​2015 was a special year for Ledbury Town Council. There was, for the first time in a very long time, an election for all its members. A sprinkling of new faces who appeared in the Council heralded fresh thinking and enthusiasm. Did it live up to its promise? Did the lights of democracy finally flicker into life?
 
After the rifts and bitterness of the previous year's Barnes’ mayoralty, Annette Crowe swept into the Mayor’s seat like a latter-day Brunhilde, pledged to bring people together, to sow happiness, and introduce a new era of openness and democratic transparency.  At her Civic Service, Handel’s majestic coronation anthem, Zadok the Priest, rang out in a burst of hope and joy. While she and her friends were thrilled, not everyone was suitably impressed with this regal musical offering. Eyebrows were also raised when invitations went out for the ‘Mayor’s Glitz and Glamour’ Ball, a hefty £45 a head taking place at Alexander Park, half way to Hereford.
 
But despite these minor off-key gaffes, hopes were high that Annette’s reign could only bring better things to the Council. God knows, they surely couldn’t get any worse after her predecessor. Could they?
 
Yes they could.
 
The last twelve months has surely to rank as the most ineffectual and unimpressive term of mayoral office since… well, the year before, as it happens, during Bob Barnes’ inglorious turn with the plate chain. And that is saying a lot.
 
Reviewing positive achievements coming of Ledbury Town Council’s efforts is an undeniable challenge, particularly so this year.
No Room.
There is one. In the teeth of seething opposition from the Old Guard, some council meetings have been relocated to disabled-accessible venues. Being charitable, it’s a step in the right direction. Mind you, for as many meetings that have taken place away the Market House, an equal number have remained there. How so?
 
Personally, that shabby upstairs room has never appealed: from the throne-like dais upon which the Mayor and her lackeys grandly comport themselves, the steep dark stairs, the amateurishly arranged pictures and wonky displays, to its dingy lighting and impossible acoustics, the place reeks of oppressive tradition, a throw-back to the 1850s when it was done out as a meeting room. It is not a comfortable space. Yes the Market House is an icon of Ledbury – but for all the wrong reasons.
 
Why is the Council still using a room that is completely off-limits to anyone who can’t manage stairs or struggles with their hearing, a room that is impervious to good quality sound and video recording? I think we know the answer to that question, but I asked this anyway at a Council meeting and was told condescendingly how very hard it is to find suitable meeting rooms in Ledbury. I wanted to argue the point, but despair overcame me.

There are two problems. Why hasn’t a venue roster for the next four years of the Council been drawn up? From the various church halls, the Community Hall, St Katherine’s, the Burgage Hall and school assembly halls, surely a range of vacant slots can be identified? If not immediately – let’s not get too excited - at least the town might expect that sometime in the yawning future all meetings will happen at ground level. Not yet it seems. No financial provision has been made for room bookings in the coming year. Also, no arrangements have been made to reserve a regular slot in accessible rooms as and when they become available.
 
The plain fact is that Ledbury Town Council has no interest in making itself accessible to the community.  Annette Crowe’s early enthusiasm for this easiest of projects has all but petered out.  No stars awarded.

​This brings us to the second point. Ledbury needs more community meeting facilities. So what consideration has the Council given to this subject? None. In a couple of years’ time, Ledbury’s population could have grown by several thousand souls. The pressure on facilities will become more intense. For a town of its size, Ledbury is pitifully short of meeting, performance and rehearsal spaces. Who cares? Not the Council. It’s too busy running the cemetery (at a financial loss) and other traditional ‘maintenance’ pastimes that occupy all its efforts and imagination.
Unneighbourly Behaviour.
As usual in the face of such pressing questions, Ledbury Town Council prefers to look inwards and spend a lot time fiddling with itself. The Neighbourhood Plan could have been the vehicle to identify locations for town centre assembly rooms catering to young and old together, bigger and better than we have now. There is public money to support such projects. Look at Bishops Frome’s splendid new village centre.
 
Alas, the volunteers sustaining Ledury’s Neighbourhood Plan, running with such revolutionary ideas, were given the sack in October 2015. At that embarrassing Council meeting, Cllr Rob Yeoman applied a dose of political ‘Agent’ Orange to the green shoots of community activism after the disconsolate years with dreary Bob Barnes at the helm of the project
 
The Ledbury Spring: it couldn’t last. In a right-wing coup that would have gladdened a junta of geriatric generals, the Council control freaks snatched it all back. It was an act of vindictive nihilism.  What a stupid thing to do.
 
Cllr Yeoman bemoaned the slow progress and unruly behaviour of the Neighbourhood Plan team. We needed progress, and professionalism, he said, and fast. Consultants would manage the Plan henceforth and in the interests of efficiency, select the best people to work with.
 
