Conversations – Page 152 – The New Listener

Interview with Angus Ellis: March 8th 2010

Interview between Paul Stainton BBC Radio Peterborough and Angus Ellis of the Public and Commercial Services Union on Monday 8th March at 08:15 am from the picket line in Peterborough.

PS: Civil servants are striking nationwide and across Peterborough this morning. Members of the Public and Commercial Services Union have begun a two day action over redundancy pay. In Peterborough hundreds of people have gone on strike, JobCentrePlus staff, the Passport Offices, if you’re due in Court today you’ve got a reprieve, they’re on strike. The Tax Office are amongst those affected as well. Angus Ellis is from the PCS. He’s at the picket line outside JobCentrePlus this morning. Good morning Angus.
AE: Good morning from a very cold picket line.
PS: Yes it’s very cold out there this morning. Has that put people off?

Continue reading “Interview with Angus Ellis: March 8th 2010”

Interview with Mark Wallace: 1st March 2010

Andy Gall interviewing Mark Wallace Campaign Director of the Taxpayers’ Alliance on BBC Radio Peterborough at 08:10 am 1st March 2010 icw a legal challenge to the release of details of payments made by Peterborough City Council to consultants.

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AG: Now in the past hour we’ve heard that Peterborough City Council is still spending millions of pounds a year on employing consultants. And we’re not likely to find out what they’re being used for, as the consultancy firm is threatening legal action preventing information from being disclosed. Cllr. Mike Fletcher Chairman of the Sustaianble Growth Scrutiny Committee says the taxpayer has a right to know where their money is being spent. Here’s how he found out about the threatened legal action:

(Cllr Mike Fletcher TAPE: On Monday 22nd February, I received an email in the evening, and was going to have an Interim Meeting the next day, but it was received without any prior consultation whatsoever, which had been issued by the Solicitors to the Council.
AG: Right.
MF: And it states: “on the instructions of the Solicitors to the Council, the Informal Meeting of the Sustainable Growth Scrutiny Committee tomorrow is required to be cancelled” The reason being, the Council is being threatened with legal action, over the release of information, and she needs to fully consider what we propose to release, with the lawyers acting for the consultants concerned. She has requested ten working days to sort out this issue. I find that to be somewhat astounding.)

AG: Now Mark Wallace is Campaign Director at Taxpayers’ Alliance and joins us now. Good morning Mark.
MW: Good morning.
AG: Thank you for joining us. Now councils .. do councils normally spend this sort of money on consultants?
MW: It’s actually been an area that so far has been very secretive. Not really in the past because firms have threatened to sue in this disgraceful way, but actually because councils have found it very difficult to put a figure specifically on how much they spend on consultants. That’s partially because obviously you have things like engineering and road development consultants, IT consultants, and management consultants. there’s always been a bit of debate. But it does seem clear that most councils spend at least a few million pounds on this. And I think most people will be shocked to learn that it’s that high.
AG: Where’s the culture gone of being open and honest though, and transparent? That seems to have disappeared when it comes to this little area of consultancy.
Continue reading “Interview with Mark Wallace: 1st March 2010”

Interview with Mike Fletcher: 1st March 2010

Andy Gall interviewing Peterborough City Cllr. Mike Fletcher on BBC Radio Peterborough at 07:10 am 1st March 2010 icw a legal challenge to the release of details of payments made by Peterborough City Council to consultants.

