“Not another new-fangled initiative”? “Why do we want to fill children’s minds with rights – aren’t there enough people talking about their rights already”?

If this would be your natural, sceptical reaction, I would well understand – because this was exactly the sort [...]]]> If someone said the words “respecting children’s rights”, what would you say in return?

“Not another new-fangled initiative”? “Why do we want to fill children’s minds with rights – aren’t there enough people talking about their rights already”?

If this would be your natural, sceptical reaction, I would well understand – because this was exactly the sort of thought going through my mind when I went last week to Bridport Primary School to hear about the fact that it had won an award for being a “respecting rights” school.

What’s more, if you talk to some of the teachers who were at the school five years ago when this idea was first introduced there, you would find that they shared the same scepticism at that stage. They had little enthusiasm for the idea of turning their children into barrack-room lawyers.

But those same teachers today have become enthusiasts – and, now that I have seen the thing in action, I have, too. The key difference between what is going on in Bridport Primary School and what you might think would happen, is that the “respecting rights” idea has been translated into something that makes the children very conscious of the rights of other children – and hence of their own responsibilities.

I am told that the value of this approach really became clear when the caretaker noticed, after about two years of operating the scheme, that he had not had to make any repairs in the playground.

Pupils at the school also talk enthusiastically about the way in which some of the older ones have been trained up to act as mediators, solving disputes between the younger children. And it is positively touching to hear both pupils and teachers describing how what you might think would be useless paraphernalia – the charters in every classroom and the displays reminding people about rights and responsibilities – have actually helped to make the place feel safer and nicer.

What the school has managed to create is an extraordinary sense of good citizenship. It comes out in all sorts of ways – not least when one teacher told me that she had just seen a young pupil, who was rather aggressively pulling a toy tractor around, being asked very politely by another pupil to stop doing this because it was likely to damage their nice building. The neighbourly society in action – and at the age of 10!

What makes this so interesting is that the power of an idea has been used to alter the balance of power. The majority of pupils — sensible and nice children who want to learn in pleasant and safe surroundings — have been given a language in which to exert communal pressure on anybody who is, or is thinking of being, a trouble-maker.

So far from creating a generation of barrack-room lawyers, the school’s focus on rights and responsibilities has actually created a culture within which kindness and good sense triumph day-by-day over the untoward and the unruly. Society as a whole has a lot to learn from Bridport Primary School.

This is a question that I have repeatedly found myself asking over the years of writing this column.

It isn’t always an easy question to answer – because there are things that the experts know that the locals may not; and there are things [...]]]> Who knows best? The locals, or the experts?

This is a question that I have repeatedly found myself asking over the years of writing this column.

It isn’t always an easy question to answer – because there are things that the experts know that the locals may not; and there are things that the locals know that the experts may not. But most of the mistakes I have witnessed in the last 13 years in West Dorset have been caused by over-estimating the expertise of the experts and under-estimating the knowledge of the locals.

Last week, I saw at first hand a striking example of this phenomenon.

For some years, I have been campaigning for a second pedestrian crossing at the west end of Winterbourne Abbas – a village that lies on the A35.

The continuous flow of traffic through the village makes it very important that people – and, in particular, school children – can cross the road safely at a pedestrian crossing in order to get to bus stops, visit their friends, and so forth. With just one crossing at the east end of the village, and with much of the population living at the west end, there has been a considerable tendency for people – and, in particular, children – to take their lives in their hands by crossing the road without a pedestrian crossing.

The same problem arises in Chideock and in Morcombelake – and it was therefore with huge relief that I (and many others) greeted the recent announcement by the Highways Agency that it was going to press ahead with new crossings in all three villages.

Work on the crossing at Winterbourne Abbas has already begun – and this is a major step forward.

But there is a little problem.

The new crossing is being located exactly where the bus currently stops. So the experts – who know a thing or two about the interaction of crossings and bus stops – have (no doubt, very sensibly) determined that the bus stop must be moved.

Unfortunately, however, there is no footpath between the place located for the new bus stop on the south side of the road and the point where the new crossing reaches the south side of the road. Result: children getting onto or off the bus who wish to make their way down to the crossing will have to perform a high-wire act, balancing themselves on a one-foot wide strip of grass between the A35 and the stream that runs through the village. Alternatively, of course, they may forsake the new crossing and take their lives in their hands by rushing across the A35 at the point where the bus stops.

Either way, as any local can point out, the result will not be the additional safety that the scheme is meant to provide.

