Strange council policy ideas

The long winter is about to end, blossoms and daffodils are beginning to appear, and politicians start to think about their chances in the forthcoming council elections in May, which is why wonky policy ideas are flown like kites in a blustery mad

march day.

Kent County Council has set its budget, even though parts of it are not fully worked out.

It doesn’t make for happy reading.

What they are trying to achieve is survival, leaving most services within a half life of doleful ineffectiveness closed libraries, proliferating potholes and a careworn highway infrastructure.

Take Levelling Up as an example.

Levelling Up is a given, yet our Sure Start children’s centres are being closed or cut down by melding them with other incompatible facilities. These are part of Kent County Council’s proposals to close children’s centres.

Yet the BBC reported that many of our selective schools are not giving special attention to attracting children from poor or deprived backgrounds.

In fact, the further west one goes the percentage of students receiving the pupil premium decreases, in some cases, to very low single figures.

Yet how do we enable children from a less wealthy background to succeed in life if we hamstring their chances at an early age? Another anomaly is the £10 charge for out-of-kent users at our household recycling waste centres.

On the one hand, the county council and others are lambasting the Mayor of London about the capital’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) charge

of £12.50 and why it should not be extended to the outer London boroughs.

In the same breath, though, the authority is intending to charge the residents of those London boroughs £10 a time for disposing of their waste at the tip.

Are we not missing the picture here?

We want to see less fly-tipping and lower emissions from vehicles, so why pursue policies that do the opposite?

I keep being told by our latterday St Augustines that ULEZ is a great idea, but just not now.

If not now when? Kccisinabind.

Adult social care is hollowing out the KCC budget and central government is responsible for delivering rigorous austerity policies, now and in the past, and not restructuring local government in a sensible, viable manner.

We will continue to live with the consequences, until reform and equitable financing for local government becomes necessary, because the pain of procrastination and special interests becomes too much to bear.