Paul Johnston

Meeting with CEO's of the Primary Care Trust and Kingston Hospital last night. It seems that Surbiton Hospital is not now expected to complete its refurbishment until 2010 or thereabouts, though plans for discussion will be around shortly. It seems the lead-in period gets longer each time I hear about it. We were talking 2008 at one time!

The CEO has got a new job elsewhere and will be leaving shortly. At the current turn over rate it will be the CEO after next who sees the job completed. Quite apart from the insane Government 'targetry' beloved of 'new' Labour, this constant changing of senior personnel can't help the cause of effective public services either - can it?

The Scrutiny Panel looks at the proposed trial of new bin collecting arrangements for Berrylands tomorrow.Do you know about the proposal and what aspects of it do you find appealing or unappealing?

Anyone can contribute via 'Comments'

Conservative Leader and Scrutiny Panel Chair, Cllr Howard Jones, has delayed the implementation of the Berrylands waste collection trial so that the Scrutiny Panel can check the Lib Dem Administration's plans before they are put into effect.

We Tories were incensed that no mention of the planned trial (due to start on 6^th November) was made at the detailed Scrutiny of the Waste Disposal Strategy by the Council's Scrutiny Panel on 5^th September.

Plans for such a lengthy and far-reaching trial, due to start only two months after the meeting, must have been well advanced by September 5^th - yet no mention of them was made to the Panel by any of those who gave evidence, including Cllr Liz Shard and Cllr Derek Osbourne.If the plans were genuinely thrown together in haste, there's a real risk that they haven't been carefully thought through and that the scheme will prove an expensive failure.

 The Executive decided to proceed with the trial on 3^rd October. The Council's Constitution allows any 100 citizens or three Councillors or the Chair of the Scrutiny Panel to call in any such decision within five working days of the Executive minutes being published. If the decision is not ‘called-in' it can be proceeded with without further ado.

Howard Jones called in the decision after the 3^rd October minutes were published - only to be told that resources had already been committed.  His reaction? ‘I was flabbergasted to be told that Cllr Shard had evidently authorized the commitment of resources, although she must have known what the Constitution said about the decision making and implementation process. In reality she must have committed resources ahead even of the Executive's endorsement of the action she intended to take.'

Last week Howard Jones tried many times to resolve the situation by letter and email, agreeing to scrutinise the decision without holding up its implementation on condition that Cllrs Shard and Osbourne apologise for acting ultra vires and promise not to do so again in future. He also wanted assurances that the Executive would take on board Scrutiny Panel concerns about the implementation of the trial.

In my view these might range around the micro-chipping of bins, fortnightly collections of waste and provision of adequate bins for separating out recyclable materials.

Instead of apologising for the failure to follow the Constitution, Cllr. Shard embarked on a feeble defence of her actions, trying to suggest that the trial had been discussed on 5^th September after all. Howard pointed out to her,  ‘If you failed to take account of (our right to scrutiny) in your planning, that is your fault and so is the possible dislocation resulting from our decision to exercise it.'

The final position, reached on Friday 20^th October, was that the full Scrutiny will go ahead at the next meeting of the Panel on Tuesday 31^st October and that all work on the trial will cease until that has taken place.

The Lib Dems have needlessly created a mess as a result of their arrogance. We tried honestly to help them out of it. All they had to do was to say ‘Sorry' - but that word seems not to be in their vocabulary.

Yesterday I received three letters from Kingston Hospital in one mailing>

Letter 1 said 'your appointment for 26th October has been cancelled and another fas been made for you on 17th November...........'

Letter 2 said 'your appointment for 17th November has been cancelled and we will contact you with an alternative date.........'

Letter 3 said 'we have made an appointment for 8th November..........' Let us hope that this one sticks.

But really, I am a fairly robust 61 year-old. What would a frail, elderly person make of all this?

Had a letter this morning from the CEO at Kingston Hospital in reply to my complaint of last week. She regrets that I had the need to complain and says she's launching a full investigation into my complaint and will report back by 14th November. She goes on to warn me that information about me will have to be disclosed during the investigation. She also sends me a leaflet about the complaints procedure. All nicely written by computer.

All I want is to know how thw Hospital doesn't apparently take notice of the people who are supposed to make its appointments - and which of the two dates I have now received from different sources for my appointment can be relied upon - if either of them can.

Surbiton Hill Safer Neighbourhood Team had its first drop in meeting last night at St. Matthew's church. Two PCs and a community support officer attended with a housing officer from Kingston Council. I went along towards the end of the 3-hour session.

About 30 local people had come along to air their concerns. It seems the greatest concentration of concerns is in the Ellerton Road and Bond Road area, where Nick Kilby and I have been long concerned about the nefarious doings of some of the Council's tenants in properties leased under the Private Leasing Scheme.

Another concern is the activity of off-estate youths who congregate in the covered entrances on School Lane and have taken to leaving their mark in the form of graffiti and worse. Oh, for the £5 million a year stock transfer would have kept in Kingston!

There's more to being a councillor than party politics. So I'd like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the way Cllr Ian Reid (Lib Dem) chaired a Panel I was at earlier this week.

He was a model of tact, good humour, clarity and incisiveness and was totally unruffled by being, due to the absence of his two Lib Dem colleagues, the only Lib Dem surrounded by three Tories.

The Lib Dems got an unexpected flavour of their true predicament in the new Council on Tuesday.

They assumed that they would be able to change the Constitution at will (as per usual) as they wished to send the all-party Grants and Awards Panel into oblivion, keeping all say over major grants to the Voluntary Sector in the exclusive hands of the exclusively Liberal Democrat Executive.

