March 2015

MPs quiz Truss over farm subsidy system failure

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What does this all mean for LEADER? It was proposed that this system would support LEADER claims. I know it’s a small deal in the overall scale of RDPE, indeed as much has been spent on the failed system as the whole LEADER budget. I do remain concerned however that any central efficiencies assumed in driving down the maximum to be spent on management and admin  ro 18% have now disappeared. In Scotland LEADER partnerships have been allowed to take up to 25% to meet M&A costs but that’s a different story. This story tells us:

Defra secretary Liz Truss has questions to answer over the failure of the government’s £154m computer system for farm subsidy payments, says an influential committee of MPs.

Ms Truss and Rural Payments Agency chief executive Mark Grimshaw have both been summoned to appear before the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.

They will give evidence to the committee on Wednesday (25 March).

The agency announced last week that its IT system – which took two years to develop – was incapable of receiving farmers’ claims for the new Basic Payment System.

Farmers are now being asked to go back to pen and paper to complete their applications, although they are still being asked to register online for payments.

The U-turn follows months of warnings from farm leaders about the capability of the system to manage complex information – including mapping land.

Brussels has given farmers an extra month to complete their claims by extending the deadline for applications from 15 May to 15 June.

If claims are made on time, the government insists it will still be able to make subsidy payments to farmers after the six-month window opens in December 2015.

UK inflation hits zero for the first time on record

We haven’t seen economic times like these for over 50 years. There are mixed messages for rural places. Falling fuel prices are obviously a good thing, falling food prices (particularly in view of the scale of the wider food chain rather than just agriculture) are a less good thing. The whole economic situation still feels too weird and fragile to me. I don’t think things have retuned to anything like normal for rural England since 2008. This story says:

Real terms pay fell for six straight years between 2008 and 2014, as inflation consistently outpaced wage growth. However, that trend has been in reverse since late 2014 giving households a boost. The latest figures showed wage growth running at 1.8% including bonuses in the three months to January.

The consumer prices index – Britain’s official inflation measure – has not fallen to zero since comparable records began in 1989. However, unofficial estimates suggest it might have been lower in 1960.

HS2: Government has ‘no convincing case’ for £50bn rail line

I have to confess I wonder what all the fuss is about in terms of half an hour of saved travel time and how it justifies spending such a huge amount. This article tells us:

The government has no convincing case for spending £50bn building the HS2 rail link between London and the North, a report by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee says.

The government’s main arguments in favour of HS2 – increasing railway capacity and rebalancing the economy – were still to be proven, peers said.

There are less-expensive options than HS2, they said on Wednesday.

A government spokesman said HS2 would deliver big benefits.

Lord Hollick, chairman of the Lords’ committee, said overcrowding on the West Coast Main Line was largely a problem on commuter trains and on long-distance services on Friday nights and some weekends.

“The Government have not carried out a proper assessment of whether alternative ways of increasing capacity are more cost-effective than HS2,” he said.

“In terms of rebalancing, London is likely to be the main beneficiary from HS2. Investment in improving rail links in the North of England might deliver much greater economic benefit at a fraction of the cost.”

One in six UK homes at risk from flooding, says MPs report

It’s the maintenance stupid – to misquote a former US President. Interesting issues arising from this report particularly for our colleagues in the South West

England’s ability to sustain current levels of flood protection for homes and businesses faces “major risks”, MPs have warned.

Some five million properties across the country, or around one in six, are at risk of flooding from coastal, river and surface water, and climate change is increasing the risks of extreme weather and floods, a report by the public accounts committee said.

While the budget for spending on new defences has been agreed for the next six years, allowing longer term planning, funding for maintenance is only settled annually.

The ‘super-council’ leader making friends across the north-east

I still think all this urban centric stuff will end in tears……

Simon Henig is in an unexpected position. Just a year ago he was leading Durham council through a period of unprecedented cutbacks that devastated communities and decimated public services across the north-east.

Then, suddenly – and after years of apparently overlooking the plight of the region – the coalition government began talking about creating a “northern powerhouse”. Manchester’s combined local authority of 10 councils was praised for its achievements and authorities across the country were encouraged to follow suit and set up their own “super-councils” to make regional decisions about everything from transport to economic growth

Devolution is a complete dog’s breakfast of different geographical [council] areas happening at different times

In the north-east, progress was initially slow, with civic battles between Sunderland and Newcastle holding up the process of joining together seven authorities: County Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle, North Tyneside, Northumberland, South Tyneside and Sunderland. The answer was to find someone to lead the initiative who was unencumbered by those historic rivalries. That person is Henig, who now finds himself at the forefront of the “haphazard” national combined authorities project.