Five months later and where are we? Nowhere. Not a thing of substance has been achieved since the coup. I lie, for the budget for the Plan has been raised from £20 thousand to an eye-watering £70 thousand, most of that going the way of consultants, the Foxley Tagg Partnership. The completion date has been pushed back to sometime around 2018 – long after the major housing developments for the town will have been set in stone. That will mean the project has been in progress for seven long years. Why, some of the original members may tragically have passed on by then.
Building Spree.
There has been a ‘call for sites’ with advertisements taken out in the local press in which landowners have been asked to come forward and have their fields and meadows considered for building plots. Not wishing to be too hyperbolic, can I just say that this is an OUTRAGE. Ledbury’s Neighbourhood Plan has no need to consider additional housing on top of the already confirmed Viaduct site (600 homes), the Cricket Pitch (100 homes) and the likely redevelopment of the Football Ground (about 60 homes), the outstanding possibility of Gladman appeal being upheld (321 houses) and the 50+ homes which have already been built in the parish since the clock started ticking in 2011 on the town’s housing growth target of 800 homes by 2031.
 
Given that Ledbury has already more than fulfilled its housing quota up to 2030, why the hell is Mrs Sally Tagg, a development consultant with strong links to the housebuilding industry, being paid an additional £5,000 of public money to solicit further bids from landowners for even more housing? Are the people of Ledbury aware that we have a circle of consultants and town councillors who seem intent on building way more houses than even the development hungry Herefordshire Council has allocated for us? Possibly not: external communications with the community have been typically inadequate and ineffective.
Lacklustre.
In other news, the Town Council ruled out the running of the public toilets in Bye Street. It also refused, until a couple of weeks ago, to share grass-cutting duties with Herefordshire Council, long after every other parish and town in the County had felt it necessary to do so. It refused the opportunity for funding from Herefordshire Council to fill potholes locally. It rebuffed an approach from the police for a ground-breaking burglary deterrent project for the whole town. It has even had to hand back getting on for £8,000 of grant funding which was there to PAY the council to consult with local people. No progress has been made on taking on the running (and income from) any of the town centre car-parks, again, unlike other local market towns. Even the apparent ‘gift’ of a piece of public art is seeing the council surprised by the need for several thousand pounds of public money to be spent on its installation.
 
Out of control traffic continues to upset and endanger local residents. Nothing has been done to tackle this, despite firm proposals being put forward for a traffic management survey to be undertaken. A local resident is fuming that his offer to pay for a speed survey in New Street has been repeatedly rejected by the Town Clerk.
 
Democratic participation: no progress.
 
Ledbury’s miserable markets continue to occupy much time and energy in meetings and working groups, but with little success to show. It’s not difficult to get a good market off the ground. Towns and cities are doing it all over the world, have been for a few thousand years now. Once again, in this town, we continue to miss the mark.
Steady as she goes.
So, Ledbury Town Council’s annual budget of £320 thousand continues to be spent in the way that it always has. Forty per cent of it goes on running the town council itself (see analysis).  It employs a large staff who are apparently rushed off their feet. But what are they doing most of the time? Seemingly running the Council… meetings, minutes, administration, lots of bureaucracy while maintaining a comfortable existence in their cosy, expensive-to-run offices in Church Street. Most of the rest is spent on looking after the Rec, some grounds maintenance in Dog Hill, and subsidising the cemetery – things it has been doing since it first began; plus ça change.
 
Financial regulations are left unreformed. There are still glaring holes in the way the Neighbourhood Plan is being managed. None of the recommendations made by last year’s official auditor have been enacted.
 
It’s not that we have high expectations, or begrudge the wages of Town Council staff, the frustration is that so little happens of consequence as a result of them. What are we getting for our money?

If Ledbury Town Council ceased to exist tomorrow, would anyone notice? Would there be an outcry? Would our quality of life be diminished? I don’t think so. Let’s face it, alternative, much cheaper arrangements not requiring the expensive apparatus of democracy, could be put in place to cut the grass and dig the graves.
 
When you come to look at Ledbury Town Council’s year, there is not a lot to look at, beyond the business-as-usual back-stabbing, the amateurish disregard for rules and due process, the steady drip-drip of poison emanating from shady political groupings, oh, and the deadening cloak of incompetence that seems to attend everything it ever does. How is it that a group of mainly clever, thoughtful, good-hearted people can turn themselves into such a shower?
 
All the grandiose trappings of our town council, are at best an irrelevance, sometimes a nuisance, but mostly a complete waste of time. Buck up people. 
 
The trouble with rising town council tax demands is not so much the 11% percentage increase on the Council Tax bill (which in real terms represents just 65p every month), but the poor value that local people receive from their investment in local services. If we got more for our money and had a town council which worked successfully to bring investment, jobs and extra funding into the town, people like Mr John Worby (Letters, Ledbury Reporter, 25 March) wouldn’t feel quite so much like he was being taken for a mug. 

I get criticised for speaking my mind – which is fair enough. If you start throwing brickbats around, expect them to get lobbed back in your direction. Even so, there are times when straight talk is needed. Like now.

Our challenges are many, and urgent... 


The cuts in services by Herefordshire Council - grass cutting, libraries, public loos, floral displays, care of the elderly, street cleaning and more - are biting deep into the well-being our community. 

Unplanned building development is putting unprecedented pressure on our town. Whatever happens, Ledbury will grow by thousands of people over the next few years, placing increasing stress on local services. Are we ready for that? Already the town’s primary school is oversubscribed, and many local children have to travel to outlying village schools which is inconvenient and provokes resentment.

The UBL Heinekin closure – with the loss of over 100 local jobs - is a reminder that Ledbury simply must get to work and attract business investment. The town’s economy is massively unbalanced with a very unhealthy outflow of daily commuters and pitifully few good, well-paid, secure positions on offer within the town itself.

Deadbury?

For a town of its size, we are not well-endowed with leisure and creative facilities – performance spaces, diverse sports facilities, rehearsal and recording rooms, meeting places, year round festivals and community events. Why else should our lovely town have attracted the hurtful soubriquet, Deadbury? Yes there is great work and tremendous energy put in from diverse voluntary efforts, but Ledbury as a whole lacks infrastructure and investment on a long-term planned basis.

Other towns have been hoovering up Lottery funding, grants and business sector sponsorship. Not so Ledbury…  Where has been the leadership, the vision, the sheer brass neck to make shift happen?

We need, collectively to wake up – not just to the threats, but to the abundant opportunities which surround us. The time is now.

Priorities

Sometimes it’s hard to be constructive, to think of ways that the current Ledbury Town Council ‘administration’ could adapt and evolve in order to rise to the challenges it faces.

A good start might be to convene an open honest discussion among town councillors about the future, what’s working and what isn’t - an Awayday or Retreat. This shouldn’t be a formal council meeting but run on more business-like lines with an independent facilitator. Such a gathering might at least help to create some esprit de corps, a coherent vision on the things upon which we are agreed.

Differences of opinion and competing perspectives are always helpful. The trouble is with places like Ledbury Town Council, such conversations are stilted affairs, taking place in the adversarial bear pit of Council meetings under the glare of the press. This has two consequences. Free debate is stifled, particularly among the quieter and more thoughtful members, and is wont to provoke intemperate behaviour from their more unbridled colleagues. What emerges is a distorted version of reality. The Town Council does not speak for the town. Come to that, the Town Council does not really speak for the Town Council. The messages that emerge are from the loudest and most strident voices, those picked up by the press because they make a good quote or a scandalous headline.

Fit for Purpose

The other huge impediment to progress is the Town Council’s sheer lack of vision and dynamism. It’s not that all its members are without talent and imagination, far from it. The shame is that so many of its precious human resources are wasted, much less exploited.  As an organisation, the Town Council in its current modus operandi, is singularly unfit for purpose in terms of its being able to deliver positively, generously and in timely fashion on Ledbury’s current challenges and opportunities. (The Neighbourhood Plan is a case in point: unhurried to the point of irresponsibility, the finished document is at least a year away.)

But never mind the next fifteen or five years, what for instance are the Town Council’s priorities for the next twelve months? Where is it going to be focusing its energies?  What outcomes is it seeking by the May 2015 election? Who is going to do what? Wouldn’t these be good starting points for the forthcoming budget-setting exercise and a necessary precursor to the democratic process?

Any successful organisation has a corporate plan at least. Ledbury Town Council does not – and the results are painfully obvious. There is drift, incoherence, frustration and an absence of concerted effort on the things that really matter.

Ledbury needs action. Ledbury Town Council needs a strategy. Urgently.

In responding to my recent letter to the Ledbury Reporter, Cllr Anthony Bradford asks upon what factual basis I claim that the town centre is Ledbury’s largest source of jobs and income.

Research carried out under the auspices of Campaign to Protect Rural England by local volunteers showed that in 2011, shops in the town centre employ over 500 people. Businesses supporting shops and restaurants in town employ a further 700. That’s a total of 1,200 jobs. The annual turnover of shops in Ledbury and its suppliers within 30 miles is around £50 million. There are in the region of 80,000 customer visits to shops in Ledbury each week. Shops in Ledbury support additional jobs in other local businesses and services –  such as local  accountants, estate agents, stationers, solicitors, window cleaners, tradespeople, and delivery firms. All of these businesses rely upon trade from local shops. It's an economic web.

Tourism is one of Herefordshire’s and Ledbury’s major industries and attracts large amounts of money into the local economy. In 2008 this injection of spending into Herefordshire totalled £411m supporting 8,500 jobs directly and indirectly (Source: Herefordshire Tourism Strategy).  If we assume conservatively that Ledbury accounted for 20% of that economic benefit (it is probably more than that), then over £80 million was generated in our town supporting 1,700 jobs. Visitors to Ledbury come here to see the heritage buildings and to enjoy the thriving traditional high street (and they might need to use a loo!), so it is logical to say that the local tourism economy is heavily dependent on an attractive thriving town centre.

None of these figures take into account the enormous upkeep costs of our immaculate heritage buildings, which in turn sustain small armies of specialist workers in buildings conservation and related trades. Nor do they include the engineering industries that service the food and agricultural sectors.

Ledbury town centre is not only a vibrant town, a focus for community spirit, but is an engine of economic activity. We are a country town, based in a rich beautiful agricultural area. Our major industries – and employers – are thus food production and supply, and tourism. We tamper with the ingredients of our prosperity at our peril.