The governer of the Bank of England has said that we might be entering into recession which is don’t panic the plebs code for “shit, how am I going to keep up the payments on my yacht”. Of course we’re in a recession, we’ve known for months that it was starting and that things were only going to get worse.
All of which means we need to tighten our belts and when I say “we” I’m including the state. We can’t afford to throw billions at banks but Alistair Darling has done it anyway. But it might not end there – El Gordo told the world that they’d look at letting banks that have had taxpayers money paying dividends after 12 months after investors told him what a crap investment a bank that can’t pay dividends for a couple of years is. But then Federal Europe poked its nose in and said that the banks can’t pay a dividend for 5 years otherwise they’ll class the money the banks have had as state aid and then the British government will get fined and the banks will have to pay the money back as a penalty for having been given the money before Federal Europe decided to move the goalposts.
But it’s not just bailing out banks by the Treasury that has got to stop – local authorities spend billions collectively and they need to do their bit to save cash as well. There was a story in the Shropshire Star last night, next to the story about Daisy the cow going missing (don’t worry, she was later found in farmer Jones’ field), was a piece on Telford & Wrekin council’s accountants warning the council that they’re facing a funding gap fo a couple of big projects.
Telford & Wrekin have committed to part funding a rail freight terminal to the tune of £3.6m. They intend to fund this by selling council-owned property. It’s a lot of money but they can comfortably dispose of £3.6m worth of property, even though the property market has fallen on its arse. But they’re also ploughing ahead with a massive “regeneration” programme from the Borough Towns Initiative which requires an investment from the council of £21.4m to be funded almost entirely from selling property and topped up with a load for about one and a half million.
You can see where this going can’t you? Shame the council doesn’t seem to be able to.
There are several large house building projects under way in Telford and they’ve all scaled back building to almost nothing. The council owns lots of land and property that’s ripe for housing or commercial development but the housing market has dried up and companies aren’t splashing out on new buildings because nobody has got any money. To raise that kind of money through property and land disposal is going to mean selling a damn sight more than they would have done as little as three months ago and in doing so they will have sold assets at a cut down price that will, in all likelihood, return to their previous value in a year or two.
I’m all for regeneration and god knows some parts of Telford desperately need it. I expect the promised regeneration of the estate I live on is all hanging on this Borough Towns Initiative money but we simply can’t afford it. The previous Labour administration pioneered the scorched earth policy they seem to have adopted nationally increasing spending, cutting council tax and spending a third of the council’s cash reserves once they realised they were going to lose the next election. There is very little money in the kitty, the economy is on its knees, the cost of borrowing is high and committing the council taxpayers of a borough with a mere 160,000 residents to £25m of spending on the day the governer of the Bank of England admits we’ve entered into recession is bordering on criminally irresponsible.
Technorati Tags: Recession, Economy, Telford, Bank of England
is it me, or did Broon not just say he would not use his wife and bairns as stage props?
And is Mrs broon not out wanking off goats for gordo in fife?
Whatever! Just so long as we can spend our £10 billion+ on the Olympics, everything will be all right. Bread and circuses, give us what we want.
A council that will splash money about whilst restricting bin services and otehr things is not on the planet. What happens in council chambers – some form of lobotomy?
“I expect the promised regeneration of the estate I live on is all hanging on this Borough Towns Initiative money but we simply can’t afford it.”
It isn’t tied to the BTI. I managed to get Brookside out of the BTI and there is £2M for capiltal projects on Brookside and £10,000 for an environmental clean up. The trouble is that they (officers) are at a loss as to what to with the £2M – I want to see it spent, they want to sit on it and wait and see. They say £2M is not enough. In the meantime nothing is happening.
I am waiting to be put in the lead position regarding Brookside, Woodside and Sutton Hill regeneration but as a cabinet assistant I will have no executive power in any case. It’s as though they think that by waiting, the economic problems will just disappear. In the real world of practical politics we know that they are likely to be with us for years!
I put in a call to the council yesterday to find out some more information because it’s a lot of money and because of the reasons I’ve already put above. Councillor Eric Carter kindly phoned me back at about half eight last night to talk about it. He said he’s not going to sell anything unless it’s going to realise its true value.