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AG: It has emerged that Peterborough City Council, it’s rumoured that it’s spending nine million pounds a year on expert consultants. The figure has gone up. Last year it was revealed that the local authority spent eight million pounds on consultants and temporary staff between July 2007 and June 2008. At the time it said that employing consultants actually saves the council money. And Councillor Mike Fletcher is Chairman of the Sustainable Growth Scrutiny Committee.and joins us now. Good morning Mike.
MF: Good morning to you.
AG: Thank you, well we’ll play this with a straight bat. So you were told the figure by the City Council’s Head of Finance weren’t you.
MF: Finance, that’s right, and er if I could tell you the background to this, like many other councillors, I share a serious concern over the council’s use of, and reliance upon consultants. At a Scrutiny Co-ordination meeting, held on the 27th. January, I was told by the Head of Finance that last year the Council paid consultants a total of £9 million pounds. And work that out, that is £750,000 per month, or the equivalent of 90 senior managers on £100,000 a year. neither is this a one-off payment. Similar amounts have been paid, year after year.
AG: So why is there a culture of this, then? What do you put it down to?
MF: Well, I er I don’t know. And that’s why I’ve asked these questions. I want some answers, so that we all know. There may be a very good reason for consultants to be employed. But if we don’t know, then it seems, it remains a mystery, doesn’t it?
AG: We’ve been told that the consultancy firm in question is threatening legal action, if the Council reveals what it’s being used for.
Continue reading “Interview with Mike Fletcher: 1st March 2010”

Interview with Marco Cereste: 25th February 2010

Paul Stainton interviewing Marco Cereste on BBC Radio Peterborough at 08:10 am on February 25th 2010, icw the controversial budget passed by Council on February 24th 2010.

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PS: Well Council Leader Marco Cereste is with us this morning. Morning Marco.
MC: Morning Paul, how are you?
PS: I’m very good. You’re not the most popular man in Peterborough this morning.
MC: Well, there you go,. That’s the problem with being a politician. You can’t please all of the people all of the time.
PS: Some very difficult choices had to be made this year.
MC: Yeah .. very .. well, you know I’m not so sure that that is exactly right. I mean, to be fair everybody’s prot… or the youngsters are protesting about the buses, and to be, to be completely honest there won’t be a single person in this city who, when they need a bus, can’t catch a bus. And, you know, I’ve gone through this with a tooth comb, my Cabinet members have gone through this with a tooth comb, in fact in many places in our city the bus service will be enhanced because there’ll be bus services where there weren’t before. So, I understand that nobody likes change, but the reality of it is, even Cllr Sandford said last night, in council, that if you wanted to catch a bus at ten o’clock at night, from Walton to the Showcase cinema, you might not get one. But as far as I know, that may be the only bus service that has been affected.
PS: Yeah, but but but how do you square ..
Continue reading “Interview with Marco Cereste: 25th February 2010”

Paul Phillipson on Peterborough

Two Peterborough councillors have written to the leaders of the three main political parties to complain about immigration levels. The Executive Director of Operations Paul Phillipson comments on the subject. Broadcast at 08:10 on Friday January 22nd 2010 in Paul Stainton’s Breakfast Show on BBC Radio Peterborough.

PS: Our top story today, two Peterborough councillors have written to the leaders of the three main political parties to highlight how immigration is affecting the city’s services. Earlier Charlie Swift told us why he’s taking the action he is. (TAPE)
CS: The whole point of what we’re trying to stress is to stop this silly business of walking round hospitals for twenty minutes, and going round schools having all these silly photographs taken. They want to come to Peterborough. They want to get to live in a real world, and we want some answers to these questions, and let’s start being honest open and straight and above the board, and realise that the position that not only Peterborough the North Ward is getting into, but many other parts of the country.(LIVE)
PS: Well Councillor Swift as he said there represents the North Ward, which has seen the number of EU citizens rise from just four, five years ago, to five hundred and thirty seven now. The local school in the North Ward is Fulbridge Primary. Headteacher Ian Erskine says the rise in immigration means the school has twenty seven different languages, and cannot cater for all the local children.(TAPE)
IE: The other issue around the area is that there’s been such an influx even continuing now of European families coming into this area, that the local authority have calculated that we have ninety children in each year group in our school, they’ve calculated that there’s probably a hundred and forty children in the area. So that means there’s fifty children not getting places at their local school. (LIVE)
PS: Sounds incredibly pressurised, doesn’t it? So how badly are the services being affected in the rest of the city? Paul Phillipson is from Peterborough City Council. Morning Paul.
PP: Good morning Paul.
PS: Some shocking really figures, and some shocking stories really of how immigration is impacting on the people of the North Ward, on the services in the North Ward. What do you think about what Charles Swift had to say first of all? Continue reading “Paul Phillipson on Peterborough”

Marco Cereste on Buying the Posh Ground

Marco Cereste Leader of Peterborough City Council discusses the completed purchase by PCC of the London Road ground, and outlines his plans for the city. Broadcast at 08:10 on Monday 18th January 2010 in the Paul Stainton Breakfast Show with Andy Gall on BBC Radio Peterborough.

