Report to Market Deeping Town Council
from District Councillor Ashley Baxter
10^th May 2017.

Greetings to the new Mayor. I hope your term of office is successful and enjoyable both for yourself and for the town.

Many thanks to Cllr and Mrs Lester for the extended period they have spent in chains. I am grateful for what you have service you have given to the town over the last two years, and longer as a Councillor.

Newly elected Chair of SKDC , Cllr Bob Sampson, with Cllr Ashley Baxter at the launch event for the inaugural Deepings Literary Festival.

The District Council has seen a lot of changes since last month. Firstly, a new Chair has been elected. Cllr Bob Sampson is a well-respected independent Councillor who was elected ahead of the Tory nominee who was expected by many to be chosen.

The Council also elected a new leader. Cllr Bob Adams having been deposed by a cabal within his own party, did not stand and Cllr Matthew Lee was nominated. I was pleased to nominate Cllr Ian Selby as an Independent alternative. Cllr Lee won 31 votes against Cllr Selby’s 13 and it was good to see many Councillors putting aside party politics.

Talking of which, three former Conservatives have resigned the Tory whip.

The first act of the new administration was to shake up the committee structure. After long debate they agreed to allow both the Independent group and the Labour group to have a seat on each of the five new scrutiny committees.

The new committee structure means more meetings and more committee Chairs and vice-Chairs. The consequent annual cost to the Council will be in the region of £100,000.

A speech by the new Leader revealed that one of the early priorities of the new Cabinet will be a new carpet in the Grantham offices.

Meanwhile, back in the Deepings we had a County Council election in which I was runner up. I extend my congratulations to Cllr Rosemary Woolley and my commiserations to the other loser.

I have organised an election hustings on the 24^th May at the Deepings School on behalf of Deepings Churches Together in the Deepings. It would be great to see you all there.

I attended the Market Deeping Annual Town Meeting and the Deeping St James equivalent yesterday. I also popped into some of the Deepings Literary events and made a short video about it.

Report to MDTC Full Council 12^th April 2017
from South Kesteven District Councillor Ashley Baxter

Tories in Turmoil

High drama at South Kesteven this month as the Conservatives once again face a Civil War.

Cllr Bob Adams who has led the Council in a generally consensual manner faced a second internal coup led by two of the youngest Councillors, Cllr Matthew Hill and Cllr Kelham Cooke. Last year, Cllr Adams had held onto leadership of his Party group by just a couple of votes. This year he lost by a margin of 26 votes to 18. Technically 26 people is insufficient to hold a majority of the whole Council and so whoever is declared leader of the Council (rather than leader of the Tories) at the Council’s AGM next week will need to win support either among his colleagues or among the opposition parties.

The usurper, Cllr Matthew Lee, has revealed plans to reform the Council’s committee structure. These have only just been released but appear to put an emphasis on Overview and Scrutiny of proposed decisions rather than concentrating on Policy Development. The new structure also reduces committee size to 6 members on each group which will effectively exclude the small Labour group from the process and leave room for just one Independent on each. The Conservatives won 51% of the votes at the last SKDC election but their new leader is proposing a system that gives them more than 83% of seats on committees.

Council meetings

Since the last Town Council meeting I have attended the Scrutiny committee to hear the answer to the question I asked at Full Council concerning the fall in SKDC recycling rates from 49% down to 43%. The main reasons are: the six-figure gap in the waste and recycling budget left by scrapping of Recycling Credits by the Conservative County Council; the high volume of waste rejected from the recycling plant as a result of contamination caused by textiles and electrical goods among other things; the shift to incineration rather than landfill. In the subsequent debate, the first Conservative Councillor to comment suggested part of the problem lay in the attitude of the bin-men. Happily this was not the consensus of the rest of the Councillors present.

I have also attended a meeting of the Communities Policy Development Group, a second Housing summit and a meeting of the Shareholder Committee of the Local Authority Controlled Company.

County Council Elections

The long-awaited nominations for the County Council have been released. I am pleased to be one of the candidates successfully nominated and would like to take this opportunity to thank the various members of the Town Council who signed my nomination papers.

