Mark Pountney, Lib Dem Councillor for Cockington-with-Chelston

This is my take on the budget setting process, having only been elected in June last year and never having been in Local Government before.

My background is that I worked for one of the big four banks in and around the South West, but came to Torquay for the second time in April 1992 and have remained here ever since. I left the bank 4 years ago and since retrained as an accountant and I am now a member of the Association of Accounting Technicians (MAAT)

Now that the budget process is over, and the Conservative Mayor has got exactly what he wanted, there can be no doubt as to who is responsible.

Neither Liberal Democrat nor Independent amendments were accepted, so a large proportion of the Councillors were ignored. Indeed so were many of the Conservative Councillors.

There is a Board called Overview & Scrutiny, which is there to be the watch dog of the people and to scrutinise what the Mayor does. At this time of year it’s mainly focussed on scrutiny of the budget.

We spent countless hours trying to get information and details on the budget from the Mayor, important papers were only made available to us hours before the meetings, making proper analysis impossible. We interviewed all the major players (except the Mayor who was too busy) and asked hundred of questions, often they didn’t seem to have the answers and had to write to us giving the additional information.

At the end of this most unsatisfactory process, we made a string of suggestions for the Mayor to consider before completing his budget. These suggested amendment were voted on by the Board, which is Conservative controlled, it was therefore very surprising when they were first not considered and then, not supported by these same people at full Council.

If you had sat there all those long hours, and then found that nothing you had suggested was taken up by the Mayor, I am sure that you, too, would have wondered what it was all about, I certainly did.

Nobody has been listened too, nothing was changed. It mattered not how good an argument that you put forward, nothing was going to make the slightest bit of difference.

One wonders, if the Mayor was so poor at providing robust information to the Overview and Scrutiny Board, perhaps he didn’t have it himself? Now that would be even more worrying!

I guess it all comes down to priorities and this is where the Parties divide.  I know that things are financially difficult, but none of the proposed amendment were uncosted and a balance budget would have been achieved. So please don’t be fooled into believing that what we had put forward was some reckless plan that would have brought ruin for the Council. It is typical of Conservative propaganda that they play on people’s fears.

Take the Riviera International Conference Centre as an example. We continue to plough in hundreds of thousands of Pounds into the Centre to keep it afloat. We are told that it is essential for the future regeneration of the bay, and we need to protect the jobs of the people who work there. To a large extent I agree with this, but what are the facts?

Over the last 10 years we have subsidised the Centre to the tune of £1.5million and has anything changed from all of this money? Do we have any sort of robust viable business plan for the Centre? No we don’t.

We are going to have a new Management board, who will work on this (allegedly) but we all know what this means, that the problems will be swept under the carpet for another year. We are going to spend £200,000 on carrying out repairs and essential maintenance, for what purpose? We have no plan beyond next week, we know that currently the Centre is not viable, history has shown us this, but with no detailed business plan in place, we are going to ‘throw’ in more money and hope beyond all hope that this solves the problem.  What we LibDem’s pressed for was to say to the RICC that there was no longer any open cheque book at the Council and that whilst we may well be sympathetic to their problems and may well be keen to help, we need to have a detailed 5 year plan, if only so that we the council can see what liabilities we have.

I worked many years in banking, it would never been possible to say to a business, don’t worry, if you are short of money we will always increase your overdraft, and you can just carry on regardless. If I had, I think that you, the shareholders, (as that is what we all are as tax payers) would be calling for my head!

The Conservatives want to polarise this issue. You are either for the RICC or you against it. It was like a parent saying to a child that they can’t do something and the child replying that you have never loved them. This is totally wrong, it’s because we care about the RICC that we want to see it have a prosperous and long term future. Remember, that the Conservatives has been in control of the Council for 8 ½   years of the last 11 years, they have done absolutely nothing in those years, so this problem is of their own making.

You will also here, the Conservative say about the last 5 ½ years that it was the previous administration that got us into this mess. They are the previous administration. It’s the same old faces. They think that as they have rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic, they are not responsible for the ship going down.

Then there is the issue over jobs, it seems that every effort must be made to save the jobs of the people who work at the RICC, I agree. But it seems that all the jobs lost from every other part of the Council are somehow less important, I bet they don’t think so!

I heard Cllr Excell say on the radio, that we LibDem’s should work more closely with the Conservatives; after all we are in collation. This is after his party had totally rejected everything we had put forward.!

This Conservative  administration is failing the Council and the people of Torbay, with it hopeless mismanagement.

I will continue to do what I promised, when elected. To hold them to account.