AG: So the future of London Road’s been secured. Peterborough City Council have bought the London Road ground for around eight million pounds. The deal’s supposed to not only secure the future of football in the city, but develop the riverside area. And PISA Chairman Ady Mowles we spoke to earlier about that, and now we do have Marco Cereste. So you announced the news ahead of Saturday’s game. You must be relieved that the deal is finally done?
MC: Yes I’m very pleased. We can now get on with the complete regeneration of the whole of the South Bank, which is something really important I think for the city.
AG: And when you say the development of that, is that .. because when we looked at the plans that you had, the aspirational plans for the city, there was talk of .. it was mooted that there might be the whole sporting complex, or the sporting aspect of the city would be to the north, rather than the south.
MC: Yes but looking at it properly it doesn’t work with the north. But if you think about it, on the south, already having the stadium on the south part of the South Bank, and you’ve already got the wonderful international rowing lake up at Longthorpe, if you think about it you could develop the whole of the river embankment from the South Bank all the way along the edge out to Longthorpe. At the moment it’s just basically abandoned land. And we could turn that into probably one of the finest sports villages in the country, if not the world.
AG: Is there any immediate short-term plans that fans will notice almost within the blinking of an eye, changes, or will it take .. ?
MC: Well we are doing the scoping right now. It would have been really difficult to have done anything, we wouldn’t have wanted to spend a lot of money on it without actually knowing that we’d secured the stadium. So we are beginning work on it straight away. A bit has been done. It seems to be something that’s very feasible. So, you wouldn’t want us to spend money unnecessarily.
AG: No.
MC: No. Absolutely not. So now we will do the work properly, and we’ll try and attract the right businesses. Obviously it can’t just be sport. You’re going to need hotels. We’d like to put the university in there, because that way the university can offer sport as part of its curriculum and use the stadium as well.
AG: A lot of fans are saying the stadium in its current incarnation isn’t actually up to the job.
MC: Absolutely right. I completely agree. And of course one of the things we’re going to have to .. we’re going to need to do as a council is we’re going to have to take down the individual stands to make it .. to bring it up to scratch. And the project for the first removal of the first stand will be to a: rebuild it and bring it up to standard, but b: to provide ..
AG: Rebuilding it in its current location?
MC: No no no. probably not quite in its current position and probably not quite in its current .. well definitely not in its current size.
AG: Where would it go then Marco?
MC: It will go at the north end of the football ground, but it will probably be moved back, you know, if not the width of the carpark behind it, something like it. Because we’d want to create a concert venue there as well. So you’ll have a skills and enterprise .. a skills and education training centre underneath. You’ll have a stand which works as a stand during the football matches. And then you’ll have already the beginnings of a concert centre above it.
AG: Marco, this sounds great, and this .. I love talking to you, because the future’s bright when I hear Marco, but how are you going to fund it?
MC: Well we’ve already got eight and a half million pounds that’s been given to us from the Government to provide a skills and training centre. And so it’s just a question of finding a little bit more ..
AG: Finding it from where though, especially in the current climate? There’s not much money.
MC: Well I agree with you. But believe it or not there are people that want to bring concerts into this city, and one of the ways to do it is to .. if you like .. pre-sell the concert venue to a concert organiser.
AG: Hmm. OK.
MC: And that way they pre-book it, they pre-sell it, the city doesn’t take the risk, the Posh doesn’t take the risk, and we’ve already got, we already know that once a fortnight there’ll be a concert in Peterborough that’s somebody worth seeing.
AG: It’s a bit like the O2 Arena.
MC: Yes. But we .. the O2 Arena is a bit bigger than London Road. (laughs).
AG: Ok so that’s what you’re looking at doing in the long term.
MC: Yes that’s right. And then each .. as we develop each stand .. one stand you may have a health facility. One of the things which we have seen which is really fabulous is in another football ground, I think it was at Preston, part of the ground is actually a hotel.
AG: This is starting to sound a little bit like Chelsea Village, isn’t it? You’re going to have like a shopping centre and everything in there. And I suppose there’s a danger then that people start to panic that it’s .. that the football is becoming a little bit overshadowed by everything else.
MC: No no no no no. The football the football has a lease, to the football ground will use, you know the football club will use it, and no threat to the football. The whole point was to secure the future of the football club.
AG: Indeed and that’s it. there has been a sigh of relief there because you know it’s gone on for a long time politically sort of ebbing and flowing about what the Council are going to do with that. So you have aquired the ground. And let’s see from there where it moves on. But for the time being we can celebrate that. But we’ll look to the future as well with a jeweller’s eye. Just before you do disappear, on the text it says:” Marco must be a pipe, dresing gown and slippers man. Great news that the Council have the ground and the land.” So Marco, we are asking about dressing gowns today. Do you have a dressing gown?
MC: I do, yes I do yes. I don’t smoke a pipe.
AG: You don’t smoke a pipe then. Is it just one dressing gown or do you have more?
MC: I’ve got two.
AG: Two. The decadence of the man. Oh yes. Adrian in Dogsthorpe says: “They’re all talk Andy. Peterborough City Council just talk.” What do you make of that.
MC: Well you know it’s just cost me eight point six five million pounds. If he thinks that’s talk you know what I mean. (laughs). I’d like to be talk like that that way when it’s for me personally as well.
AG: You do sound like there’s some biscuits on the gravy train. And Marco, thank you for talking to us this morning.
MC: Thank you. So Marco Cereste take care there, Leader of Peterborough City Council.

