Paul Johnston

Springboard is a local organisation of which Kingston used to be justly very proud. As part of local health and social provision it has become a kind of social enterprise in which people with disabilities, mainly of a mental nature, can learn skills and produce goods and services which are marketable.

Like a lot of small initiatives it helps its users so much to grow in self confidence that their lives are transformed and they come to depend on having this facility available for life. They have been repeatedly assured that they can do so. Now it seems that, because our own Primary Care Trust has accumulated a £22m deficit in its few years of life (its annual budget is £211,000,000!) and other funders of the service are also cash strapped, the PCT and CMHT are trying to close it down, along with some other mental health provisions locally.

All this was attempted without public consultation other than via a meeting of the Health Overview Panel on Wednesday evening. As it happens I was there as alternate for one of our absent councillors. I am pleased to say that, with the help of Mary Clark and Geoff Austin (Cons) and the much appreciated common sense approach of Mary Reid (Lib Dem) we managed to get the HOP to require the PCT to take this issue to public consultation. The CMHT and the local MP are reportedly trying to find a new organisation to sponsor Springboard and keep it running. Let us hope they use the breathing space to good effect.

All of which leads me to question the utility of the bureaucratic PCT structure introduced by the Labour government to replace the NHS Internal Market created by the Tories in the 1990s. And we all know who loves bureaucratic structures, don't we?

Does it really cost £10,000 to lock one park gate at night? At our last neighbourhood committee meeting we were told that it would and that, therefore, the residents of Victoria Avenue Surbiton would have to put up with the ongoing damage caused by persons accessing KFC and passing their houses and damaging their cars en route.

The ward councillors - all Lib Dem - seemed convinced that what the residents who live there saw as the solution to their problem was no solution at all and were determined that no opposition councillor or local resident was going to make them change their minds - even so far as sanctioning an experimental period to see whether the residents had got it right or not.

This is just one example of the elected representatives of people treating their electors with benign contempt, as though the simple darlings don't really know what they're talking about but the Lib Dems and Council officers know what they ought to want better than they do themselves. This is what lies behind a lot of the scepticism about the political process that is seriously weakening trust in the whole democratic process and engendering an atmosphere of helplessness and hopelessness. 

Last night we had the best attended Housing Consultative meeting we have had since, I think, 1998. It was a joint meeting with the Leaseholders' Forum but there was a high attendance by Residents' Associations.

The main matter in hand was the Budget consultation for 2007-8. A major problem for Kingston is the amount central Government extracts from the Housing Revenue A/c in Housing Subsidy. A couple of years ago this was just short of £4million. In the current financial year it is nearly £5million. Next year it will grow by another £1million to just under £6million. This seems to be a consistent Labour Government policy to bleed authorities like Kingston in order to feather the nests of favoured authorities elsewhere - and it's getting worse year by year.

What makes it particularly galling is that our tenants actually voted for this state of affairs when they voted to stay 'with the Council' and against a large-scale stock transfer. They were gulled into this by promises from some that Councillors would be able to help them if they stayed with the Council. Twaddle! Councillors are powerless to stop the Government from levying this 'stealth tax' which takes 28p in every £1 each tenant pays in rent and which could otherwise fund repairs and improvements. The levy doesn't apply to Housing Association properties.

Tenants are rightly worried about the loss of services which may well result from the cash shortage. Tere was much concern at the risk to the estate ranger service and the possible loss of the dog warden service.

If these valued services are at risk so is the attainment of the Government's much vaunted Decent Homes Standard and its soon to be announced sequel, the Decent Neighbourhoods Standard. The Labour Councillor, the organisation calling itself LATCH and Unison which backed them should be ashamed of themselves for waht they led our tenants into. I doubt if they will be though.

Meetings have started with a vengeance this week. There was a fairly uneventful Council last Tuesday but the rumblings continue after the last one before Christmas.

There's an issue about the creative interpretation of Standing Orders by which the Mayor allowed a Liberal democrat motion which effectively altered the Constitution of the Council without prior notice and despite the failure of such a motion on a recorded vote at the previous meeting.

The Mayor acted on advice but the question still remains to be resolved as to whether the Constitution means what it says in all its parts.

On a happier note it does look as though the question of the siting of the bus stop in Thornhill Road may finally be coming to a satisfactory conclusion.