided by the Borough. Thus the addition of the Parish precept did not necessarily increase the total bill to residents. As the parish precept is not capped, this means that local communities can agree to spend more money on locally desired projects. (With this facility matched funding can be generated to double monies available thus allowing significant projects to be achieved).

There were no overt complaints about the potential costs, or otherwise, of running a Parish Council: discussion rather centred on how they were determined and contained within the overall council tax assessment.

It was noted that Hayling might have at least 20 parish Councillors.

Eastleigh has established ‘character assessment’ of buildings to ensure that developments in any part of the Borough are appropriate to that area. (cf Northney Village Design Statement)

The meeting then ended and Paul thanked Steven and Colin for their time.

Rose in June site.

Residents may have attended the presentation on the proposed development here. An attractive design was proposed involving retention of the barn as a small workshop with accommodation together with conversion and extension of the pub and the addition of one larger building, both to provide 14 two-bedroom flats.

This would be alright if it were not for this being the only central site on which more appropriate, community-based developments might be implemented. (See Botley’s new Community building mentioned above and role the Parish Council has in having a status within the Borough on planning matters.)

On putting this need to the organisers of the presentation they seemed totally unaware of any possible use of the site other than for housing. Many attempts have been made to retain the pub and contact has undoubtedly been made to the vendors for other possible Community uses. The real problem was in the fact that the consultation process was stated to be to prepare Hayling for a planning application to determine the potential value of the site, preparatory to sale to an actual developer. In principle, the developer can then submit a different application if he feels it to be to his benefit!

Sorry all the above is so protracted, but the topics are important to the Island!

Tony Higham.

By forum user, PaulFisher

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