Darren Fower on the Icelandic Investments

Darren Fower Liberal Democrat councillor comments on John Harrison’s response to the news that Peterborough City Council may have lost £2 million in Icelandic investments. Broadcast at 08:25 on Monday 18th January 2010 in the Paul Stainton Breakfast Show with Andy Gall on BBC Radio Peterborough.

Darren Fower Liberal Democrat councillor comments on the news that Peterborough City Council may have lost £2 million in Icelandic investments. Broadcast at 08:25 on Monday 18th January 2010 in the Paul Stainton Breakfast Show with Andy Gall on BBC Radio Peterborough.

AG: Many of us are striving to get out of the red, but how is the City Council doing at getting back the three million it lost in the Icelandic banks collapse? John Harrison is Head of Strategic Finance. Earlier we spoke to him and he explained how much money the council would get back. (TAPE)
JH: Got about a million of the three million back, and we expect to get a lot more over the coming years.
AG: “Coming years” and “a lot more”. This is a bit vague, how many years is “coming years”?
JH: Could be several years. In particular (indecipherable) with the KSF bank. Banks lend money to the businesses, and the businesses did nothing wrong, so they’ll be repaying their loans. So until the money comes back from these businesses it can’t get paid back out. (LIVE)
AG: That’s John Harrison, Head of Strategic Finance. But the LibDems dispute that. And Darren Fower is the Leader of the party in the city and joins us now. Good morning Darren.
DF: Good morning Andy.
AG: I don’t think you dispute that he’s John Harrison. But you do dispute what he says.
DF: Absolutely.
AG: What’s your issues with what you heard then?
DF: Well it’s just fantastically infuriating, the blase attitude of senior council officers in regards to a significant amount of local taxpayers’ money being lost. At the very least it’s a million. That’s the very least. And as you asked correctly, when are we going to see some action, some good news?
AG: It is funny, especially in this climate where people are struggling obviously with finance, that you hear such a glib response. And I think you’re right, it was quite ..
DF: I think it’s worth noting as well the line that the Council are playing, which is “we weren’t the only one’s that made a mistake.” Yes but there were authorities, like Brighton, who pulled their money out. I’ve got an uncle who even heard a rumour and pulled his money out, and did alright, thank you very much. So Peterborough City Council, with a team of qualified in inverted commas individuals who know about finance and fiscal things make mistakes.
AG: So what would you like to have heard John say there?
DF: I’d like to see him say, quite simply, sorry. I think your listeners, and people in Peterborough, should be very angry that somebody, an individual supported by senior councillors, and members of staff, has lost, by taking a punt, a million pounds of your money.
AG: Because you hear so many stories in the news that just frustrate us about finance and banking systems, and how we the public are having to lick the wounds of these people.
DF: Yes. It’s also not gone unnoticed that when you spoke to John, he was talking about the fact that the Council has made some money on interest, and obviously that’s other investments as well, that’s worth noting. But they do lose money, and it’s like the Peterborough United money, it’s like the incinerator money, they’re going to borrow it. And when you asked Marco Cereste, where’s the money coming from, dare I say he gave you a bit of a side response. He didn’t exactly tell you. He’s going to have to find it from somewhere, but at the monent … newsflash …
