Leicester Mercury political correspondent
Leicester City Council
Mayoral endorsements
Feb 3rd
Firebrand ex-cabinet member Andy Connelly, shouty councillor Anne Glover, pretentious website owner Sundip Meghani, giggling Neil Clayton and returning cabinet member Michael Cooke are all behind the campaign to make Willmott mayor of Leicester.
Councillor count is relatively low, though, so he’s used his website to list other “key supporters” from the Labour Party including Sarah Brack, Dave Brazier, Brian and Pat Roberts and Lucy Chaplin.
All very positive. Although just a touch less impressive that it looks. It’s little wonder that he’s secured the endorsement of “key supporter” Ms Chaplin.
She is, after all, Ross’s partner.
UPDATE: It’s worth pointing out that Lucy is also Labour candidate for Stoneygate at the local elections in May, and therefore a political figure in her own right.
Cooke’s care cuts
Jan 30th
Poor Michael Cooke. He’s only been cabinet member for adult services for a couple of weeks but already I’ve got him on speed dial.
He’s the go-to guy for me when it comes to reporting on the most sensitive and emotionally-charged cuts; care homes, day centres, meals for the elderly, care for the disabled.
He’s one of the most up-front and honest councillors I’ve dealt with in the city. When I talk to him he sets out the administration’s position in full, without spin, and gives it his backing.
In a recent interview with the Mercury’s Adam Wakelin he even said: “I’ll be blaming the Tories for closing those homes come election time because I’d be stupid not to.” But while he plans to blame the Tories come election time, right now he’s the man in the firing line of angry old folks and public service union bosses.
It would have been Rory Palmer who faced the hostility, of course, but he resigned six weeks ago to help run Peter Soulsby’s mayoral campaign.
Coincidentally, his resignation meant he didn’t have to make any of the major budget cutbacks. He presided over periods of investment, but when it came to the really bad times a councillor was plucked from the back benches to deliver the bad news to the people of Leicester.
One Labour backbencher told me yesterday that the circumstances could help make any potential bid to become a local MP more straightforward, particularly during the party selection process. ”Rory didn’t have to implement any Tory cuts,” they said.
The next general election is set for 2015, but the opportunity to head to Westminster could arise sooner rather than later. If Peter gets the big mayoral job there’ll be a tantalising vacancy in Leicester South…
The Folding Knife
Jan 28th
Sarah Russell knitted, Patrick Kitterick tried and failed to complete a sudoku, and Ross Willmott thumbed a novel.
It’s easy to tune out at full council as Parmjit Gill asks streams of questions which could have been cleared up weeks earlier with a quick call to council officers.
But it was Willmott’s reading material that distracted me. A book called The Folding Knife by K J Parker.
The book’s synopsis reads:
Basso the Magnificent. Basso the Great. Basso the Wise. Basso the Murderer.
The First Citizen of the Vesani Republic is an extraordinary man. He is ruthless, cunning and, above all, lucky.
He brings wealth, power and prestige to his people. But with power comes unwanted attention, and Basso must defend his nation and himself from threats foreign and domestic.
In a lifetime of crucial decisions, he’s only ever made one mistake. One mistake, though, can be enough.
One wonders whether Basso’s one mistake was deciding to run for a county parliamentary seat while trying to hold down his position within the, er, republic.
In the red zone
Jan 27th
If you’re in any doubt about why the city council is desperate to resolve the safety issues at its New Walk headquarters, the picture below might explain a few things.
Scores of areas like these are seen throughout the two buildings. Sections of floorspace marked out with bright red tape, where no desks, chairs or filing cabinets are allowed to stand for safety reasons.
Staff may walk through the spaces but it is not encouraged. Health and safety says they shouldn’t really stop and stand still within the areas either.
The buildings are crumbling, and yesterday the council briefed the media that two potential solutions would be shortlisted next month.
The two main options which will be considered are demolishing block B of New Walk and refurbishing block A, or buying the Leicester Mercury building, refurbishing it, and moving staff in.
Make no mistake, the preferred option is to buy the Mercury building. The council says it will help bolster the so-called Cultural Quarter with extra footfall and give the council a prestigious main office.