One of their members didn't turn up and another went home early. The arithmetic was thus Lib Dems 23; Conservatives 21; Labour 2. The Conservatives and Labour voted together to preserve all-party involvement. One Lib Dem had a sufficiently open mind and strong conscience to abstain. So the vote was For the proposal 22; against 23; abstentions 1. And the mayor didn't even get to use her casting vote.

They also only managed to defeat by one vote a proposal from myself and David Edwards that new road scheme proposals should normally require a 40% consultation response rate and a majority thereof before proceeding. They seem to be happy to commit large sums with the support of only tiny numbers of citizens - and even to ignore the opposition of hundreds of citizens to their pet projects. This makes a farce of 'consultation' and brings the Council into disfavour with the public, but it keeps the highways officers and contractors busy, so I suppose they think it's OK.

The Executive recently decided to ban A boards on pavements throughout the Borough. That is, it decided to ban them where it has authority to do so, as some shopkeepers own their own frontage and can not be prevented from using them in this way.

Over 100 local business people signed a petition to have this decision 'called in' by the Scrutiny Panel, which has an opposition majority in Kingston.

The Town Centre management and small businesses (mainly in the town centre) seemed to favour a licensing scheme. Organisations representing the blind and disabled were opposed to anything cluttering the pavements, especially anything as movable as an A Board.

The small, locally owned businesses feel that they are disadvantaged by the comparatively massive advertising space enjoyed by the big multiple stores and they need to be able to use pavement A boards to inform the public of their presence and of any offers they might be making, which the shopping public might easily otherwise miss.

Opponents claimed that A boards were unsightly and untidy and may well be hazardous in adverse weather. Blind or partially sighted people could easily collide with them and people with disabilities already had enough problems navigating their way down streets, thanks to the proliferation of street furniture in the form of bollards, 6-sheet fixed advertising boards and other permanent signs. Movable A boards would just add to their difficulties.

Business organisations in Kingston town centre were willing to police any scheme the Council would allow on a trial basis. A period of a year was suggested.

This failed on the basis that the policy under review was a Boroughwide policy, not one solely concerned with Kingston Town Centre, and that it wasn't part of the Panel's remit to make exceptions for one part of the Borough. Also the objections of the opponents of A boards were not sufficiently well refuted by the supporters. So this was an occasion where Scrutiny at some length led to a consensus between all three parties and the Executive's decision was upheld.

No 'Punch 'n Judy' politics there, then..........

Yesterday (Friday 6th October) I received a letter from Kingston Hospital, posted, by second class mail, on Wednesday 4th, the day before the abortive appointment. This advised me that they had made an appointment for me on 17th November.

This morning (Saturday 7th October) I received another letter from KCAS, the appointments agency, telling me that the appointment has been made for 28th October.

Anyone fancy investing 21 quid in finding out which is right?

This afternoon I had an outpatient appointment at Kingston Hospital at 3 p.m. As I write this I have a letter in front of me to say so.

Because you can't park there I contemplated taking the bus. That goes all around the houses and takes ages and I might be late. So I hired a minicab to take me and bring me home again.

I arrived at 2.30 and reported promptly to Outpatients. The man in the queue in front of me was having a problem. It transpired he had turned up on the wrong day. Then it was my turn. It appeared that, not only had I turned up on the wrong day, but I had turned up in the wrong MONTH.

Kingston Hospital had gratuitously changed my appointment date from 5th October to 17th November and hadn't told me about it.

I was given a number to ring by the receptionist. It purported to be the number of KCAS, the body responsible for making appointments. Fearful of interfering with vital medical equipment I went outside where it was raining and phoned the number on my mobile. It rang...and rang...and rang. Finally it gave up ringing and my mobile told me that there was no reply. I rang my doctor's office. She is on holiday, but the receptionist there verified that the KCAS number was not the one I was given and gave me the right one. I rang it and was promptly answered by a polite young man who told me that I had an appointment with a surgeon this afternoon at 3 p.m. as far as he was concerned - but perhaps the Hospital had changed it.

This is not the first time by any means that Kingston Hospital has, in my personal experience, gratuitously postponed appointments made weeks in advance for serious conditions. I do not believe for one minute that I am the only person who falls victim to this. But I do believe that it is symptomatic of the NHS, which operates on a principle of rationing, where the Service is the Boss and the patient is the supplicant client, whose needs are secondary to the needs of the Service. And it doesn't come cheap...this afternoon's fruitless little jaunt cost me £21 in taxi fares.

Is this the NHS David Cameron was so keen to praise at Bournemouth yesterday?

Have spent the last few days in Bournemouth at the party conference. Quite a bit of the time was spent visiting the Accreditation Office. I received my pass on Sunday evening. Daphne didn't get hers until Tuesday morning. This put something of a restriction on our doings and enjoyment of the occasion. Someone has blundered BIG TIME!

This was David Cameron's first Conference as leader and there was a distinct air of difference from times past, and not only that we didn't get our passes on time this time. What's refreshing is that there is definitely more openness, a greater readiness to 'think outside the box' than at previous conferences. However some of us have been thinking outside the said receptacle for some time, taking a very pragmatic look at the problems our communities face and trying to devise ways to deal with them which are not constrained by ideological shibboleths.

The Tory Party has done this since Robert Peel was a lad. So in a sense Cameron is in an authentic Tory tradition, if this is what he is about.

But he must avoid picking up some new shibboleths of his own in his eagerness to ditch the perceived ones of the past. Let him emphasize protection of the environment, but not make a fetish of it. By all means be economically prudent, but also recognise that this government has tried tax and spend solutions to the problems of the public services to destruction and they haven't worked. Finally, Blair stands discredited as I always believed he ultimately would. Now above all is not the time to run up to him shouting 'me too!'