AG: A lot of these claims, they’re quite aspirational claims, aren’t they?
DF: Yes they are. It’s good to have aspirations, but you’ve also got to be realistic on the serious issues. And right now we’ve got a downturn in the economy, we’ve got eleven thousand applicants on the housing waiting list, we’ve got a city centre that, dare I say, is not looking too great, especially that Cathedral Square. I’ve just walked through now, with the pavement already starting to look quite bad. It isn’t good. And our council tax is going to go up again come April. So where’s the justification for the value of money?
AG: And they’ve budgeted into the council tax the impact of the losses ..
DF: Yes they’ve got to make …, they’ve got to sell stuff. They’ve got to sell some silverware. That’s the bottom line.
AG: So apart from hearing him being a bit more genuine about apologising about what happened, do you want to see proper big changes in the way they structure themselves?
DF: I think we need to see a greater clarity. It’s all very well talking about budgets etc, but how many people even know where to go to find out the information? We need to see these details printed on their home page of the website, put in a manner that’s easy to read for example, because I can tell you there’s city councillors who have trouble understanding this, and dare I say Joe Public on the street is going to find it hard. But it is their money that’s being supposedly managed, and in this situation, lost. So it is definitely within their interests to show some sort of attention to this matter.
AG: I think for public relations as well, because there’s so many people .. if you speak to people in the street they would probably say that they’re very cynical about Council.
DF: Well you talk about public awareness and public relations for example, the City Council now has a media machine that costs over a million pounds. It’s gone up again this year. So for all the press releases to tell everybody how great they are, it’s costing the taxpayer there again a million pounds. So perhaps one idea there would be to back to the old days where they had one press officer who did a very good job, and communicated with the local media, and it worked, and save themselves a million pounds there, perhaps.
AF: Okay so you could argue that they’re just overcomplicating things.
DF: They are. It’s all about complexifying. The bottom line is if you gave me three pounds, and then a week later I gave you two pounds back, you’d say, Darren, I’m not very happy with that. And I would say, Andy, it’s not my fault, that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. The other bloke I borrowed three pounds off, I actually made some money for him. But you’d be saying, well I’ve lost, and I’m like, well.. and I’m not even saying sorry. You would get a bit infuriated and think, that’s not right.
AG: Yes. Rightly so. And Darren, thank you very much for talking to us this morning.
DF: My pleasure.
AG: That’s Darren Fower Leader of the LibDems here in Peterborough.

John Bridge and the Cardea Development

An interview with John Bridge Chairman of the Peterborough Chamber of Commerce on the news that Morrisons will be coming to the new Cardea development in Stanground. Broadcast at 07:15 on Thursday 7th January in the Paul Stainton Breakfast Show on BBC Radio Peterborough.