“It’s a complete dog’s breakfast of different geographical [council] areas happening at different times. I’m a big fan of devolution, but it should apply to everybody, not be based on where government ministers think there should be devolution. It’s clear that some areas are as far away as ever from devolution, while others race ahead. That’s no answer to the devolution issue – the issue that England is the most centralised country of any western democracy.”

Smiling Scots, worried Welsh and lazy Londoners: survey maps regional personality types

Looks like many rural places don’t come out well in what might be described as a “metro-sexual” analysis. I just think the researchers don’t get deep understated rural folks. This story tells us:

The finding may be no surprise to those outside the M25, but Londoners rank among the least welcoming and most lazy people in the country, according to a survey of personalities in Great Britain.

Though more curious and sociable than most, people living in the capital came across as uncooperative, quarrelsome and irritable compared to the rest of Britain, and scored particularly badly on conscientiousness.

The dim view of London’s residents emerged from a survey by Cambridge scientists that provides a rare snapshot of the country’s psychological landscape. It suggests that different personalities cluster together to create a patchwork of regional characters.

According to the survey, the most friendly and emotionally stable Britons were found in Scotland, while Wales was home to a disproportionate number of shy and neurotic people.

“There’s a widespread belief that people in different parts of the country have different characters and in some ways this research was testing that idea,” Jason Rentfrow, a psychologist at Cambridge University, told the Guardian.

The findings, published in the journal Plos One, go beyond reinforcing, or in some cases, overturning, tired regional stereotypes. Psychological factors can have a significant impact on public health, and understanding the reasons they cluster in geographical areas can help with local policies to improve people’s wellbeing.

Budget 2015 key points – everything you need to know

This is a really good summary. It is a bit too long to quote but it covers everything. The really worrying thing from a local government perspective is the level of proposed cuts at the start of a new Government. This also appears to be a budget which does a lot for the elderly but offers relatively little for the young already a challenged minority in rural England. Read the whole article and you’ll get the best overview I have found.

Northern powerhouse: is the north really a winner in the 2015 budget?

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I fear smoke and mirrors in terms of the rhetoric about stoking up the economic development of the north and at best some more cash just for its cities. The author of this article has a similar view – she begins by telling us:

It has been almost nine months since George Osborne started talking regularly about the “northern powerhouse”, his vision for a prosperous new north of England, which will contribute to the nation’s coffers rather than draining them. I remember being quite scornful of it at the time and still think it sounds like a genre of music popular in the working men’s clubs of Lancashire on karaoke night.

On Wednesday the chancellor – and the MP for Tatton in Cheshire – devoted a good portion of his final budget of this parliament to promising stuff to fill the land of milk and honey that is his northern paradise, sorry, powerhouse. His fixation led some to ask whether the real winner of this budget was the “north”, wherever that may be (certainly not Cumbria, as I will explain below).

Green energy costs ‘far higher than ministers admit’

I have long wondered about a coherent overview of how the current renewables subsidies affect the market.

The report featured in this article provides fascinating food for thought – it identifies:

Highly subsidised wind and solar capacity flooding the market with near random amounts of zero marginal cost electricity wrecks the economics of conventional power stations. It is therefore impossible to integrate large amounts of intermittent renewables into a private sector system and still expect it to function as such.

There are two options to align ownership and control:

1.       If renewables are a must-have – although no government has made a reasoned policy case for them – then nationalisation is the answer; or

2.       the state cedes control, ditches the renewables target and returns the sector to the market.

What will the next government do to end the bus cuts crisis?

As we look forward with trepidation to cuts at the beginning of a new Government which make our recent experience seem like small fry in the public sector this story can stand for many other threatened services the death of which will make life in some rural communities unviable. It tells us:

Millions of people rely on local bus services to get them to work, school, job interviews, hospital appointments and shops. According to annual bus statistics [pdf] from the Department for Transport (DfT) there were 4.7bn passenger journeys on buses in England in 2013-14. But as austerity measures make mincemeat of council budgets many vital subsidised services – which provide a bus where one is needed but no commercially operated route exists – are disappearing.

In addition to the government’s 28% cut in funding for local authorities, the bus service operators grant, which provides a fuel duty rebate to bus service operators, has also been cut by 20%. Cash-strapped local authorities have responded by reducing their funding for bus services by £44m (15%), and more than 2,000 routes or services have been lost [pdf], according to the Campaign For Better Transport (CBT).

Although they only account for 19% of bus services in England outside of London, subsidised services are often the only form of public transport isolated people can access. In counties such as Hertfordshire, Derbyshire, Hampshire and East Sussex these services have been particularly hard hit. North Yorkshire has cut 90 bus services, according to figures the CBT obtained through freedom of information requests.

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