Uttlesford is a district that prides itself on its countryside, its listed buildings and its many conservation areas. An appraisal of conservation areas was carried out in 2006/07 to identify the special features within these areas so that they could be protected. Legal orders are needed to bring any influence to bear on property owners to take care of flint walls, iron railings, etc. all of which make our towns and villages worthy of claiming to be places worth conserving.

Regretably, the appraisal reports are gathering ethereal dust on Uttlesford District Council’s website. The work to bring in legal orders was dropped as part of the cost-cutting by the present adminstration and that remains the case despite the council having banked £600,000 of government grant for planning work like this.

Last night’s meeting of the environment committee agreed to ask the finance committee to release the money needed to finish the conservation project. The Conservatives on the committee were less than enthusiastic and some didn’t vote, so optimism that this proposal will get through the Conservative-dominated finance committee is low. It leaves the question open about what Conservatives are there to conserve.  

By the way, there are real concerns about this neglect in Stebbing and also in Stansted, where a Victorian flint and brick wall was recently demolished to make way for a car hard-standing. The council was impotent to do anything.

The deal with South Cambridgeshire District Council to make savings by sharing staff, accommodation and computing facilities has well and truly fallen through with an unedifying spat of claim and counter-claim in the press between the two councils. The falling-out was precipitated by a back-bench revolt within the ruling Conservative group at South Cambs. The Cambourne based council runs a cabinet-style system of decision making whereas Uttlesford runs the more inclusive committee system. It seems that the South Cambs cabinet didn’t involve those councillors outside the cabinet until a deal was almost sewn up; and they didn’t like it! Uttlesford’s Conservative administration also wants to switch to the cabinet system next year. I think our council needs to tread carefully and learn some lessons from this recent costly debacle. 

In 2007 UDC drew up a comprehensive plan for Stansted’s conservation areas. The plan contained many recommendations about looking after and improving features such as railings and walls around homes in the village. Unfortunately, the council didn’t follow up on these suggestions by voting through orders would have given them the force of the planning system. This has come to light recently following the demolition of a brick and flint wall that was described in the report as ‘a distinctive feature to be protected from demolition’. I am pressing the council to employ someone to finish off the work from 2007 on the basis that there is little point UDC saying it wants to conserve the character of our villages if it fails to put in place rules that tell people what is expected.     

There have been complaints on behalf of pedestrians about the appallingly long-standing unsafe surface of Water Lane near the railway Black Bridge. Discussions with Essex Highways have been arranged, though I don’t want to raise expectations about an early improvement as everyone has been avoiding responsibility and action to repair the surface for years.  Walson Way is expected to have been opened through to Church Road by Easter. Once that is done, the 510 bus will be routed along Walson Way and will use the smart bus stops that have been installed. Essex County Council has told me that there isn’t time for the 7/7A bus route to be extended to Walson Way to provide a link to and from the 510 and that part of Stansted. I have told them that I disagree as I believe it would add only 30 seconds to the journey of the 7/7A.   

That was Nick Clegg’s parting message to the British electorate from today’s leader’s speech in Birmingham. In other words, if you want fair tax, a fair start in education for ALL children, an economy that is fair to the environment and successful, and a political system that is fair to everyone and not just a political aristocracy, VOTE for the Liberal Democrats. The tax package includes higher aviation tax.

Don’t be seduced by Tories who think they have a divine right to rule on behalf of themselves. Don’t vote Labour for fear of getting the same old Tories. Vote Lib Dem if you want what they want!

This was the most highly charged speech right from the heart I have heard in years. The spent force of Labour hardly needed to be mentioned. The latest Tory threat that they would bring the markets crashing down on all our heads if they don’t get they way on May 6th was aptly described by Nick as a ‘political version of a protection racket’. With a sideways reference to the Ashcroft scandal, the Conservatives were accused of being the world’s first off-shore political party.

The BBC was running the speech as its main story on Sunday afternoon. Labour was saying the Lib Dems couldn’t possibly work with a Tory minority government. The Tories were saying the Lib Dems were confused about whether to support an ongoing Labour government. And Nick said the Lib Dems were close to confusion - confusion in both Con and Lab!