As ever, if anyone needs any more information, please do not hesitate to let me know.

Cllr Ashley Baxter
Independent District Councillor
for Market and West Deeping

Report to MDTC Full Council 8th March, 2017
from South Kesteven District Councillor Ashley Baxter

SKDC Full Council – 3rd March

About 48 out of 56 Councillors attended the Budget meeting, although not everyone made it to the end at 5.30pm. There were no questions from members of the public so the Council moved quite swiftly onto discussion of its £12m budget. Some questions were asked by me and others regarding the detail, e.g. I learned that the Council paid out a 6-figure insurance claim last year. The Labour group tabled amendments to the budget concerning potential refinements to bin collections, highway planning issues and town ‘gateways’. After warm words from the Council leader the amendment was withdrawn. The budget was then passed (unanimously for the first time in living memory).

The second potentially contentious issue was a motion from Cllr Dilks (DSJ) concerning hare coursing. The proposal was to raise awareness of the issue and consider a Public Spaces Protection Order which, it was argued, would give the police an additional means of preventing and disrupting the activities of hare-coursers. An amendment was proposed by Cllr Ray Wootten which said a) the police should be congratulated on Operation Galileo; b) the Council should not be specific in its action for a PSPO (without a formal request to SKDC from the police); and c) the Council should not publish anything in the SK Today newsletter on hare-coursing. Along with others, I spoke against the amendment saying that it would be better to take tangible and positive action towards PSPO and awareness raising. After further debate the watering-down amendment was passed by 20 votes to 19 with 3 abstentions. It was a shame the vote was carried but encouraging to see that some people are clearly prepared to vote against the party line on occasions.

SKDC Local Plan Briefing – 3rd March
On the morning before Full Council, I attended most of a Members’ briefing session regarding the local plan (I was slightly late due to work commitments). The session discussed the planning officers current thoughts and progress towards site allocations. There will be no formal consultation on the proposed sites until after the County Council elections but Members have been invited to a further briefing session later this month to learn about the methodology and rational for choosing the sites which have ‘made it through to boot-camp’ as it were. I would urge all Deepings Councillors and residents to engage with the formal consultation when it begins.

SKDC Housing Summit 2.0

Tomorrow (9/3/17) I will be attending a session at SKDC to discuss the Council’s future housing strategy. This follows on from a similar session earlier this year.

Report to MDTC Full Council 8^th October 2017
from South Kesteven District Councillor Ashley Baxter

SKDC Full Council
The Council had its first full meeting of the year on 19^th January. The main topic of presentation and discussion was the Lincolnshire NHS Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP). There has been much concern about the future of emergency care at Grantham Hospital and a presentation from Allan Kitt, Chief Commissioning Officer for the South West Lincolnshire Clinical Commissioning Group did little to allay these fears. His message was that the NHS needs to change in line with technology, demand and available budget.

Mr Kitt suggested fewer people should be using fewer hospitals and that far more services should be delivered by local GPs, clinics and pharmacists. He said that anyone who were released from hospital after a single night’s stay probably shouldn’t have been in hospital in the first place.  Most of all, it would be much better for everyone if people didn’t get poorly in the first place.

During the Q&A he seemed to say that if you decide to have a heart attack you should drive to the excellent coronary care facility in Lincoln and if you decide to give birth then you should travel to Lincoln.  Two heart-attack survivors pointed out that Grantham hospital staff had literally saved their lives but this Mr Kitt appeared to consider such opinions as sentimental tosh.  The STP talked about ‘managing the increase in wages’. I asked if this meant recruiting lower-skilled jobs and volunteers as has happened in the police, schools and library services. Mr Kitt replied that the item about ‘managing pay’ reflected that the STP assumes an increase of 1% per annum. Any decision, nationally or locally, to exceed 1% wouls result in a ‘financial gap’.

The Council meeting also discussed the proposals for a ‘Garden Village’ at Spitalgate Heath which I reported on last month and the impact of the Grantham ‘Gravity Fields’ festival won which the council spent hundreds of thousands of pounds.

