As expected, the louts from the far right didn’t materialise in town on Saturday (21 May), but this doesn’t mean the threat to democracy and free speech has gone from the streets of Ledbury. A more insidious authoritarian movement is taking root in the town, not among the more rabid elements of social media as might be supposed, but centred within Ledbury Town Council itself.
 
There is a conspiracy to purge the Council of dissenters. Some councillors appear to be waging a concerted campaign of denigration against their critics. Yes, they are telling lies, but the old guard are also busily manipulating the levers of power to firm their grip on power. The aim is to eliminate from Ledbury Town Council dissident voices, any trace of resistance. By also creating such a hostile environment, it is clear that no decent-minded person would in future contemplate standing for election. If all goes according to plan, at the next poll, there will be few candidates willing to stand for Council, just the old faces, allowing the old rotten borough practice of co-option to return with a vengeance. Neat isn't it?
 
In Ledbury, as in other politically stricken towns (such as Berwick, Frodsham, Peterlee, Tewkesbury), local democracy is being nicely snuffed out by a ruthless clique of legally sanctioned hoodlums. Town and parish councils are truly laws unto themselves: there is no oversight, no ombudsman, no higher authority to which you can appeal. Resistance is not tolerated. They are fertile territory for power freaks, narcissists and right-wing authoritarians.
 
As 'banned' Ledbury Town Councillor Andrew Harrison pointed out at last week's Annual Council Meeting (12 May 2016), our Council is a morally bankrupt institution.
 
If you express an opinion which is contrary to the majority view, and which offends elements of extreme right wing nationalists, you are now liable to be reported for bringing the council into disrepute. Even as an elected councillor, you are not allowed to state your opinion within a council debate, it seems. [i]
 
Minutes, the bedrock of legal constitutional practice, are subject to manipulation, distortion and omission of key facts which present a false account of proceedings. [ii]
 
Scrutiny by elected members is regarded at best as trouble-making, but if persistent, is subject to accusations of bullying and harassment leading to ‘banning’ (as has happened to Andrew Harrison and Liz Harvey).[iii]
 
When some elected councillors with alternative opinions attempt to put their side of things, they are told to be quiet, while others, with more palatable views, are given free rein to read out pre-written statements, wander off topic and be generally offensive or inflammatory whenever they wish. [iv]
 
The Ledbury Town Council establishment takes a very relaxed attitude to the application of its standing orders and financial regulations, either ignoring them completely or, if this proves inconvenient, chucking them aside and coming up with new rules that better suit its purposes. Meantime, some of the rules of operation are scrupulously observed, generally those that disallow discussion or are controlling in nature.[v]
 
At the head of this league table of democratic contempt is the matter of council resolutions, when a vote is taken to do something: these decisions are theoretically inviolate, as legally binding as a court judgement. But in the deceitful world of Ledbury Town Council, they are, if required, completely ignored by councillors (and sometimes staff). [vi]
 
Taken in the round, Ledbury Town Council is a corrupt institution. It has members who are motivated by greed for power, personal self-interest and covert political objectives. It is a place where objectivity, fairness and respect as core ethical values are entirely missing. Anything goes.
 
Political scientists draw a distinction between dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. The former are characterised by the rule of a single figure, or a small ‘junta’; they are totalitarian in the sense that there is no freedom of speech or expression, while democratic institutions and an independent judiciary are suppressed.
 
Ledbury is not a dictatorship – despite the increasing power and influence that has accreted to the cultish figure of the Mayor in recent years under Annette Crowe and Bob Barnes, abetted by the local press.
 
Life under an authoritarian administration is rarely much more agreeable even if it appears less overtly vicious than a dictatorship. There exists superficially a plural system to which the trappings of democracy are paid lip service with elections, legislative debate, and the toleration of dissent – up to a point.
 
In places like Russia, Zimbabwe, and Turkey however, the odds are stacked against alternative voices. There are prosecutions for defaming the government or the church, trumped up charges against opposition politicians, redrawing of the legislative framework to outlaw criticism and there is collusion with a supine press which presents one-sided reportage. Sound familiar? 
 
