Report for Box Vale Ward from Cllr Bryn Hurren. May 2024.
It has been great to receive so much really good positive feedback following Babergh DC’s winning of the Council of the year award for the whole of the United Kingdom.
While much of what local councils do and achieve goes unheralded, it is very heartening that all our coalition’s efforts and hard work have been noticed and recognized at a national level.
As one of the lead members and chair of a major committee, it is a very proud moment for myself as well to have the recognition and, I feel, to have reached this pinnacle after 25 yrs. hard work as a District Councillor on our local authority.
The model we have adopted at Babergh DC where the middle of the road political groups work together to freeze out the extremes from the political groups, could be a model that could work well at a national level as well. Would be so nice to just get back to a commitment to dialogue, working together and our national Government doing its very best for the country and all its people who live within it.
The great car parking debate has occupied far too much Council time recently and has been hijacked by some to comment in the press columns for meaningless shameful political gain. This is a discretional service that Babergh DC has pursued for many years by offering land that it owns as free car parking to support our high streets and make shopping and working in our urban areas as easy and as cheap as possible, our local economy is of great value to all of us and we have always done our very best to support and enhance it.
The bottom line is that car parking cannot be provided free, this discretionary service has to be provided by either charging everybody what it costs on the Council tax (rates) or charging the user at source when the facility is used via a ticket.
It now costs Babergh DC £440,000 to run all our car parks, of which £300,000 is Business rates levied and handed over to our national Government as a stealth tax and this ever-increasing tax on us to try to provide a good service, is the straw that has finally broken the camel’s back.
I understand that some dialogue has taken place with national government to ease this burden and I have also done my best as always to change minds, but this has all fallen on deaf ears and those in charge continue to hammer local authorities and use them as a cash cow to raise revenues for other national schemes. Is the money then wisely spent? With this present Junta, I very much doubt it, I suggest everybody now writes to complain to their MP or Gov minister responsible. Please be careful in who you vote for, you do have a choice.
We have no known local election in Babergh this year, only the Police and Crime commissioner post on May 2nd and the National General Election later this year, we presume at a time yet to be chosen by our now national government. No doubt this will be at a time when they feel it might be mostly in their best interests.
I am not in favour of the Police and Crime Commissioner being a political post as I feel this has led to this job being at the behest of our political masters, with a much poorer service at a much greater cost. The creation of this post has not worked well and should be scrapped now.
Having said that, I will vote for anyone other than the present incumbent, in an effort for meaningful change.
While the present administration can delay going to the polls until January 25 and may well do so, it is widely predicted the day of reckoning will be later in our autumn when the nights pull in and the wind and rain is upon us again. The pundits think the normal working people, that is you and I, tend not to bother to go out to vote then and stay in watching the telly.
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Let’s give them a huge surprise. The vote is the only weapon we have left against the very worst.
We are in the season now when all of our villages hold their annual Parish meetings, these are your meetings where reports are given by your local representatives, and you can question them on what they have achieved throughout the year and make suggestions yourselves on what needs doing for the village in which you live and for the people who live in them.
This is a good time to start a new group or service that would help your village and yourselves.
I will be at all six of my villages and will be pleased to answer questions from the floor or privately afterwards. Please come. The dates should be under the columns from your village or as a separate notice in this magazine.
Hopefully by the time we all read this magazine, my beloved Ipswich Town FC will be in the Premier league. What a Season. C.O.Y.B.
I will be pleased to talk and help everyone as always, then or before through normal channels.
We can achieve a lot together. Bryn.hurren@babergh.gov.uk 01787 210854 mob 07771 508348. Take Care of yourselves and all of your loved ones. Bryn.