I am now attempting to draw on the further goodwill of the Highways Agency to solve this problem – perhaps by creating a wider path between the A35 and the stream. But the interesting question is: why was there so little opportunity for the locals to bring their knowledge to bear?

Here, as in so many cases, the best efforts of the bureaucracies can be negated by failing to take into account facts that any local can tell you.

540 words

But, for people further south, the normal destination is, of course, Dorset County Hospital in Dorchester. And Dorset County Hospital has been much on our minds recently.

As most readers of [...]]]> West Dorset residents in the Sherborne area naturally tend to use Yeovil Hospital for the acute services that the Yeatman in Sherborne itself cannot provide.

But, for people further south, the normal destination is, of course, Dorset County Hospital in Dorchester. And Dorset County Hospital has been much on our minds recently.

As most readers of this column will undoubtedly recall, the saga began when the chairman and chief executive of the hospital left their posts amidst reports that the hospital was facing grisly deficits.

It appears that large amounts of money were spent reinforcing staffing in particular specialisms – without any equal and opposite efforts to increase efficiency, reduce the scale of management and cut the cost of back offices.

Once the crisis broke, a new chairman and chief executive were put in place. With the help and approval of the regulator (the so-called “Monitor”), a rescue plan was quickly devised.

Importantly, the rescue plan did not involve cutting back on services – despite recurrent rumours to the contrary.

Instead of cutting back on services, the plan envisaged cutting back on management and other staff, and reorganising the way various things were done, as well as a severe dose of pay restraint.

We are now some weeks further on, and some rather strange things seem to have happened.

It has become clear that, while the re-engineering of various activities is going forward, the Department of Health is not currently intending to lend the money that the hospital needs to make the redundancy payments that would be involved in rapid staff reductions, and no strenuous pay restraint is in prospect.

Mercifully, it also seems clear that the hospital has found a way of making its cash flow work well enough to keep it running through coming months.

But, without the money to fund redundancies and without severe pay restraint, there seems little prospect of DCH being able to get its finances on to a basis that is sustainable in the long term.

The absence of the pay restraint is not altogether surprising. It is, at present, really very difficult for an individual hospital to change the pay of those employed in it, because of the way the national pay bargaining system works.

But the redundancies are different matter. It is certainly possible for a hospital like DCH to buy people out of their jobs by making the required redundancy payments.

So now we come to the really interesting question about these latest developments: why is the Department of Health not financing the redundancies?

Long experience in Westminster and Whitehall has not actually made me a cynic. My impression is that when things go wrong, it is more often because of cock-up rather than conspiracy – and, contrary to the current fashion, I don’t generally assume that ministers, even though they are my political opponents, are motivated mainly by low cunning.

But I have to say that, in this particular case, I do wonder whether the Secretary of State for Health, one Mr Andy Burnham, may have decided that he preferred not to see redundancies occurring this side of a purely arbitrary date like 6 May.

Could this really be the case?

And yet, I frequently find that, when there is a topic of real importance to people locally, the [...]]]> I don’t know how many times in the last few years I have heard people complaining about “apathy” – but this is certainly something one hears so often that it is in danger of becoming a cliché.

And yet, I frequently find that, when there is a topic of real importance to people locally, the locals turn out to be anything but apathetic.

I will never forget the huge congregation that gathered in the church at Bradpole when there was a threat to the local sub post office, or the meeting on the Sustainable Communities Bill that had to be moved from the Bridport Town Hall to the United Reform church down the road because the numbers exceeded health and safety limits, or the numbers of people who came to talk about the Three Cups Hotel in Lyme Regis, the biodigester in the Piddle Valley and the village shop in Thorncombe.

When people feel that their quality of life is really affected by something that they think they might be able to do something about, they turn up in large numbers and they display anything but apathy.

I had the same experience a few days ago when I chaired a public meeting about youth facilities in Lyme.

Any suggestion that the grown-ups in the west of West Dorset don’t care about providing more things for young people to do is, I can testify, completely false. The hall at the primary school was packed with adults who very clearly cared a lot about this problem. They had strong views, and they weren’t shy about expressing them. Any dispassionate observer would also have been bound to admit that the many people who spoke were articulate, polite, rational and well-informed. This was definitively not a screaming crowd: it was a group of mature people trying to solve a real issue.

What’s more, as the meeting progressed, it became clear that the solution which I had at first imagined might find favour was not going to achieve anything like a consensus – and a different solution gradually emerged. By the end, a show of many hands indicated that there was a way forward which was at least worth trying.