£2m sounds like a lot of money but when you think about what needs doing in Brookside, it’s not a great deal. I imagine it would cost more than £2m just to rebuild the shopping arcade-cum-drug den-cum-beer garden. As long as it’s not in an Icelandic bank, sitting on it for a year or two until the council’s land and property assets are worth more wouldn’t hurt. I’d love to see this place tarted up but not if it means a bit now and a bit later when there’s some more money. To get the natives to appreciate what has been done and to have some respect for the place it needs to be the big bang approach.
There is certainly a debate to be had. However, I have submitted arguments for the precise opposite of what you say and I am awaiting the feedback. I do not believe that the regeneration of Brookside necessarily rests upon a retail developement, particularly in or around it’s present location. When I contested the election I took the trouble to knock on doors. I received a very clear message: Crime, ASB, Environment, Bins, Housing, Schools. No one, save for those that live next to it mentioned the shopping centre.
The fact is that the £2M allocation was never going to be enough to deliver a new shopping centre and attend to the wider concerns on the estate and I said so at the time. However, it was held that a developer might well come on board. I can’t see it now myself and I believe that it is time for action on the wider issues. I have never favoured the “big bang” approach. It is the small things that matter to people the most. They are the things that people talk to me about everyday and yet they are the things that present the greatest difficulty. Why? Because T&W puts the “vision” ahead of the practical reality.
“The previous Labour administration pioneered the scorched earth policy they seem to have adopted nationally increasing spending, cutting council tax and spending a third of the council’s cash reserves once they realised they were going to lose the next election. There is very little money in the kitty, the economy is on its knees, the cost of borrowing is high and committing the council taxpayers of a borough with a mere 160,000 residents to £25m of spending on the day the governer of the Bank of England admits we’ve entered into recession is bordering on criminally irresponsible.”
You know Stuart, I really do question your logic. Labour spent precious little on Brookside for years! When did they ever raid the kitty for the people of Brookside? As for the 160,000 residents, don’t deserve to see a return for their taxes? God knows they’re not likely to get much of one from Gordon Brown. Any fool could see that we were likely to enter a recession: I contend that we’ve actually been in one for months whilst the “official” rate of inflation has been a joke for over a year!
Yes, the BTI will have to be reviewed but let’s not talk the people of Brookside out of their regeneration. If we “sit on it” for two or three years, the infrastructure and environment around the estate will be even worse. My view is that credit crunch or no credit crunch, recession or no recession, Brookside residents, including you, deserve to see improvements. That £2M is a start. It was always going to be just a start. £2M up from where we were when I entered elected office. The ideas as to the refurbishment of “Brookside centre” (i.e. the shops) did not originate with me. I agreed however, that if we could deliver, then fine. That was when expectations were raised. However, I don’t believe they can deliver in the current climate and therefore I want to revisit my original ideas which were gleaned from talking with residents on their own doorstep.
Those talks were concerned with practical realities like bins and derelict houses which, somwhere along the line, seem to have forgotten as people have been swept up with this “vision” of a 21st Century City. I was never swept up in it. Indeed, I have been fighting an up hill struggle to get into the drivibg seat on Brookside to take the thing forward in a realistic manner. And now, at the last, at the very point when I am in reach of taking the reigns, you say we can’t afford it!
Great. But apparently, tax-payers CAN afford to bail-out profligate banks to the tune of £750 BILLION and more. But little Brookside can’t have it’s £2M spent now. What’s the point Stuart? It’s bad enough that Brookside people have had to wait until now. You come and be councillor for Brookside and tell the people that they should get nothing because of “recession”.
George, you must have read something different and then posted a comment on what I wrote!
If you’re going to spend, say, £10m on a housing estate that’s run down partly because of neglect and partly because of the actions of some of the residents then you need to go for the big bang approach to address both problems. Spending money will sort out the neglect bit (at least temporarily) but if it’s in bits and drabs then the destructive natives with no respect for their local area won’t do their bit and stop destroying it.
There was some street art graffiti left behind after Brookside Day this year to make the area by the school look better – it didn’t make it past 24 hours intact. Little bits and pieces won’t work, it needs to be a big bang.
Something like…
Carpet bomb the place and turn it into a holiday resort? 😉
Or is that only Woodside?
Now, now Stu…despite all we know about TAW council, it’s unfair to say they couldn’t find their arse with an Atlas…they’d be unable to find it with a satnav, or even if it was glued to their hands…