He warned the electorate not to vote negatively by backing either of the old parties, for what’s just good enough, as that is not good enough any more. His audacious speech was an impassioned plea to vote for what you want - the Lib Dems, of course!

In Birmingham this weekend for the party’s spring conference. Very good conference centre in an interesting post-industrial location; a mini-Venice of bridges and canals. Conference attendace is very high.

I just arrived in time for the evening rally on Friday to hear Shirley Williams (for second consecutive Friday), Paddy Ashdown (first conference speech since standing down as leader) and Nick Clegg; all in very good form. This is a conference of anticipation about a general election expected in 50 days with a far from certain outcome. Labour is down. The Tories want power for its own sake and change - but to what. The Lib Dems promise change to a better, fairer Britain “that works for you”. I guess that contrasts with the growing public perception that Tory change is for an elite “us” from what are emerging as the same old Tories after all!

Friday saw the East of England Regional Assembly hold its final meeting in Norwich. It finally bows out on 31 March, to be replaced by new regional arrangement that are still to be tested. Yesterday’s meeting approved a revised regional plan on jobs, homes, carbon reduction, transport, etc. Approval was given without any opposition; an all-party endorsement. Locally, that means future housing targets are endorsed by both Conservative and Liberal Democrat (me) representatives. Let’s hope the Tories now stop pretending to disown local housing plans and commit to a sensible solution rather than their discredited new town at Elsenham.

Wednesday night: Shirley Williams was on Tv paying tribute to the late Michael Foot. Thursday night: Baroness Williams was a member of the Question Time panel on BBC1, bringing commonsense and wisdom in stark contract to fellow panelist Carol Vorderman. Last night Shirley was in Stansted as guest speaker at the Lib Dems’ supper club.

There was a capacity turnout at the town’s day centre for the most successful party event in years. Shirley was in good form and held the audience’s attention for over half-an-hour on topics from morality in politics to the Lib Dems’ key policies for the (May?) general election. Amorality and deregulation in financial markets got the country into the current economic mess. This week’s admission that Tory peer, Lord Ashcroft, has fooled or been part of a conspiracy with other senior Tories over his tax cheating is just the latest example of a political elite that is now despised by the public.

The final answer to questions confirmed that Nick Clegg’s Lib Dems will not respond with a demand for minsterial seats to a  post-election parliament in which no party has an overall majority. There will be no formal coalition. Lib Dem support for a minority government will depend on its support for key Lib Dem policy priorities. 

I‘ve just arrived home from the council’s area forum meeting in Dunmow. The main topic of discussion was the local development framework and Uttlesford’s plan for a new town between Elsenham and Henham. Few people were present from that area, probably because Dunmow is too far away. Most people present were from the Dunmow area, which just shows how consultation can be biased if councils don’t go to the people most affected by their proposals. 

This rerun of a consultation over two years ago is far from perfect. A report has been produced which compares various new settlement proposals with future housing distributed across more of our towns and villages. All have been scored against 24 sustainability criteria and, surprise, surprise, the council’s official, preferred option – Elsenham - has been rated the best.  The problem is that no one has yet bothered to suggest what weighting should be given to the 24 criteria, which range from maintaining historic buildings to educating children, improving public transport and business growth. Some criteria seem to me to be far less consequential than others and there is lots of overlap. So I can’t see that much value can be put on the arithmetic which has come up with the claim that Elsenham is the best.  

It seems that the council wants the public to tell the council which of these criteria matter most; to do the work that UDC members should at least have had a go at already. The problem is that these documents were all published without any (known) input from elected members and I can only assume that officers rightly bottled out from suggesting what matters most and what matters least. After all, that is the job of politicians. But at Uttlesford the Conservative administration tends to prefer to hide behind professional officers rather than risk the public knowing their opinions!  

Of course, with a general election coming up, it doesn’t pay for politicians to have opinions that are too clear just in case some people don’t like them! So is Elsenham the best solution? That’s not very likely. Then is there a better solution? Don’t look to UDC for the answer, but write it on a postcard (or visit the website) so they can ignore you like they did in 2007!    

I am looking forward to the day when the Tories come clean with local people and tell us what they will do, even when it may be unpopular in some quarters, and not just go on about what they don’t like and would abolish. A political party cannot be all things to all people. 