There has been no meeting since June. The next will be Thursday 22^nd of September. The agenda has not yet been released.

Housing Summit
All Councillors were invited to attend one of two special meetings concerning the future of housing provision in the District.  The meetings were held in an informal ‘workshop’ style with small groups of councillors discussing three issues and then returning to a plenary session. Topics of discussion included ‘Housing Delivery’ and ‘Independent Living’. The sessions were good-humoured and produced some creative ideas. Whether anything positive comes out as a result remains to be seen.

Boundary Review
I am pleased to say that the Local Government Boundary Commission has published its final recommendations for the Deepings. The Commission appears to have accepted the argument put forward by the Town and Parish Councils and myself that the ward boundary should follow the established boundary between Deeping St James and Market Deeping Parishes. The new Deepings wards will be called ‘Deepings East’ and ‘Deepings West and Rural’. A few Market Deeping households end up in Deepings East which means the Town Council will now have two wards, the smaller of which will be called ‘Swine’s Meadow’ (not sure about the apostrophe)!

Communities PDG
This meeting took place on 27^th January with a relatively long agenda including the “Lincolnshire Health and Wellbeing Board – Integration Self Assessment Findings” which basically said Councils and NHS should work more closely together especially since no-one has got any money.

One item on the agenda was SKDC Car Park strategy. This is a document that the Communities PDG has been discussing for around 18 months including a few separate working party meetings.  In September the final report was delayed partly because I was insistent that the insinuation of the possible disposal of Halfleet car park be removed from the document.

At the January meeting a final draft was presented but abandoned because it was decided the scope of the document was not wide enough and should wider parking issues within the District beyond those for which SKDC is directly responsible.  I did point out that this is exactly what I had argued from the outset.

As ever, if anyone needs any more information, please do not hesitate to let me know.

Cllr Ashley Baxter
Independent District Councillor
for Market and West Deeping

POST SCRIPT

In response to a question at the meeting from Cllr Colin Gamble about Gravity Fields, I double-checked the expenditure figures.

“Gravity  Fields  2016  was  successfully  delivered within the approved budget of £140k, with it also attracts £89k of associated Arts  Council  grant  funding  and  £10K  of  other  grant  support,  as  well  as  over £10K of local business sponsorship.” So a total spend of around £270k.

More details of the festival can be found here: http://moderngov.southkesteven.gov.uk/mgAi.aspx?ID=19263

The budget for Deepings Literary Festival is about £20k.

Report to MDTC Full Council 11^th January 2016
from South Kesteven District Councillor Ashley Baxter

SKDC Full Council
The next Full Council meeting is due to take place at 2pm on 17^th of January. The agenda is not yet available.

Spitalgate Heath – Grantham

The following news is taken from the SKDC website:

“Plans for 3,700 new homes on the outskirts of Grantham are to be built as part of a ‘Garden Village’ development.

The site at Spitalgate Heath, which has formerly been known as the Southern Quadrant, is one of only 14 throughout the whole country selected by the Government to have access to a £6 million fund over the next two years which is designed to unlock the full capacity of sites and provide targeted funding to accelerate development and avoid delays.”

It all sounds very positive but will have a major impact on Grantham and South Kesteven. The site stretches from the A52 near Prince William of Gloucester Barracks right round to the approach road to Grantham from the A1. It will include a Southern Relief Road and a wildlife corridor along the River Witham.

Happy New Year

That’s all for this month. Once again I wish you a healthy and prosperous New Year. I look forward to working with the Town Council and the local community throughout 2017.

Report to MDTC Full Council 14^th December 2016
from South Kesteven District Councillor Ashley Baxter

SKDC Full Council
The meeting took place at 2pm on 17^th of November and was attended by 41 of the 56 Councillors. It was possibly the most friendly meeting I have attended so far though perhaps not the most interesting.

• There was a secret ballot regarding the Grantham BID (See below)
• A revised gambling policy was adopted by the Council.
• Once again we discussed whether or not to pray during council meetings. This time the Council decided it was better to have corporate prayers before the meeting rather than during the meeting (which has been my own opinion throughout the 14 months that the matter has been in debate).