In this toxic setting, political corruption is rife: nepotism, croneyism, mutual back-scratching for personal advantage and shady deals to do down opponents, up to an including violence. Because the government so effectively controls the channels of mass communication, and by patronage, pulls the strings of the civil service and judges, these regimes cling to power by popular assent. Putin, Mugabe and Erdogan are undeniably popular, and continue to win elections. It doesn’t make them good people or run good governments. The people are spun a line, kept in ignorance. Critics of the regime have their reputations ruined. Dirty tricks do the trick.
 
When there are no rules to which the powerful (and rich) adhere, and when there are no mechanisms to call politicians to account, the door is open to financial corruption. If there’s nobody watching the sweetshop, why wouldn’t people fill their pockets with lollies and bonbons? In dirty politics, you do what you can get away with. Why not?
 
The cancerous nature of authoritarian administration is more than dispiriting. It robs places of their creative vigour and dynamic energy. What’s the point in trying? Advancement happens not by talent or merit, but by knuckling down and playing the game, doing as you’re told, licking sweaty arses.
 
And so to Ledbury. The miserable tarnished crew dodge and scheme their way to looming perdition. We hope. But in the meantime, the casualties are many. Not just the two banned councillors, and those who have resigned or retired in disgust (I am one of a long line over the years), but the decent souls around the town who look on in dismay, the young people sickened by politics, the ratepayers who receive poor value for money, and the enthusiasts for change and action who have their dreams quashed at every turn. Good things happen in Ledbury despite its entourage of costly politicians. Mediocrity rules.
 
Ledbury's authoritarian town council is not just a democratic obscenity, but it is a tragedy for our community.
 
Here's a final thought. I have had some harsh words to say about these people over the years. People ask me, how do I get away with saying such awful things without incurring actions for libel. It's quite simple. I tell the truth. Nothing I say, not a word, is without evidence and justification. Ledbury Town Council is at liberty to sue me for defamation. I challenge them. Do it.
 
Notes...

[i] Cllr Liz Harvey is being reported by Ledbury Town Council for bringing the Council into disrepute. Her offence was to suggest that red, white and blue bunting should not be left up all summer long as it could be construed by some people as a political symbol of the far right, of Loyalist sentiment. Cllr Annette Crowe said that ‘because we’ve had so many complaints about the [bunting issue], and that’s gone into the national newspapers, and the threat from the far right… should not be how a council acts, and I propose that [this] goes forward to Herefordshire Council [as a complaint].
 

[ii] At Ledbury Town Council Standing Committee on 22 December 2015, a resolution was taken to seek alternative clerical support and advice to that being offered by Lynda Wilcox, who was judged not to be impartial and objective in managing the staff complaints process against Cllrs Harrison and Harvey. Lynda Wilcox was acting as stand-in Clerk to LTC and is the Chief Executive of Herefordshire Council of Local Councils. (She is also the wife of Cllr Brian Wilcox, Conservative Councillor and Chairman of Herefordshire Council, but that's another story...)
 
Minutes of that Standing Committee meeting were presented by Annette Crowe to Full Council on 28 January which omitted the Standing Committee resolution dispensing with Lynda Wilcox (who also wrote the minutes). Annette Crowe presented them as an accurate record, knowing them to be incomplete and misleading.
 
A verbal report was also made by Mayor Annette Crowe to LTC Full Council on 19 January, stating that it had been agreed by Standing Committee that Full Council would henceforth be handling the staff grievances (not Standing Committee). No such discussion took place. Annette Crowe actively misled Ledbury Town Council.
 
At the meeting of 25 February Full Council, Cllr Maria Mackness asked why the minutes of Standing Committee were ‘incomplete’. Mayor Crowe refused to discuss the matter and ordered Cllr Mackness to move on. Minutes of that Full Council meeting  (25 Feb) written by Karen Mitchell, presented on 7 April, omitted Cllr Mackness’s important question. Councillors challenged the accuracy of these minutes (because they were incomplete), and were told by the Clerk that accuracy could only be discussed of what was written, not what had been left out.
 
Mrs Wilcox clerked the Extraordinary Full Council Meeting (5 May) to consider ‘sanctions’ against Cllrs Harrison and Harvey.
 
Cllr Harrison questioned why Full Council was being asked to determine the  sanctions against them for bullying, when there had been a council resolution on 19 January which said that the Grievance Panel itself should set the sanctions. Lynda Wilcox said the process was within the terms of reference agreed, and LTC was acting correctly. (It was not).
 