Take housing. Last year the Conservative Westminster housing spokesman, Grant Shapps, launched a green paper on housing. He said that the Labour government isn’t building enough homes. See “Housing Policy Paper - Strong Foundations” at this link: http://www.conservatives.com/Policy/Where_we_stand/Housing.aspx 

Mr Shapps is right. Not enough houses are being built to meet people’s needs. There is a desperate requirement for more homes in places like Uttlesford, so on that we agree.  Yet if you believed the website of the local Tory MP, Alan Haselhurst at: http://www.saffronwaldenconservatives.com/index.php?sectionid=3&pagenumber=332 you would think that the need for new homes was an invention of the Labour government and nothing to do with young people having to stay living with their parents into their 30s because they can’t afford to get on the first rung of the housing ladder. He must be in denial of the fact that people from places like London and Harlow are moving to rural areas like Uttlesford when they have children or retire. He even attacks local Liberal Democrats for supporting the provision of homes in our local towns and villages.    

Uttlesford council leader Jim Ketteridge similarly denies the need for what he regularly calls ‘unwanted houses’, yet his council’s recently published Strategic Housing Market Assessment: http://www.uttlesford.gov.uk/main.cfm?Type=PLCSD&MenuId=583#Strategic_Housing_Market_Assessment , confirms the same level of housing need which the Tories keep saying are not needed and have been imposed by the government and the regional assembly.  

It is time local Tories stopped trying to mislead the public by grabbing headlines that deny people the right to a home, especially when their own party’s official policy says the opposite. Yet it seems that would be too much to expect of a party which says it wants to replace air travel and airport runways with rail travel and railway lines until it has to tell voters where the railway lines will run! (See last blog entry.) 

The Liberal Democrats backed new, high-speed railway lines years ago as an alternative to higher-polluting aviation for domestic and continental travel. New, faster railways would reduce the need for more air travel and extra airport runways at Heathrow and Stansted. It’s been proved in France and Spain, where people have switched from air to rail.  

Then the Conservatives took up the cause and backed a new line to the north that would take in Heathrow Airport. The Labour government joined in what seemed might become an all-party initiative. They came up with real plans with routes that their Lord Adonis wanted to discuss with the Tories.

But last week the Conservatives backed off discussing the proposals. Apparently they are afraid of losing the votes of Tory-supporting residents in Buckinghamshire, through which the new railway would pass. They seem happy to talk about the principle but are afraid of getting down to detail.  

Where does this leave Tory policy on airports? Does their flip-flopping on rail travel over election votes signal that their opposition to a second runway at Stansted is also only to get more Tory votes in this area? Is their aviation policy only as skin-deep and opportunistic as their railway policy? Our nineteenth century railways weren’t built by Sunday headline-grabbing opportunists. 

See what the local Conservatives say:

http://www.saffronwaldenconservatives.com/index.php?sectionid=3&pagenumber=331

Sixty economists wrote letters in yesterday’s Financial Times backing the view that government spending shouldn’t be cut too rapidly for fear of creating another recession and making the lives of people worse than necessary.

They effectively backed the Labour and Liberal Democrat approach to taking care in managing the economy and the budget deficit rather than the flip-flopping of the Conservatives around their preference for quick and deep cuts in government spending. The economists warn against the risks of damaging Britain’s fragile recovery by “reckless” early cuts.

The national Tory approach is reminiscent of the way local Tories set about correcting spending at Uttlesford District Council three years ago. They took a hatchet, caused massive personal distress and created a council that was at least temporarily dysfunctional. It then required an emergency squad of external experts to start to rebuild it; akin to the IMF having to be called in by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

It is said that Uttlesford’s recovery could be used as a test case. I suggest the reckless Tory downfall of Uttlesford would also serve as a lesson to Mr David Cameron and Mr George Osborne on how not to go about ruining the economy so that you can claim credit for having restored the nation’s finances.

At Thursday’s council meeting, the Tories spent too much time on pessimism and continued forecasts of doom and gloom, hoarding money for a rainy day, rather than saying what they might do for local people and the local economy. Uttlesford doesn’t deserve four wasted years.