Grantham BID

There was a secret ballot regarding the Grantham BID (Business Improvement District). It was later revealed that Councillors overwhelmingly supported the BID (by 35 votes to 6) and in the public ballot of businesses there was also a majority in favour (189 votes to 164). Unfortunately, the votes are weighted according to ratable value and the overall result was ‘no’ (£7.639,050 in favour and £7,639,650 against). A losing margin of 0.004%! As a result the Council has spent £27,500 and all it has in return is ‘egg on its face’.

SKDC Communities PDG

A meeting took place on 18^th November. It discussed Housing and Safeguarding policies as well as the possibility of sharing ‘front of house’ space with DWP and other government services. During this debate I drew attention to the stark difference between the SKDC services available to residents in Grantham and the unloved, minimalist facilities provided in the Deepings.

 Devolution
I am pleased to report that the idea of a directly elected mayor for Greater Lincolnshire appears to have been firmly defeated. Unfortunately, due to the intransigence of the DCLG, this means devolution of any kind for Lincolnshire has now been kicked into the long grass.

Deepings Community Trust AGM

As Treasurer of DCT I was pleased to present a report to the Community Centre AGM. The first since the merger of the DCT with the Friends of Deepings Library. The finances are currently quite healthy due to robust management of the centre and some very generous donations to the Trust not least from the Deepings Raft Race committee.

Christmas Market

As mentioned to Cllr Collins informally last week, I am preparing an on-line survey for the raft race. It seems to make sense to ask similar questions regarding the Christmas Market in the same survey and share the feedback with Cllr Collins, the Clerk and the Market Team. Please let me have any thoughts on this by Friday otherwise I will assume it is OK to proceed.

I am happy to continue supporting the Christmas market as a volunteer on the day, but unfortunately due to time constraints and other commitments I am reluctant to join a Christmas Market working party. My suggestions for improving the market remain the same as I was suggesting for at least three years on the Town Council:

• Change the start time to Noon and the finish time to 7pm.
• Increase the number of stalls
• Involve New River Retail to encourage footfall through the precinct
• Involve local businesses e.g. through sponsorship of the stage or adverts in a programme.
• Delay the lights switch-on until it is actually dark, e.g. 5pm or 6pm.

Election

For the avoidance of doubt, I am pleased to reiterate my intention to contest the new County Council seat of ‘Deepings West and Rural’. Thanks to our joint campaign earlier in the year, the seat includes the vast majority of homes in Market Deeping. If elected I will do my best to represent the views and interests of local residents to County Council meetings.

Happy Christmas

May I take this opportunity to wish all Town Councillors and Town Council staff a very peaceful Christmas and a happy and productive New Year.

As ever, if anyone needs any more information, please do not hesitate to let me know.

Cllr Ashley Baxter
Independent District Councillor
for Market and West Deeping

Report to MDTC Full Council 9th November 2016

–Development Control 18th October–
I was pleased to join Cllr Redshaw, Cllr Brookes and other members of the public in requesting the Development Control ctte refer the Larkfleet Plans until they have been radically revised to take into account the view of the Town Council and the local population. I believe the slightly revised plans will be considered by SKDC next Tuesday 15th November.-

Report to MDTC Full Council 12^th October 2016
from South Kesteven District Councillor Ashley Baxter

SKDC Full Council
The meeting took place at 2pm on 22^nd of September was attended by 46 of the 56 Councillors although only 30 remained to the end at 5.36pm.
The first hour was mostly concerned with the ‘temporary’ overnight closure of Grantham Hospital. An unfortunate situation over which SKDC has no authority and little influence.
The second hour was a presentation about the Grantham BID (Business Improvement District) which was purely for information and no vote was required.
At about 5pm, after a very brief debate, the meeting approved a proposal to galvanise links with the  Greater Cambridge and Greater Peterborough Local Economic Partnership (GCGP LEP). This is far more useful to people in the Deepings than the Lincolnshire LEP which SKDC is also involved in.
Finally, Members’ open questions included one from me asking about progress (or lack of it) towards devolution.

