Ann,Council officers confirmed to me yesterday that the sale of the car park was completed on Wednesday. At the hustings Cllr Johnson said the council has received £3 million. So we can't block it now. Julian Bell insisted on rushing the sale through 8 days before an election. Let's see what people think of that. Our promises are very specific and quantifiable. They are also very modest. It was notable that at the hustings both LibDem Cllr Malcolm and Labour Cllr Johnson resorted to multiplying annual costs by four to make them sound larger. We know how to fix the cleaning contract. We fixed Ealing before in 2006. We have studied the contract very carefully and we know what to do. Labour has demonstrated that it hasn't got the skills and the perseverance to manage large contracts. They also managed to lose both housing maintenance contractors last year and they only finished Acton Town Hall with days to go. What are those large concrete things that have been left outside for the last week anyway? Scrapping the garden tax is very inexpensive. Even after Cllr Johnson multiplied the number by 4 it was only £5 million. The only reason Labour won't do this is because of the loss of face it would involve. Labour invoke the argument that it is unfair on flat dwellers. That is like saying it is unfair on the childless that they pay for schools. It is expensive to offer recycling to flats but we do it anyway. We all enjoy well kept gardens and anything the council can do to encourage gardeners is of benefit to everyone in my view. If we put up council tax 2% in 3 years that would be the equivalent of 1% of the council's overall income. As even Cllr Johnson acknowledged on Wednesday a small rise is pretty immaterial. Even Labour are now saying that they would like to freeze but can't promise. They do though want to retain the right to increase it. In 2003 both Labour and the LibDems voted en bloc to raise council tax by 26%. Having doubled income from parking (excluding PCNs) Labour insists on retaining the right to increase charges again. The council's medium term financial strategy is in many ways very hyper cautious but officers have confirmed it makes no provision for increases in parking charges. This saving is effectively free - it is already built into the budget. The Conservatives will cut the £4.50 all day CPZ visitor's voucher to £2.50. We left it late to announce this change because we didn't want the LibDems to steal it as they have done with the bulk of our pledges. Cllr Malcolm was wrong to say what he did at the hustings. We were formally told by officers that this change would cost £234,410 on 25th February. This assumes that there will be no increased sales due to the much reduced price. For comparison this is the same as the council gives to the unions every year for facility time. Very affordable and easily replaceable by charging commuters a sensible hourly charge in CPZs rather than £2 a day. The roads pledge is a no brainer for Acton. Under the Conservatives we resurfaced 91 stretches of road or pavement in Acton and spent £4.2 million. In the 4 years Labour has been setting the budgets it has resurfaced 14 stretches and spent just less than £1 million. This pledge is a choice. There are lots of things we won't be able to do. We won't be able to build new council offices as Labour has. We won't be able to buy a car park for Southall for £2.5 million. We won't spend another £2.5 million doing up Ealing town Hall. If there is less cash to go around we reckon it should be spent near council taxpayers' homes on roads and parks not on far off municipal baubles. On street drinking we will work with the police to make the enforcement of the borough-wide controlled drinking zone a priority. A Conservative led council can provide political leadership. It can use the council’s communications tools such as Around Ealing to explain in a measured way that this behaviour is not acceptable. It can task its community safety team on this issue. It can use the licensing laws to track down misbehaving businesses and councils have had success in voluntary agreements not to sell cheap, high strength products.We don’t think that this will be remotely easy. It will require a consistent approach over time. We cannot change behaviour that has been tolerated for a long time by the wave of a magic wand. We can start the journey though and we can change the behaviour over time.Our pledges are very affordable and very doable. The big surprise to me is how unambitious Labour has been in their manifesto. They do seem to have run out of ideas.
Phil Taylor ● 4505d