BBC transcripts
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire’s Peterborough Breakfast Show host Paul Stainton has beaten Vanessa Phelps from BBC London and Liz Green from BBC Radio Leeds to win Best Presenter Gold at the Frank Gillard awards. Expect continuous and triumphant jingles. We’ll never hear the last of it.
Well done indeed!
A summary of the Peterborough Breakfast Show from BBC Radio Cambridgeshire broadcast from 06:00 to 09:00 on Friday 5th November 2010.
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Cowgate will get a £350K makeover with cash from English Heritage, the Council and businesses themselves.
Leighton Primary in Orton will get a £650K makeover. The front of school will become the back and vice versa.
Hindus commence their Diwali celebrations at the weekend at the Rock Road centre.
Continue reading “Peterborough News 5th November 2010”
A summary of the Peterborough Breakfast Show from BBC Radio Cambridgeshire broadcast from 06:00 to 09:00 on Thursday 4th November 2010.
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The DVLA in Peterborough has wind of plans to close the regional offices and move the functions to Swansea. 30 jobs are at threat in Peterborough, 1500 nationally.
Peterborough City Council has submitted plans for a scheme to install electric vehicle charging points in this region.
The Co-op in Stanground has been slapped with a temporary alcohol retail ban after being caught twice selling alcohol to under-age customers.
Continue reading “Peterborough News 4th November 2010”
A summary of the Peterborough Breakfast Show from BBC Radio Cambridgeshire broadcast from 06:00 to 09:00 on Wednesday 3rd November 2010.
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Peterborough City Council are considering selling off the family silver to maintain their spending levels. There seems to be an issue on whether land sales would be a bad idea in a depressed market. What has not been made clear is how planning permission issues would affect the outcome. Selling plots of land to developers who then apply for planning permission to build houses would obviously benefit the developers most. But it would clearly make more sense for Council to grant outline permission before selling, and the legality of this has not been made clear.
Peterborough Council’s highest earners are hunkering down in their bunkers over suggestions that they might like to take a small voluntary paycut in these times of austerity. Council are still claiming that the scrapping of the Deputy Chief Executive post is an example of their willingness to tighten their belts. In fact, the post was vacated in March, long before austerity became the watchword. The real reason for scrapping the post is that it was created in the first place specifically for a consultant, who became the focus of unwelcome attention when it became clear that Council were spending many millions on consultancy without any clear and evident benefit to the taxpayers.
Some but not all of the general population consulted are prepared to get excited about a new tenant for the Woolworths building.
A summary of the Peterborough Breakfast Show from BBC Radio Cambridgeshire broadcast from 06:00 to 09:00 on Tuesday 2nd November 2010.
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Peterborough City Council have agreed to pay £175,000 to refurbish the Woolworths Building in order to encourage TK-Maxx to lease the property from the private landlords some time next year.
As it becomes apparent that Council budget cuts are affecting those least able to cope, questions are being raised about why the councillors themselves and the top earners at the Council have not offered to accept any cuts to their income.
The BBC Peterborough studio is afflicted by equipment failures for a second day in a row.
Continue reading “Peterborough News 2nd November 2010”
The post of Deputy Chief Executive at Peterborough City Council was ended in March, around about the time when a question arose about individuals holding both salaried posts and consultancy roles within the Council. The post was vacated in March, in the financial year 2009/2010.
DARREN: I can refer back to when we used to have this position of Deputy Chief Executive, which was the first time we’d ever had it. Our group campaigned to find out exactly how much the chap was getting paid. We were told that we couldn’t be told this, because it was commercially sensitive, and it would cause all types of problems. We obviously didn’t rest there. We continued to fight. We got the result. And it was quite an impressive amount of money that one chap was getting for a job that wasn’t previously required.
Meanwhile, everyone is waiting to see whether savings will be made at the top of the Council, as opposed to sacking workers from the frontline.
It is noticeable that recently, in the context of making savage cuts to the Budget, defenders of the cuts may be tempted to quote the scrapping of this role as a budget saving, an example of Council making savings at the top as well as at the bottom of the heap.
But the role was vacated in March with a pledge it would not be re-filled for three years.
“An in-depth inquiry should be held into the circumstances of the Deputy Chief Executive post as some members did not feel that the published figures were correct. The arrangements for the Deputy Chief Executive post would be ending by 31 March 2010 and the Chief Executive was proposing that the post would be vacant for three years. If members wished to undertake an inquiry, the Executive Director would put together clear terms of reference for the remit of any inquiry.” Council Report 1 Medium Term Financial Plan 2010/11-2014/15 (note: 247 page 1.6mb pdf file)
No-one can therefore decently claim this as a recent top management saving within the context of the budget cuts required by the Comprehensive Spending Review.
Stewart Jackson 07:40 Monday 1st November 2010 Peterborough Breakfast Show BBC Radio Cambridgeshire:
“It’s not fair to just look at that, and not look at where the Council have also cut. It’s fair to say they’ve also cut the budget for the Deputy Chief Executive post, they’ve cut the budget for Your Peterborough, they’ve cut the budget for Neighbourhood Funding. They’re intending to do a lot more outsourcing. So the idea that they’re just cutting vulnerable people’s services …”
Probably just a slip of the tongue there, quoted out of context. But it does show you have to be careful. This is not a cut dictated by the Comprehensive Spending Review.
Back in March Cllr Fletcher posed a series of questions about who got paid what and when for consultancy services, believed to be up to £12 million a year.
Here is an extract from the Agenda Reports Pack for the upcoming meeting of the Sustainable Growth Scrutiny Committee for 9th November 2010 at 19:30pm. It is an outcome of sorts.
None of these specific questions have been answered in the report, but named councillors have apparently been given access to a great deal of information which they will be required to examine. The answers should be in there somewhere, and we the people must wait for enlightenment until 1st February 2011, maybe longer, but a mighty long time anyhow. But they still haven’t answered the questions.
Continue reading “Use of Consultants: November Update – Playing for Time”
A summary of the Peterborough Breakfast Show from BBC Radio Cambridgeshire broadcast from 06:00 to 09:00 on Monday 1st November 2010.
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Peterborough City Council set out to defend their new and unpopular budget proposals.
The local TUC Chair expresses his concern at budget cuts which affect staff and vulnerable service users.
The local MP attacks funding for translation services and the provision of trade union facilities for staff.
Continue reading “Peterborough News 1st November 2010”