Minutes presented at LTC council meeting 12 May, omitted Cllr Harrison’s important question: again, discussion of the accuracy of minutes was only allowed for what was written, not was left out.
 
Annette Crowe misled councillors on 19 January by not stating that Standing Committee had resolved not to use Lynda Wilcox henceforth because she was prejudiced and compromised.
 
Minutes have been systematically falsified to conceal this fact by Lynda Wilcox, and presented as accurate by Annette Crowe, Mayor.
 
Council took decisions concerning the prosecution of the grievance process which were contrary to council resolutions, unlawful in respect of the provisions of the Localism Act 2011, and outside of ACAS guidelines pertaining to grievance procedures.
 
Had they been provided with a true and accurate record, it most unlikely this process would have unfolded in the way it did.
 

[iii] Cllrs Harrison and Harvey have been found guilty of bullying, harassment and intimidation of the Clerk and Deputy Clerk of Ledbury Town Council. The evidence for this is subject to independent review by the Monitoring Officer of Herefordshire Council so cannot be discussed in detail at this point, but it will soon be in the public arena. Both councillors deny any wrong-doing and contend that they have been systematically blocked from investigating potential financial irregularities, breaches of procedure, lack of staff impartiality, and political conspiracy. 
 

[iv] As an example, during the discussion of the motion to report Cllrs Harvey and Warmington to Herefordshire Council for misconduct, Cllr Harrison attempted to say a few words in their defense (at 7’41” in the film clip). He was stopped by Mayor Debbie Baker. In contrast a few minutes earlier, Cllr Martin Eager (at 4’38”) read out a prewritten statement denouncing Cllr Harvey which had nothing to do with the motion under discussion but was allowed to speak unhindered.
 
Such two-sided treatment is a regular feature of LTC debate: if you agree with the ‘establishment’ you can speak, if not, you are silenced.
 

[v] The most outlandish recent example of this concerns the procedure LTC used to prosecute the grievance complaints against Cllrs Harrison and Harvey. In short, LTC should have referred the complaint to Herefordshire Council for review by the Monitoring Officer. Even if it had been handled in-house, the matter should have been dealt with by the Standing Committee according to Standing Orders. Instead it was given to the 16 councillors who constitute the Full Council. The reason for these hastily cobbled together changes were to load the dice against an innocent verdict by recruiting about a dozen politically hostile councillors into the process: precisely the reason why code of conduct complaints should properly be considered by the Monitoring Officer.
 

[vi] Having got itself into a mess with the grievance process against Cllrs Harrison and Harvey, LTC has twice voted for resolutions which it then has ignored because they would have got in the way of its objective to deliver a guilty verdict. 

Local reporter Gary Bills-Geddes must be thrilled that his bunting story hit the populist jackpot - and made the national tabloid press into the bargain. It's not often a part-time weekly newspaper journalist breaks a story which ends up in the Daily Mail. Somebody's got to do it I guess. Mark Twain said 'never let the truth get in the way of a good story'.
 
That Gary deliberately slanted his story for maximum impact is clear. It's what journalists do. Did he and his colleagues though really intend to unleash a true patriots versus foreigners, us and them crusade against dissident town and county councillor Liz Harvey?
 
Comparing Liz Harvey's words with the way it was reported reveals significant discrepancies. Other elements of the story from the brief Town Council discussion were also left out.
 
In the Ledbury Reporter's extensive coverage, five times the word "foreign" was used in the front page splash and related features, even though Liz Harvey did not utter that word once in her brief address to Ledbury Town Council. This is what Mr Bills-Geddes said in the opening sentence of the story: 'A councillor has voted against red, white and blue... because she fears it will upset foreign visitors.' In a photo caption of Bob Barnes the paper said:  'Cllr Liz Harvey claims the patriotic colours could 'unsettle' foreign visitors to the town.' In an editorial, it twice uses the phrase 'unsettle foreign visitors'. There is a What You Say piece; this too opens with the 'unsettling foreign visitors' phrase.
 
Why did the Reporter keep repeating that phrase 'foreign visitors'? Was it designed as a dog whistle to whip up chauvinistic, even racist sentiments?
 