Engineering company Arup tells the council it needs to find a solution to the safety issues by June this year.
I’ve no knowledge of my own company’s attitudes to the plans, other than the comments we’ve already printed in the Mercury. But I do have my finger on the pulse of political feeling at the city council.
Barring a major breakdown in negotiations the council’s flag will be surely be flying above this impressive St George Street building by some point next year.
“Ross Grant is a monster unleashed”
Jan 22nd
Ross Grant, the leader of the Conservative group on Leicester City Council, has become a “monster unleashed”.
That’s the phrase used in an email sent by Tory councillor Nigel Porter to colleague Andy Bayford, branch chairman Roman Scuplak and others dated January 15.
He says Grant is “bullying” him and his actions have caused him and his family stress.
Let me fill you in on the situation. There’s an investigation underway by the council over a potential breach of the data protection act by Nigel.
A document, apparently given only to him, was given to a third party. The council launched an investigation, and Ross Grant was made aware of the situation.
Ross contacted Nigel early last Saturday and asked for a sit-down meeting with him urgently. I understand that the deadline was 48 hours or so. This wasn’t met and Nigel was later suspended from the council’s main opposition group. Other issues are swirling around, but I’ve covered the main thread.
I’ve published Nigel’s email below. Ross Grant is in the difficult position of not being able to comment until party process is complete, so do bear in mind that we’ve only got one side of the story here.
In Aylestone at the last local election we increased our vote by 17%; in part this was because we always respond promptly to any enquiries and never miss surgeries. Even my mother (who has been a member for more years than she would care to remember) was pleased to hear that Councillors will have to pay 3% to the party. She said, she can now stop wasting her money on the general election. She was very amused when she heard that councillor Grant seriously believed he was going to win.
Councillor Grant called me at 9.30 this morning about council matters, demanding that I meet with him. He claims he wants an urgent meeting with me in the next 48 hours yet he refuses to tell me what it is about; despite me asking him a number of times.
A person should be told what a meeting is about in advance for several reasons: out of common courtesy, for practical reasons (one may need to prepare and bring materials or resources to the meeting to share or study them in advance), one may wish to bring another person along for support (an advocate, representative, amanuensis or witness) how would one know who to bring?
If someone is going along ’in the dark’ they will naturally be anxious, therefore will not be thinking clearly and not be able to contribute properly.
Councillor Grant is bullying me. When I explained to councillor Grant why I thought I should be told what the meeting was about councillor Grant said: ’I don’t care, I’m the leader in the Council and in the group and this is how I’m going to do it, this is what’s happening. You either do it or you don’t. Councillor Grant is abusing his position to make me do something I felt was wrong.
Councillor Grant has now sent me an email in which he says I have refused to meet him this weekend. At no point during the call this morning did councillor Grant tell me that I had to meet with him this weekend or at 9.00am on Monday morning the next course of action is likely to be proceeding with my suspension.
The deadline of 9am on Monday has appeared from nowhere as has the threat that councillor Grant has power to suspend me if I do not rush unprepared and headlong in the ambush councillor Grant has no doubt prepared for me.
He says in his email the matter is urgent and serious but refuses to give me the slightest detail. What if the matter could easily be cleared up if I brought something along with me to the meeting?
I have not refused to meet him; all I have asked is that he lets me know what it is about for the reasons stated above.
Like most people with a young family such short notice is not always possible. I never said I refuse to meet him all I want is transparency; I am willing to meet him and I would be available to meet any time during the day on Thursday or Friday.
What ever councillor Grant thinks of me personally he should credit me with a little sense. I am no more a lamb than he is a lion.
Can you imagine the stress councillor Grant has caused me and my family? And councillor Grant has done this before.
You might be surprised that I am sharing this with you all, but I sat and thought and prayed for guidance - how should I proceed? I looked deep into my heart and realised that I could no longer keep quiet. I felt by keeping quiet this is what councillor Grant wants and in effect I would be sheltering him. My partner says Councillor Grant – has become a monster unleashed. And I should do whatever is in my power to rein him in, however unpalatable that may be.
In the mean time I hope to meet councillor Grant to discuss the matter.