Of course, a public meeting of this kind is no substitute for the hard work that will now need to be done by professionals in the County’s youth services and others to put together a workable plan. And then there are all sorts of other hoops that will need to be gone through – consulting young people themselves, and working with Woodroffe School, Trustees of the Club for Young People, the Town Council, the Development Trust and others besides.

But there is all the difference in the world between a proposal which starts its life in a meeting of many locals whose views are based on genuine, personal understanding, and a scheme that merely descends from on high.

When local people are engaged in a process of collaborative democracy, there is at least a real chance of arriving at solutions that will stand the test of time. This surely has to be the shape of things to come.

Almost no matter whom you ask, they will tell you that the Exchequer has been living wildly beyond its means and that we can’t go on like this.

The recognition that we face a gargantuan fiscal crisis is, of course, the first step [...]]]> As just about everyone now knows, our national finances are totally up the spout.

Almost no matter whom you ask, they will tell you that the Exchequer has been living wildly beyond its means and that we can’t go on like this.

The recognition that we face a gargantuan fiscal crisis is, of course, the first step towards achieving the change we need.

But a new mythology has now sprung up.

This new myth consists of the suggestion that the only way we can hope to reduce government spending is by cutting back on services.

If competing firms in the free market were in the grip of this myth, they would rapidly head to bankruptcy. A firm that offers its customers reduced service in the competitive market place will make its problems worse rather than better — since customers will move next door.

The result is, of course, that competing firms struggle mightily to think of imaginative ways in which they can reduce their costs while keeping up the quality of the goods or services they produce.

And this is exactly what the public sector has to do over the next few years. But, I hear you say, is it possible? Can we really get more for less in the public sector just as we do in the private sector?

The answer – that we most certainly can – came home to me with great force last week when I was talking to some marvellous people from Macmillan Cancer Care in Dorchester.

They pointed out an amazing fact – that there are now about 1.6 million cancer survivors in England, and almost two million in the UK as a whole.

This is an astonishing tribute to the progress that medical science has made over the past few decades — since it isn’t long ago that one thought of cancer as something pretty close to a death sentence.

But this huge advance has a consequence. There is a significant risk that cancer survivors will fall ill in other ways after their resistance and strength have been diminished.

As the experts at Macmillan pointed out to me, through effective monitoring and well-targeted care we can vastly reduce the incidence of illness amongst cancer survivors — and thereby improve their quality of life while also saving large amounts for the NHS.

But what was really fascinating about the Macmillan message was that they did not favour the traditional, bureaucratic idea of medics seeing cancer survivors at specific intervals to go through a check-list.

Their message was, on the contrary, that the effective method is to equip the cancer survivors themselves with enough understanding and enough technique to spot early any worrying signs, so that the medics can rapidly intervene when and where this is necessary.

This is a tell-tale case. Right through our public services, we will need to exhibit exactly the same sort of imagination as the Macmillan people were exhibiting.

Out go the clunky, ineffective bureaucratic systems that cost large amounts of money and produce poor results. In come new post-bureaucratic methods that harness the expertise and understanding of the individuals on the front line, who are receiving and providing the service.

This way, effective, cheap, commonsense solutions can be found — to deliver more for less.

Some years ago, we all celebrated the news that the magnificent coastline of Lyme Bay was to be a World Heritage Site. We expected that great benefits would follow.

In some respects, these early hopes and aspirations have been fulfilled. The worldwide publicity given to world heritage sites is very probably [...]]]> What price a world heritage coastline?

Some years ago, we all celebrated the news that the magnificent coastline of Lyme Bay was to be a World Heritage Site. We expected that great benefits would follow.

In some respects, these early hopes and aspirations have been fulfilled. The worldwide publicity given to world heritage sites is very probably one of the things that has helped our West Dorset tourism keep up so well during the global recession (matched, of course, by the increased inclination of UK residents to holiday nearer to home when budgets became stretched).

I am sure that, as time goes on, the benefits of this high status will be felt in many other ways. Certainly, the careful management of the coastline by the various bodies that are responsible and the co-ordinated way in which they have gone about managing it, augurs well for the future.

But I am afraid that news of the world heritage status doesn’t seem to have penetrated some of the Whitehall bureaucracy. Or if it has, the conclusions reached in Whitehall do not seem to match our local expectations.

If you had to list something you wouldn’t want afflicting a World Heritage coast, what would it be?

Obviously, such a question leaves one spoilt for choice. Skyscrapers built along the shoreline is clearly a strong candidate for the worst horror. The construction of a large power station at Abbotsbury would clearly be a contestant. Inviting factory ships to destroy the livelihoods of all the local fishermen and to mash up the seabed would be a third entrant for the race.