Full details are available at http://moderngov.southkesteven.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=261&MId=3317

SKDC Communities PDG (Car Park working party)
Following my comments at the PDG meeting on 1^st September, an additional working party was held on 22^nd September to review a revised draft of the SKDC car parking strategy. The most important, in fact the only small but welcome change was the removal of the reference to the potential disposal of Halfleet car park.

Shareholder Committee 3^rd Oct

This meeting concerned the Council’s plans to form a Local Authority Controlled Company to enable it to do works outside the normal remit of a local authority and hopefully to make profits to offset the Council Tax requirement.

Devolution
The dismal response rate and lack of enthusiasm for an elected mayor in the recent consultation has put a ‘bump in the road’ to devolution. DCLG appears to be insisting on elected mayors as a pre-requisite for devolving control of finances from London to Lincolnshire. Unfortunately the consultation showed almost no support for a mayor. All councils are supposed to respond to the government by November. LCC and SKDC are planning extraordinary meetings during October to discuss their responses even though nothing appears to have changed since the last extraordinary meeting.

Library AGM
At the AGM of the Friends of Deepings Library I stood down from the committee having been involved since the Save the Library campaign was launched in response to the County Council cuts. Thanks to the commitment of the Deepings community including the Town and Parish Councils the library is now the busiest community library in Lincolnshire with over 6,000 members and loaning over 2,000 books a month.

Polling stations
A consultation on polling stations is currently being undertaken by SKDC. It concludes on 14^th October. It recommends the use of the Scout hut as a polling station for the new Swine’s Meadow ward of Market Deeping.

Deepings Business Awards
I attended this event on Sept 30^th as a member of the business club. It was brilliant. Really well put together and a celebration of the vibrant Deepings business community.

As ever, if anyone needs any more information, please do not hesitate to let me know.

Report to MDTC Full Council 14^th September 2016
from South Kesteven District Councillor Ashley Baxter

What lovely weather we’ve had this summer. I hope you’ve all been able to enjoy at least some of it.

SKDC Full Council
There has been no meeting since June. The next will be Thursday 22^nd of September. The agenda has not yet been released.

Devolution
The consultation on a ‘combined mayoral authority for Greater Lincolnshire’ closed on August 6^th. I would like to thank the Market Deeping Town Council and local residents for responding. I have been arguing against an elected mayor throughout out and during the summer I set up a Facebook page and appeared on Radio Lincolnshire and Lincs FM to criticise the proposals.
The consultation turnout was a pathetic 0.5% of people and organisations across the county which is fewer than 4,500. In South Kesteven, only 571 people responded of whom 61% disagreed with the idea of a Mayoral Combined Authority. Lincs County Council and SKDC are now trying to interpret what they have called a ‘mixed response’ to an elected mayor (I would call it a rejection).
An extraordinary SKDC full council meeting on the devolution issue is being scheduled for Oct 24^th, by which time hopefully the Government will have been able to offer a compromise.

Boundary Review
I am pleased to say that the Local Government Boundary Commission has published its final recommendations for the Deepings. The Commission appears to have accepted the argument put forward by the Town and Parish Councils and myself that the ward boundary should follow the established boundary between Deeping St James and Market Deeping Parishes. The new Deepings wards will be called ‘Deepings East’ and ‘Deepings West and Rural’. A few Market Deeping households end up in Deepings East which means the Town Council will now have two wards, the smaller of which will be called ‘Swine’s Meadow’ (not sure about the apostrophe)!

Communities PDG
This meeting took place on 1^st September and was mainly about housing, car parking and polling districts.
On housing, it was agreed to set up a workshop session during October concerning the Council’s housing strategies.
On car parking, a proposed SKDC car parking strategy was presented and was roundly criticised by several members, not least myself. One of the recommendations was to dispose of the Halfleet public access car park near Coronation Hall. I argued vehemently that it would be unjustified to remove the only SKDC managed public car park in the Deepings. It was proposed and agreed that the car parking working group should have a further meeting and this will take place next week.
On polling stations it was mentioned that the new Swines Meadow ward of Market Deeping will need a new polling station. I suggested the Market Deeping Scout and Guide hut and have passed on the contact details to SKDC.