It worked. Small wonder that the baying mob on Voice of Ledbury said that 'foreign visitors' can go jog on, or less polite words to that effect. The flotsam and jetsam of the fascist fringe are so outraged, they plan to demonstrate in Ledbury.
 
When a 'social media frenzy' (the Reporter's words) takes place, it's advisable to check the evidence. What Cllr Harvey actually said was: 'There were quite a few poets who came from Ireland who were on the [Poetry Festival] programme. They were really quite unnerved by the red white and blue and actually wondered whether they’d walked into a sort of National Front area because they were used to that in Ireland.'
 
She went on: 'I like the idea of bunting but ... it might be an opportunity to get some brightly coloured bunting that would look lovely in the middle of town but wouldn’t make people unsettled who come here as visitors'. She was responding to a suggestion from Mayor Annette Crowe that the union jack bunting be left up all summer.
 
From these off the cuff remarks, clearly unacceptable in these days of intolerant jingoism, Liz Harvey has been turned into a right wing hate figure, pilloried and threatened online, and now, outrageously according to Mrs Crowe, the cause of the potential fascist demonstration.
 
The Ledbury Reporter was also very selective in its commentary of the ensuing Council discussion. Cllr Tony Bradford, who normally gets full coverage, spoke out strongly against buying bunting for the Queen and said the money should be spent making a donation to the Ledbury Food Bank. At the other end of the argument, Cllr Jayne Roberts made what appeared to be a typically incoherent racist-xenophobic comment: 'Unfortunately', she said, 'the Moslems that come and visit us, the Irish that come and visit us... I'm afraid, it's our Queen...' When the vote came to buy red, white and blue bunting, seven councillors either voted against or abstained, including the Deputy Mayor, Keith Francis. This was over a third of the Council.
 
None of these 'facts' were reported, just Liz Harvey's words and vote. So much for balanced reporting.
 
By the time the tabloids had the story, it had been mangled into a loonie left councillor wanting to 'BAN' the flag for the Queen's birthday. A flower seller and barman, quite clearly fictional creations, were quoted in the piece.
 
One of the few balanced reactions to this hot-air balloon of political puff came from a contributor to the Facebook 'Voice of Ledbury' discussion (itself instigated by Mr Bills-Geddes). He said:
 
'I cannot believe the negativity directed toward one person who said so little, based upon a few published words from one person who should have known better.
 
'I believe that Gary Bills has caused quite the little race-storm, resulting in a public witch-hint against Cllr Harvey by not just writing an article so everyone could read what she said, but also publishing her picture, so everyone could now SEE who said it. Well done. Great job.

'Being a journalist (and I'm guessing a fairly intelligent person), I am convinced that he must have known that the reaction to his article would end like it has - with VOL going all "if they don't like it here they should just go home" and all that uneducated garbage. To me, this is really bad form.

'Whilst I understand that Cllr Harvey may possibly regret saying what she did, it was only (as I understand it) in reaction to a couple of Irish visitors, who inquired as to the nature of the blue/white/red coloured flags.

'Now, in certain parts of Ireland those colours are considered pretty political, so I can totally understand why they asked, and why she put it to the council.'
 
This gentleman might understand why, in a democratic country, people are permitted to put alternative points of view, but clearly our friends in the media do not.
 
We have been warned. When it comes to the flag, Liz Harvey is correct: it is indubitably used as a symbol of far right resistance.  It also seems these days that we may not question the wisdom of patriotic-nationalist imagery festooning our streets on pain of a reactionary backlash, led by the local paper.
 
You keep your mouth shut and your head down. Here's to the future! To democracy and free-speech! Not.  
 

When I opened up my copy of the latest Ledbury Reporter and caught site of the front page, I was fortunately at home and able to run to the sink to empty the excessive saliva that had begun pooling in my mouth. While I managed to interrupt an actual attack of sickness, the lingering feeling of queasiness has persisted off and on for several days, every time in fact when I glance at those two faces grinning fatuously like a pair of Britain First supporters.

When every rational line of argument is spent, when you are facing political oblivion or pressure to own up to wrongdoing, when the game is up, there's only one thing for it. Bunting. You know that things have reached the pits when politicians wrap themselves in the flag.
 
Ertswhile enemies now best Council buddies it seems, the two laughing mayors, Mr Barnes and Mrs Crowe, have gone better than this: they have literally swagged and festooned themselves in Union Jacks. If you look carefully on the left side of the picture, you will see that Bob Barnes has got his right hand raised in a diagonal posture which for all the world looks like a fascist salute.  Or is it a raised fist or the Red Hand of Ulster? The mind boggles. Thank god the hand is cropped so we are spared the full horror of the image.
 
Flags are potent symbols. They mean lots of things. They are expressions of pride, as when Mo Farrah won his gold at the London Olympics, or of national celebration for the Queen's jubilee, or of sorrow for the fallen: who can forget the heartbreaking site of a sea of tiny flags at the Normandy commemoration each one representing a life lost in the fight against Nazism?

Or they can be objects of hatred. In Britain, the Union Jack, and more particularly the St George Cross have assumed ugly connotations over the years, unfairly so perhaps. Throughout my youth travelling to and from school in grimy Birmingham, the sight of red, white and blue flags, along with skin-head haircuts provoked in us grammar school boys, a shudder of fear and revulsion. It was the era of the Pub Bombings, and being a catholic school, we were evacuated with bomb threats on a weekly basis, as well as being targets for violence and abuse. At the Longbridge car factory against a back-drop of Union Jacks, there were terrifying mock hangings of Irish men. Anti-Irish hatred was as palpable then as anti-Muslim hatred is now. The flag had been indelibly tainted by the National Front, by extremist politics, by fascism. And I admit, those associations still linger in my mind. The lunatic right continues to appropriate the flag while menacing shoppers on Saturday afternoons and deliberately terrorising BME communities. Across the water, last summer Belfast erupted over the disputed right to fly the Union Jack over City Hall.

I have been driven up the Shankhill Road and visited North Belfast and seen the eerie sight of kirbstones painted red, white and blue, bunting and tattered flags fluttering sadly in the drizzle. In these pitifully deprived neighbourhoods, families save their pennies to have their houses painted from top to bottom as Union Jacks. You'll see a few adolescent boys kicking a can around in the broken glass, perhaps a scrawny dog wandering idly. In such benighted working class communities, tokens of patriotism, unionism, and loyalism, for they are one, are worn defiantly by people against the encroachment of enlightened, secular values, against integration and outsiders, vouchsafed against the decades of hurt and bitterness which has soured their hearts. Something of the same is witnessed in the Republican areas, although without quite the visceral xenophobia of the Loyalist districts.
 
So when Irish visitors, or people from multicultural London or Birmingham, or some black people whose lives have been ravaged by racist thugs brandishing Union flags, when they visit a quaint country town, predominantly a white British town, and see it decked in a profusion of red, white and blue for no apparent reason, they do feel a cultural jolt, a political charge, as do I. It's probably wrong, but there it is. You can't deny your gut instincts. The flag is still controversial. It means something. Is it, as those Irish poets asked, a political statement? Is this a centre for right-wing extremism? They could be forgiven for enquiring, as some of the baying mob against Liz Harvey are undoubtedly motivated by those views. Some of those loud voices on Voice of Ledbury are known right-wing agitators. Perhaps there are one or two of them in Ledbury Town Council judging by the rancid comments of some councillors in recent years.
 
Annette Crowe is outraged at the suggestion that the crass image on the front of the local paper might be seen as a nod to the far right. She asks: 'Any connotation like that, about our town; it's unacceptable. It puts the town in a bad light. Just putting the comments out there is unacceptable.' Is she either extremely naive or is this just more political hay-making, another gambit to get her name in the paper yet again? Is that look of defiant glee genuinely about intense patriotic sentiment or the prosecution of tawdry political opportunism? I hadn't realised that we had disappeared down a worm-hole and wound up in North Korea, where free thought, much less a stated opinion is forbidden.

The Daily Express and Mail, themselves proud fascist sympathisers in the 1930s and still raging against anyone left of Mrs Thatcher, claimed Liz Harvey wanted to 'BAN (their caps) the Union Flag.' Did she really? See the transcript of exactly what she said in the Council meeting here.  More worrying is the fact that Annette Crowe appears keen to ban real concerns people might have about the far right and its imagery permeating our town. Even the mention of it is now 'unacceptable' in Mrs Crowe's dubious judgement.

