A quick shout out to my friends Phil and Faye who are once again putting themselves through the torture of the London Marathon this weekend. Complete madness, but the best of luck to both of you…

Complaints from individuals continue to roll into me regarding missed rubbish collections nearly three weeks after the implementation of the new waste contract between Cory and Conservative-led Cornwall Council. The good news is that the majority of the complaints I have received have been dealt with after being referred to the relevant people. The bad news is that the problems show no signs of abating just yet.

It seems the main cause of the issues has been the moving around of collection staff who had previously been used to covering specific routes. Having been moved to another area, the staff – through no fault of their own – have had to learn the routes from scratch. This has led to the wrong vehicles being led down narrow lanes and some areas being forgotten entirely. It doesn’t appear that there has been any effective monitoring of this state of affairs by the Conservative-led administration.

There has been little response from the Tory leadership of the Council beyond a series of inadequate comments about “teething troubles”. Rubbish collection is the most tangible benefit people receive from their Council Tax and when this most basic of functions falls over people are justifiably angry. It boils down to a test of competence and the Tories are failing it badly.

I have written to the Leader of the Council and I reproduce the text below.

Dear Alec,

You and I are both aware that the new waste and recycling contract for Cornwall is a major undertaking. Everyone expected some teething problems in the form of missed collections, but trusted that these would be cleared up with a smile and an apology.

What has transpired in Cornwall since 2nd April is, I would suggest, of a different order.

Not only have there been thousands of missed collections, but the call centre has been jammed, thousands of homes have not received their new recycling containers, promises of action within 48 hours have been consistently broken, the wrong collection vehicles have been sent to narrow streets, lower levels of service have been imposed on residents without consultation or information and piles of uncollected refuse have littered our streets. In short, I believe that this entire transition has been mishandled.

Given the failures on this project, I would invite you to do three things:

First, that you and the council should stop pretending that these are only a few teething troubles and acknowledge that there are very large areas of Cornwall which have been failed by the new contract. Please issue a formal apology for these failures;

Second, we need to sort these problems out. I and my group have always been ready to assist in any way we can, but the pretence that there are no real problems and the lack of information is hindering moves to put the system right;

Finally, as a Council, we need to understand what went wrong. Was this a failure in preparation by either the Council or Cory? Why were so many collections missed and why could the call centre not cope? The latter is particularly important given that this is a service that we are considering selling to other public sector organisations. The waste and recycling service may be large, but it is hardly the only big contract let by this council. We need to ensure that the same chaos does not affect service changes in the future. I would therefore ask you to support my call for a full inquiry – led by the EP&E scrutiny committee – into the contract change and to ensure that officers and cabinet members make available any and all information requested by that committee.

Cabinet members are undoubtedly right when they say that there are aspects of the change which have gone extremely smoothly and we should recognise these successes. But we must also properly acknowledge the failings, apologise for them and ensure that they cannot happen again.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

Jeremy

As you may already be aware, there will be changes to rubbish and recycling collections in Cornwall from 2nd April and in many cases this will involve different collection days and different containers for recycling.

To find out how the changes will affect you follow this link and to find out your new collection day use the postcode checker on the Cornwall Council homepage.

In what has come to be known as the ‘post-democratic era’ at Cornwall Council, I thought there was very little that could still surprise me about the endless conspiracy and back-biting that swirls around the authority’s Conservative Group. All that changed today, however.

As you may have seen elsewhere, the Deputy Leader of the Tory group has resigned his position, citing skullduggery over the Stadium project and a broader disaffection with Alec Robertson’s leadership style. There are a couple of passages in Scott Mann’s resignation letter which are pure dynamite:

After much thought I have decided to resign from my position as deputy leader of our group. I’m afraid that the straw that broke the camels back is the funding of the stadium for Cornwall. Although the group are generally supportive of the stadium they have made it clear on two separate occasions that no tax payer funding should be used. However a report is now being presented asking for 12-16 million pounds worth of funding.

and:

There appears to be separation from what the group are saying and what you are doing. It is my view that your leadership style is one that is not conducive to democratic decision making.

In a sense this is faintly reminiscent of Geoffrey Howe’s famous assassination of Margaret Thatcher’s Premiership, but anyone who thinks this automatically spells the end for Alec Robertson’s leadership of Cornwall Council should think twice before laying any bets. We have, after all, been here before. It was only last year that his own membership tried to topple him – he survived by the skin of his teeth and even claimed it represented an endorsement of his style. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the bunker mentality only becomes stronger as a result of this.

Nevertheless, this has not been a great week for the Leader. He came a poor second in his needless spat with the Council’s Chairman and was condemned by Members from all sides for some unwarranted personal attacks on his opponents during the budget debate. The unwelcome resignation of a high-profile member has capped off an embarrassing few days for him. Is he likely to pay any attention and learn from the experience? No one should hold their breath.

Yesterday was Cornwall Council’s supposedly annual Budget Meeting (although we seem to have two of these a year these days).