My budget zinger
Jan 19th
City council budget briefing day on Wednesday. Glum faces. Chief executive and head of finance did the detail while Veejay Patel, Vi Dempster and Mohammed Dawood did the politics. Press man Mark Bentley looked on.
On the subject of controversial changes to staff contracts Veejay used his gravest of tones. “This is not something we would have chosen to do.” Among the changes was the removal of free parking spaces for some staff. All part of sharing the burden of the cuts, the councillors nodded.
Then time for my zinger: “You know the car park for councillors underneath New Walk Centre? Will you be charging for that?”
An uncomfortable mumble from some of those present. One officer grinned.
Dawood: “Sorry I missed the question.”
Veejay responded: “Er, no.”
“But is it at least under consideration?” I pressed.
“We can look at that yes,” Veejay said, quickly scribbling down the suggestion.
Don’t hold your breath on that one, folks. The full council would have to vote it through, and turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.
The big bacon ballot box
Jan 16th
The race to become elected mayor of Leicester is really getting into gear now.
The Labour party’s local government committee has given wannabes the green light to begin their campaigns, and other parties are due to do the same soon.
Candidates hoping to win their party’s nomination will first have to woo their party’s members, before going up against other candidates in the main contest on May 6.
But a book called The Lore of the Land details the unique way that Leicester’s mayor was chosen as recently as 1762:
An odd story formerly current was that the mayor of Leicester was chosen by a sow. According to an article in the St James’s Magazine in 1762, aspiring candidates would each sit with a hat full of beans in his lap and the new mayor would be the one from whose hat the sow ate first.
I’ll let you write your own snouts-in-the-trough jokes…
Hat-tip: Liberal England
Twitter storm over leaked budget
Jan 16th
The city council’s budget was leaked late last week and the Mercury published the key points in Saturday’s paper, at the earliest opportunity.
There was a bit of a storm on Twitter from Councillor Sarah Russell and activists alike, who said that the paper was wrong to publish before staff had been briefed.
My personal view is that we write for the tens and tens of thousands of rate payers across the city who deserve to know at the earliest opportunity what plans their local authority are making.
But I think those who complained loudest know deep down that it would be wrong to expect a newspaper to hold off publishing such information.
Colleague Lee Marlow summed up the situation:
If you were cynical. you might think they were trying to create some kind of smokescreen…
Meanwhile the Mercury’s Mark Charlton offers a handy Viz-style Top Tip to city politicos:
CITY POLITICIANS: Take the heat off your controversial decisions by blaming the Mercury for publicising them
Willmott’s website woe
Jan 4th
Ross Willmott has stolen a march on his rivals for elected mayor with his new campaign website.
It’s designed by Eazy Tiger (the same folks who were given the One Leicester branding job) and it’s pretty smart.
Ross has also been careful not to leave himself open to any criticism; the website was registered and set up after the consultation process was completed, and the photographs were bought from an agency from his own pocket.
Although judging by his most recent blog post that hasn’t stopped people from going negative in the website’s comments. He said:
I am sorry to disappoint those who have made personal and pointless comments, you’re right, I won’t be publishing them here. I want to make it clear that I am more than prepared to respond, and to publish serious enquiries about my campaign and what I would do if elected as Leicester’s Mayor.
The Mercury’s website comments, however, give you a flavour of what he’s had to contend with:
Surely, the voters of the City of Leicester are not that gullible to vote for this chap or have they got short memories. I hope he is soundly and roundly beaten!!
-David, Great Easton, Rural Leicestershire
His record is far from successful, in fact it is one of failure, to serve. As soon a politician is more interested in self than service, he should resign. The decisions he has made have been to drive through his ‘pet projects’ for his own grandisement which have resulted in ‘white elephants’ such as the Curve, Phoenix.
-Kulgan, Crydee
Ross go and take a walk off the pier, LEICESTER people HATE you, if he gets in i will not pay any more council tax, the guy is a waster and will waste OUR MONEY….
-Freddy
Rory Palmer, Peter Soulsby and Leicester South
Dec 14th
He wasn’t pushed, and he wasn’t forced to jump, either.