The question for Mr Barnes and Mrs Crowe is why they would ever think that staring out provocatively draped in rampant nationalist insignia could ever be a good thing, except on a day of national celebration. Even then, good taste surely demands that there are limits. A few 'true patriots' no doubt will be delighted. Most reasonable people will think them tastelessly vulgar. Others with longer memories, finer political sensibilities or first-hand experience of the corrosive effects of nationalist hatred will be disturbed, even worried. 
 
My view, and it's not worth much, is that by all means we should put out the flags and swathe the town in bunting for the old Queen's birthday and 1916 commemoration. Let there be lots of red, white and blue, but there should also, properly be a healthy dose of Commonwealth colour. The 56 nations of the Commonwealth love Elizabeth as much as the Brits; they fought in the First and Second World Wars, one million seven hundred thousand men and women died. Does their contribution, and memory count for nothing in Ledbury?
 
What a kind gesture it would be both to the monarch, and to our friends overseas, that Ledbury celebrates its place in the world and shows that we are not a narrow-minded little town full of patriotic zealots.
 
To Mr B and Mrs C, they should remember Samuel Johnson's words: patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Note: please no comments pulling me up on my use of the Union Jack, rather than the supposedly correct 'Union Flag'. In Britain, it's known universally as the Union Jack whatever the pedantic patriots  say.

News that planning permission has been granted to predatory housing developer Gladman Developments to build 321 houses on green fields to the south of Ledbury has been greeted with dismay and disbelief in the town.

Now a precedent has been set to build beyond Ledbury's southern by-pass, there's nothing to stop other schemes also being given the go-ahead. Already, Bovis has proposed a 625 house estate on land adjoining the Gloucester Road roundabout, up the hill from the Gladman scheme. 

Both of these developments are in addition to the 600 houses proposed in the Council's Core Strategy for north of the viaduct and the 100 houses already granted permission on the Cricket field by the Full Pitcher. 

Ledbury is well on its way to another two thousand houses, despite the Core Strategy proposing only 800 units for the town up to 2030.  

Ledbury Ward Councillor today issued a stinging rebuke for Ledbury Town Council for delaying progress on the Neighbourhood Plan. She said:

"This is a very concerning decision. It makes a nonsense of the effort we have all gone to in shaping the county council’s planning policies for Ledbury and demonstrates the damage that the Town Council has done to the town in dragging its heels for so long on the Neighbourhood Plan.

"There is nothing good about the Gladman development as far as I’m concerned. It detracts from the functionality of our bypass, makes it difficult and dangerous for young people to get to school and to sports facilities on foot and by bike from the site, it damages our landscape setting, it is the first development to actually reduce our sustainability as a community, it brings with it no employment land and it delivers us absolutely nothing in terms of community facilities.

The likelihood is that government changes to the definition of ‘affordable housing’ will mean that only a fraction of the homes which eventually get built will be truly affordable for local people; and the minimum build standards required by council policies mean that the houses will be much more expensive to live in and to heat than need be the case.

In addition it will call into doubt whether the cricket pitch site ever comes forward for development, which in turn will reduce the likelihood that a new cricket facility is built in the town.

I hope the councillors who have deliberately hampered the progress of the Neighbourhood Plan since its inception and have most recently led the scheme to pull the plug on it altogether feel proud of themselves. These councillors have acted selfishly and through their actions have denied the community a voice on the future for Ledbury. In doing so, they have rendered the Neighbourhood Plan all but irrelevant.

I was ashamed to be asked to defend these councillors’ actions to the inspector in the appeal hearing. Dissolving the Neighbourhood Plan working group was a gift to Gladmans. The timing could not have been better for Gladmans and worse for Ledbury.

What many people don’t seem to realise is that the Gladman development will be in addition to the viaduct site, not instead of it. Neither will it reduce in any way the number of houses to be built to the north. Both this sites will come forward before the Neighbourhood Plan is able to wield any influence. It will be down to ward members working with planners to get the best outcomes for the town now.

Heaven only knows what was in the mind of the Mayor when she sanctioned a call for further development sites throughout the town only last month at a cost of a further unbudgeted £5,000 on the Neighbourhood Plan account. How much more development does Cllr Crowe want to see here in Ledbury?