The Tory Leader of the Council seemed a bit edgy from the start and although he tried to put forward a positive message he seemed to cut a more isolated figure as the day rumbled on. One thing he was able to do was accept the Lib Dem proposal for a Council Tax freeze which is paid for by a one-off grant from central government.

What he couldn’t do was give the Council any meaningful detail on where the Tory-led authority will wield the axe in search of £40m worth of cuts previously voted through. Indeed, at one point we had the bizarre spectacle of him trying to claim there would be no cuts, only “reductions” in service.

The fear is that, in spite of a supposed rabbit being pulled out of the hat a month or two back, areas like the rural bus network will once again come under threat due to the administration’s ill thought out plans. We have already seen this area in crisis over the last twelve months because of the administration’s failure to keep its eye on the ball and this has also been the case with the car parks budget and the provision of public toilets. I asked for a guarantee that the Cabinet would pay closer attention this year but nothing was forthcoming.

In the end the budget was passed, primarily due to Tory and Independent votes, but questions will continue to be asked over the coming months about the devil in the lack of detail. There are no signs that there will be too many answers.

A Tory Cabinet Member on Cornwall Council (who blogs even less frequently than I do) has stepped into the debate about the civic role of the Chairman of the Council, questioning why the authority is debating the Olympic Torch row at a time “when there are so many important issues to be addressed”.

It is, of course, the classic device deployed when those in charge would prefer a thorny issue to go away, but in a sense he is probably right: Cornwall Council shouldn’t have to be debating the civic function of the office of Chairman. The point he forgets is that this wouldn’t have arisen if the Chairman of the Council, whose impartiality is widely considered to be impeccable, had been left to represent Cornwall in the way she has always done since she was elected.

Instead, we have seen the Leader’s clumsy attempt to muscle in on a non-political photocall which has led to an undermining of the Chairman’s office. What is behind this I’m not entirely sure, although I’m not alone in suspecting the involvement of one of Cornwall’s Tory MPs who may or may not have instructed the Leader to “show them who wears the trousers” at their regular disaster committee meetings in the top floor bunker at County Hall.

Perhaps the question the Tory Cabinet Member should be asking is not why the Council has to waste time debating this, but rather why the Leader can’t find more important things to be doing than interfering in areas which are none of his business.

Cornwall Council’s Cabinet met today to discuss a number of important issues (not least their handbrake turn on the buses) but the story that will probably make tomorrow’s papers will be the Leader’s extraordinary outburst about the use of Twitter.

Those with reasonable medium-term memories will recall a brief storm over Councillors using the social networking site a couple of years ago, but it is now accepted as the norm (like it or not) in council chambers, courtrooms and even Parliament, with many viewing it as a more accessible way of following proceedings than the traditional method of sitting through a meeting waiting for the item (or items) of interest.

Cornwall Council’s Leader has, however, decided to park his throne right in the path of the oncoming wave of social media with his unilateral ban on the use of Twitter at today’s meeting. He read out some (admittedly less than complimentary) tweets from Members and announced that he was using the Council’s recently passed broadcasting protocol to ban any further interaction with the outside world.

Some will say that Councillors shouldn’t be tweeting during meetings at all and, although I disagree, I do understand that point of view. However, in this case the dissenting tweets came from people who were not voting members of the Cabinet and therefore not participating directly in the meeting (apart from one rogue tweet from within the inner circle). The Leader’s ban attempted to put a stop to the external debate and affected not only councillors, but journalists and members of the public too.

It’s difficult to understand the purpose of this beyond suffocating dissent and it’s questionable whether he is actually entitled to do this.

The Leader’s actions today have been nothing but counterproductive for him. The stories he wanted to put out will have slipped down the news agenda and his administration now looks even more paranoid and controlling.

The Leader has often complained about the accusations of a ‘bunker mentality’ but he really doesn’t help himself sometimes. Nor does it do a great deal for his oft-repeated claim of ‘openness and transparency’.

Some time ago I wrote a post about the facilities the Americans left behind at Trevisker St Eval. I reflected at the time that it would be a tragedy if these buildings were left empty while the local community faced the closure of its Post Office, shop and community facilities.

Two years on, after an astonishing amount of hard work from members of the community, I was invited to attend the opening of new facilities – on the site of the former US buildings at Orion Drive.

No one should underestimate what an amazing achievement this has been for the local community. There have been numerous occasions when everything seemed to be lost and it appeared that St Eval might head the way of so many other rural settlements and fall into slow decline. The local residents had other ideas. Their determination has been outstanding. They have fought their corner with the Ministry of Defence, worked up business plans and put in the hard, unpaid labour to produce a social club, kitchen, meeting venue and a new Post Office. Most crucially of all, they have never given up.

There will still be many obstacles in the future, but the local community was proud to open the doors today. It is an amazing achievement with an incredible community spirit at its heart – local residents have every right to be proud.

(You can read more about the community at St Eval here.)