But none of these things, mercifully, is at all likely to happen. In fact, there are laws against them happening.

So can we breathe a sigh of relief that this wonderful coastline is protected from despoliation? Alas, the answer is no.

Some way back, the Dorset Wildlife Trust discovered that huge oil tankers were parked off Lyme Bay.

I was sure this must be a purely temporary phenomenon. How, I reasoned, could the Department for Transport possibly be allowing an environmental risk of this magnitude off a World Heritage coastline?

So I took it up with the Department in the expectation of receiving a rapid response reassuring me that these tankers would not be around for long.

Unfortunately, these happy expectations haven’t been fulfilled. After rather a long delay, I received a letter confirming that these large and environmentally risky objects were indeed parked off Lyme Bay. The letter also explained to me that the Department proposed to do absolutely nothing other than to monitor the situation.

Of course, I recognise that these things never look quite the same when you are looking at them top down from Whitehall – and I accept that, while we remain heavily dependant on imported oil, tankers have to be stationed somewhere from time to time.

But, even by the standards of the Department for Transport, the tone of their response revealed a somewhat breathtaking ecological insouciance.

Why do we go to all this trouble to ensure that skyscrapers, large power stations and factory ships do not situate themselves along or near to the world heritage coastline, if we are then going to allow ruddy great oil tankers to park themselves for long period right in the place where any large-scale spillage would do maximum ecological damage?

I am now seeking to have a debate in Parliament about this, so that the Minister is forced to ask the Department exactly what is going on here.

So far, at any rate, the growth of unemployment amongst people in mid-career has been rather lower than one might have feared in the deepest and longest economic downturn since the 1930s. Many firms and many employees have agreed to reduce [...]]]> One of the worst features of the recession has been its effect on young people.

So far, at any rate, the growth of unemployment amongst people in mid-career has been rather lower than one might have feared in the deepest and longest economic downturn since the 1930s. Many firms and many employees have agreed to reduce hours or to cap wages in order to keep the firms open and the employees employed.

But, for young people, it has been a different story.

A sharply growing number of those leaving school, college or university haven’t been able to find work – and there is little prospect of this getting better in the near future, because many firms just don’t have new jobs to offer; they are struggling too hard to keep afloat and keep their existing employees in place.

At times like these, it is right for government to do everything it can to find jobs, training, apprenticeships – any useful and productive form of activity – for the young people concerned, so that we don’t wake up some years later and find that we have a lost generation who never made their way into the world of work.

But, however hard governments try to solve this problem, and however successful the attempts over the next couple of years prove to be, times will still be tough for many young people – and they will need all the help and support they can get.

This isn’t just an inner city problem. Right here in West Dorset, there are plenty of young people who are finding life pretty difficult just at the moment, and help is needed.

Luckily, there are some wonderful institutions in West Dorset that specialise in providing exactly this sort of help. One of them is the RendezVous. .

I have been involved for many years with this remarkable little voluntary body, located in a little set of rooms under Cheap Street Church, Sherborne. Like many a small charity, the RendezVous has had its ups and downs over the years; but it has soldiered on and has gradually grown both in size and in stature.

There is no rocket science involved – just generosity of spirit and a pretty unconditional offer of help for any young person who has a problem of almost any kind, from things that may take minutes to sort out, right up to life-changing issues that require many patient hours to address or resolve.

The operation has been run on a shoestring throughout its history, and I am absolutely sure that it costs a fraction of what it would cost to replicate its work in some more bureaucratic and official organisation. But, despite its frugality, its finances have always been, and remain, narrowly balanced.
There is now a highly supportive and growing group of “friends”. But there is still a need for more help from both and private and public sources in the Sherborne area — and I hope that any reader of this column who is able to help will make a beeline either for the front door or for the website(www.therendezvous.org.uk).

I hope it won’t sound unduly cynical if I say that I don’t automatically assume that this will happen when the research in question is conducted by bodies with names like the “Rural Community Action Network”.

But last week in Westminster, this very [...]]]> Every so often, someone somewhere produces a piece of research that illuminates the scene.

I hope it won’t sound unduly cynical if I say that I don’t automatically assume that this will happen when the research in question is conducted by bodies with names like the “Rural Community Action Network”.

But last week in Westminster, this very body, the Rural Community Action Network, undeniably came up with the goods.

At the annual general meeting of the National Village Halls Forum, they produced their report on rural community halls in England.