Rainbow Parking
I am pleased the Council is planning to discuss the New River Retail parking proposals. This has sparked some debate on Facebook, the gist of which appears to be that shoppers will tolerate the 4- hour enforcement (if long-stay is available) but are very upset about the idea of any kind of pay and display.

Photocopying charges
I note the Council is paying photocopying charges of around £800/year. I can recommend a supplier who specialises in smaller organisations and whose charges would be much less (£240/year or 1p/copy whichever is the higher). I will pass on the details to the Clerk.

Emergency Meeting
Apologies for not having attended nor sent a report to your Emergency Full Council meeting in August. I was not aware that it was taking place. It did not appear to be on the Council website or FaceBook page. Could I please request that I might be copied in to the summons or e-mailed regarding any future emergency meetings of the Council?

Wildflowers and play equipment
I was interested to read in your July minutes that Cllr Stephenson wanted more information and that Cllr Broughton had received complaints about the wildflower area. I would welcome any feedback on the scheme and would encourage Councillors to get in touch with me if they have reservations, feedback or constructive criticism.
Meanwhile, as stated last month, I intend to combine the consultation about potential wildflower areas around the town with a consultation about play equipment in the Deepings. This will hopefully be accommodated within the forthcoming Neighbourhood Plan consultation on leisure facilities and activities.

Local Plan
The local plan process continues with a SKDC Members briefing at Grantham tomorrow. Meanwhile, the Deepings Neighbourhood planning process is also making good progress.

As ever, if anyone needs any more information, please do not hesitate to let me know.

Here is my monthly District Councillor’s report presented to Market Deeping Town Council on 13th July, 2016.  (I sent apologies to the meeting. My daughter was cramming for a violin exam and I was her chauffeur!).

SKDC Full Council (16^th June)

A lot of this meeting was devoted to prayers or rather discussion of how and when to pray at Council meetings. It also discussed the Council’s corporate plan 2016-2020. I commented that the plan has very few specific mentions of the Deepings.

The meeting was also the first time for many years that Councillors have been allowed to ask open questions of the Executive. I was honoured to ask the first question which was to Cllr Terl Bryant and concerned the Deepings Library. Supplementary questions are not allowed but I was pleased that Cllr Dilks and Cllr Judy Stephens later asked questions of Cllr Bob Adams on the same topic.

Shareholder Committee Training (4^th July)

The Council plans to form a Local Authority Controlled Company later this year. Initially the remit will concern the purchase, letting, sale, refurbishment and perhaps building of social housing. Once established it may diversify into other areas in order to generate profits to subsidise local services.

Communities PDG (7^th July)

This meeting concerned the forthcoming review of the Council’s Housing Strategy and other closely related issues.

Devolution

I am campaigning against the proposal for an elected mayor which would be unaccountable, impractical and expensive. I have so far voiced this opinion at SKDC, on Facebook, three local newspapers, BBC Radio Lincolnshire and of course via the current LCC consultation on the issue which continues til August 8^th.

http://www.spaldingtoday.co.uk/news/no-mayor-no-deal-for-county-1-7459404

Wildflowers and play equipment

Following e-mail exchanges with District Council colleagues, Cllr Nick Neilson has suggested we extend the consultation about establishing wildflower areas around the town. I think this might usefully be combined with a consultation about play equipment in the Deepings. I suggested this to MDTC planning and highways last week who suggested it be accommodated within the forthcoming Neighbourhood Plan consultation on Leisure facilities. I agree with this proposal as it will reduce the number of consultations and hopefully improve overall participation.

Local Plan

A local plan stakeholder consultation will take place at the community centre next Tuesday 19^th July. All are welcome. It is an opportunity to affect which sites in the District are earmarked for development.

As ever, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch.