Month: February 2011

38 Degrees – Save Our Forests campaign

I have been contacted by a resident about the Save Our Forests campaign which is regarding the government’s plans regarding the Forestry Commission. Locally Lib Dem councillors recently voted to increase the size of the Bidston Hill site of biological importance (which is a material consideration when deciding planning applications). Also Norman Street and Upper … Continue reading “38 Degrees – Save Our Forests campaign”

I have been contacted by a resident about the Save Our Forests campaign which is regarding the government’s plans regarding the Forestry Commission. Locally Lib Dem councillors recently voted to increase the size of the Bidston Hill site of biological importance (which is a material consideration when deciding planning applications). Also Norman Street and Upper Brassey Street have had fifty trees planted (which makes both streets look more pleasant). The current position of the Lib Dems (and the coalition government is outlined below).

The government wants to resolve the current conflict that exists within the Forestry Commission as it’s a supplier of timber and regulator of that industry. The forests will be protected for future generations, although commercial interests may get forest land this will be in the form of a lease with strict protections built in rather than a direct sale of the land.

Public access and biodiversity will be protected and there will be safeguards to protect the public interest. First refusal will be given to community bodies and civil society organisations. Land owners will still need a licence for felling more than five cubic metres of growing trees. 70% of England’s woodland is already in private hands, the Forestry Commission controls 18%. The overall aim is to allow those who live closer to the forests greater powers to protect them.

When in government Labour sold over 25,000 acres of woodland with barely any protection. However the Lib Dem/Conservative government will put in place safeguards to protect public access, the natural environment and the interests of local communities.

The government is also planning to plant one million trees in urban and suburban areas in the next four years, which will be the first government tree planting campaign since the 1970s. There is a consultation process and the Coalition Government is trying to reassure the public that they will protect our forests better than ever before.

Millions jam street-level crime map website

Millions jam street-level crime map website

                                          

The government often come under criticism for large amounts of money spent on websites that hardly anyone uses. However the new website for looking at crime statistics on a more local basis has ground to a grinding halt due to demand.

I run a website that has thousands of visitors in an average day. It has no problem keeping up with that kind of load and peaks in demand, despite many of the pages having graphics and being written in PHP. Despite the government spending £300,000 on the website, the main problem seems to be scalability of the database.

Clearly whoever designed the website for them wasn’t thinking of scalability, but instead of doing things cheaply rather than designing it to be robust when lots of of people visited it.

If they’d just designed it in a more logical way, where you choose your area from a drop down list by force area, or like the election maps website there wouldn’t be such problems as it seems the web server’s CPU can’t cope with all the requests. This is one of the downsides to a dynamic rather than static site and sometimes it’s best to run CPU-intensive tools on a separate server and sub domain.

Clearly there have been comments in the IT industry before that (especially under the previous Labour government) that persuading ministers to fork over large sums of money for IT projects and websites was “like taking candy from children”.

Although it is now correctly identifying my force area as Merseyside, no maps (it seems to be using an API and Google Maps) are appearing. Local residents can however view crime statistics for Bidston & St. James on Merseyside Police’s website.

I hope it’ll get sorted out soon as it’s the kind of thing that residents of Bidston & St. James are interested in knowing.

Council Excellence Overview and Scrutiny Committee – 31/1/2011 Part 5 – Strategic Change Programme update (continued)

Mr. Green continued by saying the easy answer was no but he was not saying no in the future. They had built on 6-9 months of work and could move people around and possibly bring in specialists although they had very good people within the authority. When they supported people’s ideas to improve the service they tended to blossom and catch onto the idea.

Cllr Gilchrist asked about Equality Impact Assessment and referred to the work of Jacqueline Cross. He referred to 11.2 and asked although they were not required for the program as a whole whether they were conducted for each individual project and were held in a database?

Mr. Green said the simple answer was yes, this was held by the Strategic Change Programme Office. Peter Crawford’s software and paperwork was also held by individual project managers and Chief Officers who had copies as well. Cllr Green referred to Harry Jones and the case of minutes of a meeting that hadn’t happened yet being published. He said there would be no minutes before Friday’s meeting.

Cllr Davies thanked Mr. Green for the report and said it was helpful. He said he looked forward to the councillor’s seminar in March. He asked whether Mr. Green was confident that £10.7 million of savings would be achieved?

Council Excellence Overview and Scrutiny Committee – 31/1/2011 Part 4 – Strategic Change Programme update (continued)

There were one or two projects that had been initiated as a result of the Wirral’s Future – Be a Part of It in relation to fees. He said there could be scrutiny by the overview and scrutiny committees regarding emerging ideas. Regarding resource implications, a lot could be contained within existing resources. The board had stepped back to monthly meetings which was better. Most problems were smoothed out before reaching the board. He said lots of people were working hard and that the appendices don’t list the individual status of projects. There was approval at each gate which was enshrined within the governance arrangements. He was happy to answer and questions from councillors.

Cllr Gilchrist started by referring to section 4.9.1 in relation to skills and capacities. He said he had had problems when emailing people who had left. He asked if Wirral Council had retained people to manage things? He queried whether consultants would be needed and highlighted that Chief Officers could hire consultants up to a certain figure, without approval by councillors.

Mr. Green responded that the strategic change office had 4 1/2 staff, but it would be nice to have more. Of all the projects initiated and that had moved through the process none had needed consultants. However consultant support could be added. He said Friday’s board meeting was considering six projects. Some were still held at the project approval stage and resource requirements needed to be considered. Ideally the resources could be found from inside the Council.

Council Excellence Overview and Scrutiny Committee – 31/1/2011 Part 3 – Strategic Change Programme update (continued)

He outlined the cautious approach referring to section 4.5 of the report in relative to savings in 2011/2012. The savings were agreed by Chief Officers, Mr. Green, the project managers and the Director of Finance (Ian Coleman).

The program could be accelerated, but they didn’t want to overstate the benefits. They had made sure there was no double counting as a result of the EVR (Early Voluntary Redundancy). They were following good project management protocols and the papers for the next Board meeting were an inch thick. 4.8 showed they were making sure deadlines were met of the business as usual projects. 4.9 detailed the efforts to make sure there was no double counting as a result of the EVR. He thought they had found a delivery mechanism that works. There was oversight of individual projects.

At this point, 6.30pm Cllr Kearney arrived (late). Mr. Green continued by saying they were expanding the program. 4.9.6 outlined the strategic importance of the change program. Each have risks and a risk register. The oversight was provided by the Strategic Change Office and there was an overall risk register with oversight provided by the Strategic Change Board. There was quality assurance and it was an evolving process which was being constantly reviewed. There would be some “bumps along the way”. It was not realistic to say that every project will deliver every penny of savings.