Rural communities are unconvinced that Labour supports them - Carl Les
My recent piece about the Government missing an opportunity to talk to the farming community at the Great Yorkshire Show led to a response. Katie White, Leeds North West MP, wrote to the letters page to disagree, citing that she had been in attendance, along with two of our elected Mayors, Tracy Brabin (West Yorkshire) and David Skaith (York & North Yorkshire).
She forgot to mention the junior minister who also attended, to his credit. It’s good that they came, but with respect that’s not a lot of engagement. My point was that as Labour consider that they are doing “a lot to be positive about”, according to Katie (and the jury is out about that) they had a great opportunity to get their message across, face to face, at the premier agricultural show in England, rather than just in print.
However, that is in the past now. Katie thinks this is political point-scoring. Really? I think it’s an observation from someone who has lived and worked all my life within a rural community, and where I have been involved in local community service for but half that time.
She is right to say that the “focus should be on the long-term importance and endurance of the farming community. These are the people who will be here for generations to come” but along with others I remain to be convinced that Labour policy supports that view. In particular IHT changes will challenge that endurance. Also she claims “Labour is the party of graft and industry”, but I don’t think they can claim to be alone in supporting those qualities.
However going forward Katie has offered to share tea and a bun next year. I’m delighted to accept, and if we repeat our breakfast forum, we will invite her at least to be in the audience, or perhaps to be on the Panel as this year our chairman had difficulty securing a Labour nominee (no criticism here, as we finalised arrangements late in the day). However, as she has suggested Yorkshire Tea and a Fat Rascal, we will have to provide our own, as I don’t think Betty`s has a pop-up on the Showground. I look forward to it, it`s always good to talk.
The Daily Telegraph continues its campaign to reverse council decisions, first made by NYC and now made by over 200 councils, about second homes council tax premia, either by reduction or abolition. The latest iteration was in Saturday’s Money section. It is still early days to see how the policy is working in North Yorkshire, but nobody can argue, and indeed nobody did argue in the article, that the problem of a shortage of available local, and especially affordable homes, exists, especially in areas where second homes and holiday lets are prevalent.
A few points stood out in the article for me, admittedly a snap shot rather than a full canvas, but this is what the Telegraph wanted to feature. One property featured was a four bedroomed detached house with ¾ acre of land. The possibility of developing small affordable houses on that plot was limited according to the owners because of National Parks planning issues. An owner more locally was selling not one but two apartments in the same street. An estate agent said people coming to stay in their properties spend their money locally. Surely local owners do this all the time?
What was frustrating was that the article made no mention of the fact that North Yorkshire is the first, and I believe still the only council to state that 100 per cent of our council tax premium take will be spent on housing initiatives, including an affordable housing delivery fund, a rural housing delivery fund, developing properties adapted for disabled people and providing supported housing for those in need. This is not a silver bullet, but it is a serious attempt to tackle a serious problem.
It is a way of gaining additional monies to tackle issues the Council has to face. A bigger challenge as ever is to balance the books by making savings.
In the same way that income generation can be unpopular, and we are now seeing attention being focused on other ideas such as charging full recovery of the cost of issuing licences for occupying the public pavement, and who should pay for good quality, safe, clean public conveniences, so too is any reduction in service provision.
The debate about home to school transport continues, although the policy is in place for this year, with the Post Implementation Review to follow.
We knew it would be unpopular, as nobody wants to pay more, but changing the policy so that parental choice is paid for by the parent, not the taxpayer, seems the fairest way to achieve a significant saving in the ever-increasing H2ST budget, now over £50m per year.
There will be more difficult choices for my colleagues to make as I lead the discussion to set next year’s budget, unless we are surprised by the results of the consultation into Fairer Funding of local government.
Carl Les is the Leader of North Yorkshire Council.