PS: Good news for Stanground this morning. It’s set to get a new Morrisons supermarket. The chain has confirmed they hope to be part of the new fifteen hundred home development planned called Cardea. Plans are on show today and Saturday at the Stanground Community Centre. John Bridge is Chairman of Peterborough Chamber of Commerce. Morning John.
JB: Yes good morning Paul.
PS: Are you warm?
JB: Yes not too bad at the moment. But obviously looking forward to going out and meeting the challenges of the cold this morning.
PS: Yes. Does Peterborough need any more supermarkets, do you think?
JB: Well I think the key thing is that we all know of the current economic difficulties, and the only way we’re going to get out of this is with businesses investing, and putting their money into Peterborough, and creating jobs for people. And so I think we should really welcome Morrisons’ involvement in this new Henry Davidson development at Stanground, because what it is going to do is going to be a stepping stone to enable us to get through the economic difficulties perhaps quicker than many other locations.
PS: Yes I think most people agree we’d like to bring more jobs to Peterborough, but won’t this just be taking trade from elsewhere? We’ve already got an Aldi in Stanground, we’ve got Serpentine Green just down the road.
JB: Yes indeed. But a key thing is that particularly supermarket businesses only invest where they can see that the customers are going to come and use them. Because no-one is actually going to come and create something without being able to get the revenue they need. And certainly the choice which the general public at large need ensures that they get good value for money. Because what it does mean is that there’s competition and people obviously vie for their business. And so I think really it’s a win-win situation. It does give the choice, and it gives really good value for money because people are able to see that these companies do compete with each other. One of the biggest problems we hear from many of the public is that you know there isn’t choice. One chain is you know got lots of stores and they’ve got no other options. But in Peterborough there are lots of options, and people can decide which supermarket they want to use, and it is really good for a competitive situation and keeping the prices right for the customer.
PS: Yes. Morrisons is just the latest in a long line of investment to come into Stanground. What’s so special about Stanground at the moment?
JB: Well I think the key thing is that people do see that there is tremendous potential there, and I know obviously there are one or two concerns which need to be dealt with. But clearly with its strategic location and particularly when we’re looking at the Magna Park development along the railway line which is going to be developed from Felixstowe to Nuneaton, it is a very strategic route, and people can see that there is the availability of the creation of jobs there, and clearly we believe that developing it like that is going to be really positive for Peterborough. And we’re looking at some four to five thousand additional jobs, and we all know how desperately we need to provide jobs, in order to ensure the quality of life for people, and to sustain the development of housing and all the things that go with it for everybody that lives there.
PS: Yeah. And retail at the moment, is it starting to pick up? We keep being told we’re pulling out of recession here. Some good figures for Christmas trading from some areas, how are we doing round here?
JB: Yes I mean I think with Queensgate and John Lewis and Next in particular we’ve seen some really positive figures, and they’ve done really well, and I think that one of the key things we have to understand is that Peterborough has a really good retail offering, and people are finding it very attractive to come and shop in Peterborough. And that is shown by the figures that we’ve seen over Christmas. they do see it as a real place that they want to be and spend their money. And there are lots of options for them to be able to shop in all the different varieties. And I think we’re very fortunate to have such a vibrant city centre and shopping centre such as Queensgate. But the key thing is it’s still going to be challenging in the early part of this year. Things are changing with the VAT having been increased again. There are going to be challenges with various issues of additional redundancies as we meet the challenges of the debt that the UK has got. So I think that although we’ve had a really good Christmas, we have to understand that there are still going to be certain problems that we are going to have to manage ourselves through. Which is why it is so important that as Peterborough, we are able to attract investment now, to ensure that we don’t get the kind of lull that perhaps may happen in other locations.
PS: John. Stay warm. Thank you for that. John Bridge, Chairman of Peterborough Chamber of Commerce. Morrisons said “we are keen to bring our great value fresh food to new customers in Peterborough.” And they are “looking forward to being part of this exciting new development in Stanground.” Your thoughts on that, and anything else you hear in the show. Do you want another supermarket in Stanground?