The most ironic part of all this is that these two huge developments will both be approved ahead of the introduction of Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) – the government’s new local development tax … so the Town Council won’t get a penny of CIL money from either of these developments … which formed such a large part of their motivation for undertaking Neighbourhood Planning in the first place.

​I hope these councillors see the sense of putting aside their petty interests and small town politics. Ledbury is in peril and I would hope that everyone who cares about the town will start to work for our collective good."
​

People continue to wonder why Ledbury Town Council is sloshing so much public money the way of the Foxley Tagg Partnership.
 
While other places put out a modest press release announcing a ‘call for sites’ as part of their Neighbourhood Plans, Ledbury has commissioned consultants to do this at a cost of five thousand pounds.
 
As one Neighbourhood Plan ‘insider’ commented off the record, it’s money for old rope.
 
The call for sites is understood to be one of the 'tickbox' stages needed to complete a Neighbourhood Plan. Not a legal requirement, it gives local landowners the chance to have any parcels of ground they own considered for building development. This is not a complicated exercise. It might involve a press statement, a press advertisement, even a personal letter to landowners.
 
It requires no specialist expertise nor should it cost five thousand pounds.
 
While members of the community go to Ledbury Town Council cap in hand, and get put through the mill for a few hundred quid to support genuinely worthwhile projects, Mrs Sally Tagg and Co bask in civic munificence, money no object.  How much are we paying her in total? Fifty, sixty thousand pounds?
 
It was a different story last September (2015) when the now disbanded Neighbourhood Plan team of community volunteers (at least three of whom were marketing professionals) sought ‘permission’ to produce a newsletter to publicise the project.
 
Then, under the pretence of cost-cutting and good management, town councillors shaved a miserable few hundred pounds off the newsletter budget. Instead of its being printed as an A3 tabloid newsletter, they stupidly decided it should be half that size, effectively rendering it illegible and from a marketing point of view, hardly fit for purpose.
 
The volunteers dug in and refused to have their names associated with such an exercise in incompetence. The designs went in the bin. It felt like a calculated act of sabotage. All those expressions of wanting ‘good value for council tax payers’ were hollow words.
 
When Mrs Tagg shakes her head and mutters dubiously, that’s not part of the original contract, we’ll need extra money for this or that, the shady powers that be in Ledbury Town Council sit up like a pack of well trained Jack Russells and say how much?
 
I ask once again: why is the Foxley Tagg Partnership being paid so much money for our Neighbourhood Plan?

​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.

Should Ledbury Town Council have taken over management of one of the town’s public toilets? 

When Town Councillors were considering this issue – and the costs involved – it seems that the budget figures they used were slightly dubious.

At last night’s (24 April) annual ‘Town Meeting’, a local resident questioned the projected costs for the upkeep of the public loos.  She asked whether it was true that the dedicated ‘toilet clerk’ would have been paid the equivalent of about £65 thousand per annum (dubbed 'the best paid job in Ledbury').  

Additional costs  which she argued shouldn’t have been added to the toilet budget included: 

• £8 thousand for a parish ‘referendum’
  
• £2 thousand for unspecified ‘one off costs’ 
  
• £2 thousand per annum for the Town Clerk’s time to administer them - even though her salary had already been accounted for in full elsewhere, and the toilet clerk would be working one day a week in support.  
  

On top of all that, maintenance and repair costs were estimated at an extra £5 thousand per annum. 

‘If the Town Council wanted to kill off the proposal to take over the toilets with exaggerated figures, they could not have done a better job’, she added.

At a whopping £38,500 per annum, Ledbury’s conveniences look like being among the most expensive places to spend a penny in Britain.  It would have cost Ledbury Town Council almost twice as much to run one toilet block as it has cost Herefordshire Council, using external contractors, to run two.

Responding to strong criticism at the meeting in his handling of  the budget, Finance Chairman Cllr Clive Jupp said the figures were ‘hypothetical’ and put together in good faith based on available best estimates.

In scenes reminiscent of the French satire, Clochemerle, a majority of Town Councillors took fright at such exorbitant costs at their December 2013 meeting, voting to sit on the proposal. And with that, the lavatory doors finally clanged shut.

Job done.