In days gone by, our Victorian ancestors put together the most amazing efforts at mapping the terrain. Countless intrepid and talented amateurs and professional surveyors charted every corner of the land in Ordnance Survey maps, plumbed the seas for the Hydrographic Office and triangulated from mountain peaks in Tibet. In much the same way, though on a smaller scale, thousands of people have now contributed to a survey of village halls.

The results are gently staggering.

It transpires that the total value of the buildings occupied by village halls in England now exceeds £3 billion, leaving aside the value of the land which must surely be worth at least the same again.

Very sadly – though very importantly – it also transpires that in 58% of our villages, the village hall is now the only meeting place. Gone, the church hall. Gone, the school hall. Only the village hall remains.

The figures revealed by the survey give real meaning to the catchphrase, “social capital”. Village halls, it seems, really do bring people together. Almost all the halls are run by volunteers – who contribute an average of an amazing 18.5 hours per week to the running of each hall – no doubt accounting for the fact that 75% of all village halls cost less than £10,000 per year to run and 51% of them cost less than £5,000 per year.

The uses to which the halls are put include just about everything you would expect — the range is huge. 75% of them are used for one form of local democratic purpose or another (village meetings, parish council meetings, consultations, polling booths and the like). 72% of the halls help local community groups to raise funds. 50% of the halls enable people to engage in health pursuits like yoga classes and aerobics. And that is on top of all the cultural pursuits — the clubs, societies, theatricals and music.

The really encouraging thing is that all this social capital is being built up at an increasing rate. Hall use has apparently tripled since 1988 – and, despite the fact that only 3% of the halls receive any regular local authority funding (and 46% do not even receive any discretionary rate relief), we still find half the halls in England making a profit each year and three quarters of them engaging in successful fund raising.

Whatever other problems we have in our society – and unfortunately we have many of them – one problem we do not have is any lack of community spirit in our villages. Just give them a hall and our villagers up and down England will do what villagers in West Dorset have been doing for years — building something that is a community in fact and not just in name.

What, you may ask, are Local Spending Reports?

This is a highly pertinent question, since the answer is that at present there aren’t any.

Lest, dear reader, you should think I have finally taken leave of my senses, I should [...]]]> A few days ago, I found myself yet again involved in the long-running saga of Local Spending Reports.

What, you may ask, are Local Spending Reports?

This is a highly pertinent question, since the answer is that at present there aren’t any.

Lest, dear reader, you should think I have finally taken leave of my senses, I should add that even though there aren’t any of these objects in existence, there are meant to be. The Sustainable Communities Act gives ministers the duty to publish  comprehensive Local Spending Reports for every area of the country.  .

The idea is simple.  In West Dorset and every other part of the country, there are dozens of government departments and quangos happily spending taxpayers’ money on projects of one kind and another.  But, at present, no-one has any way of knowing how much they are spending locally.  The Sustainable Communities Act gives ministers a duty to publish reports that will show what each such central government department and quango is spending in each area, and what they are spending it on.

Many months have now passed since the Sustainable Communities Act became law.  But very little information has, so far, been published by the Department concerned.

So we had a debate in Parliament about it, and we asked the Secretary of State why there was such a delay.

The debate had the unusual characteristic of being extremely, though unintentionally amusing.

The amusement consisted in the speech that Sir Humphrey had written for the Secretary of State.  This was a speech designed to explain why it had not been possible to produce reports showing how much all the various government departments had spent in each of the areas of the country.

You can imagine the sort of stuff: problems of allocation … difficulties of interpretation … questions of judgement … all very weighty and difficult.

What made this Yes, Minister speech particularly jolly was that all of these figures which the speech explained it wasn’t possible to produce have actually been produced in various parts of the country as part of a separate and parallel government scheme called “Total Place”.

This is a scheme in which the Treasury is trying to get all the bodies that spend money in West Dorset (and elsewhere) to talk to one another to find out whether they are spending money on the same thing, or whether they could spend less money if they combined forces.  Miraculously, despite all the problems raised by Sir Humphrey, when the Treasury asked various parts of the country to do this, it turned out that all the bodies in question are actually able to provide all of the data which in Sir Humphrey ‘s eloquent explanation couldn’t possibly be provided.

Discovery of this fact didn’t actually require any degree of rocket science.  Once I had been told that the statistics for West Dorset existed (even though I have not yet been able to lay hands on them) a little searching around on the amazing item called the internet (which Sir Humphrey has not yet heard about) revealed that all the figures for Cumbria have actually been published by … Cumbria.