Instead Rory Palmer quit the city council’s cabinet of his own free will. It’s rare in politics, that.
I tried as hard as I could on Monday afternoon, but I couldn’t uncover a whiff of tension or resentment from any of his colleagues. Senior councillors were as puzzled as me at his departure.
Not for long though. On announcing that he was off to help Sir Peter Soulsby to campaign to become mayor of Leicester, tounges started wagging.
A win for Soulsby – and you’d be made to heavily bet against it at the moment – would open-up a juicy vacancy in parliament.
Who’d be in pole position for that plum job? None other than Rory Palmer, some say.
If that’s the case, he’d have to be confident that he’s onto a winner, he’s given up a £14,000-a-year allowance to work unpaid for Peter.
One Labour party old-hand praised his move on the phone to me last night. “He could easily have hung on to the cabinet role and pretended he was still committed to it, he’s done the honourable thing.” Another was less charitable: “His departure doesn’t surprise me. I doubt he’d want to be associated with the cuts he’d have to impose as cabinet lead.”
But let us set that aside and concentrate on what I believe will become a key opposition point over the coming weeks.
Rory has said he could not carry out a part-time council role effectively while campaigning for Sir Peter, and has quit a full six months before a potential May election.
So will Peter be doing the same and resign? Can he really carry out his full-time role as parliamentarian while campaigning for six months to become mayor?
How long does it take Mark Bentley to get a letter posted?
Dec 10th
More than a week, according to Tory opposition leader Ross Grant.
He told Wednesday night’s finance committee that people had been left in the dark over the elected mayor consultation in some parts of the city.
For example he said turned up at one library to find that the consultation poster was still lying in an envelope, un-opened, on Monday. That was the final day of the consultation.
But more curious was the postmark. November 30 – nine days after the shotgun council meeting which began the attempt to ram through the elected mayor idea.
He told the committee: “We were all quickly hauled into the council chamber to start this process, yet the head of communications couldn’t even get the consultation documents to a library for nine days after that.”
A first hand experience for a city councillor of press office delays?
The truth about council FOIs
Nov 19th
Members of the public submit more than half of requests
Some councillors around Britain would have you believe that the Freedom of Information Act is a dodgy piece of legislation which has been hijacked by journalists and is rarely used by members of the public.
They say that the majority of requests made to local authorities are by media organisations digging dirt, while the members of the public it was aimed at aren’t as interested in using it.
Earlier this month communities secretary Eric Pickles poured cold water on the possibility of councils charging for Freedom of Information Requests after growing pressure from local authority chiefs.
Among them was Hampshire’s cabinet member for efficiency, Cllr Colin Davidovitz, who said:
“There’s no doubt that newspapers use the information they receive from FoIs to benefit a great deal, by putting it on their front page to sell more papers. They are benefiting from research we do on their behalf, at our expense. Why should taxpayers pay for newspapers to benefit?’
Recently I submitted an informal request (via the press office, rather than under FOI) for Leicester City Council’s disclosure log for a sample three-month period. It shows the reality of FOI requests.
Less than a quarter of requests in Leicester came from the media. That’s not just the Mercury, but BBC Leicester, community media groups, local television news programmes and websites. It also includes national FOI requests which cast their net across every council in the country.
It was most heartening to discover that 92 of the requests were recorded as from members of the public, however I suspect that the 18 also submitted via websites such as WhatDoTheyKnow.com are very likely to be from members of the public also. This would increase the figure to just over half of all requests.
Eight requests were submitted internally – which I presume means from councillors who choose this rather than informal member queries. Nine were from unions, 35 were from private companies, one was from an education establishment, one was a “parliamentary brief” and five were from pressure groups.
I want to make it clear that this isn’t an attempt to target the city council, I’m simply using their figures to shed new light on a national argument.
And to be fair, the city council has attempted to work with members of the media in the past, encouraging us to use press office mechanisms rather than the more costly FOI process.
Unfortunately, journalistic scepticism of council-approved responses across the UK means that some members of the press are reluctant to take up similar offers, preferring the formal legal route of FOI.
Luckily – these figures appear to show – we’re not as big a part of the problem as some councils in Britain would have you think.
