Catching up with the Leader of RDC, Councillor Terry Cutmore -  Continued

18th December 2015

RL: You’ve said there’s only been one meeting so far. What is the likely pace of this? Is it likely to happen in the near future?

Terry: Well it’s happening now. We’ve actually got to have a small budget to work with on that and we’re working at what can we afford and what can’t we afford.  That will be called capital monies, monies that we get from sales of assets that we’re not allowed to use for the day to day running of the council.  That is fairly low at the moment because we have used some of those resources on other things, so it is what we call unmarked reserves.

RL: Would this be something for the public to invest in?

Terry: It’s not seen that way, because the idea is keep the money but it might be an option to do that in some way. How we will take it forward, I don’t know. When we put this forward to the Council it was unanimous, so every person in every party, or non-aligned, is actually behind this and thinks it is a good way for the Council to proceed. We have a committee of thirteen and that is taken proportionally from all the parties and some of them have got some very good entrepreneurial backgrounds. I’m quite excited about it, it’s a new thing, but we’ve got to be very careful because we are using public money and there will be ideas and suggestions coming through how we can take things forward, examining assets, looking at organisations, perhaps of other people that we could join with to take it forward but, as with any company, you have to know when to say no or when to draw back, and so on. We regularly meet with our Chambers of Commerce and our local businessmen and they’ve said they will support us in this and try and use their expertise with us as well, and that is great

Housing

RL: Backtracking are we behind on our housing targets?

Terry: Yes, there is no question about that.  It’s not so much about the land availability and passing the plans because of course we don’t actually build, only facilitate. I’ve recently heard there are signs of movement down at Hall Road. Looking at the drawings coming forward, I think the frontage is going to look very nice, almost to the standard of the houses that are already there, and I think they are going to keep the tree-line as well. And of course we’re going to get a school with it as well. What it means is that we might have to bring some other sites forward because we really need to get development going, because if we don’t we will be vulnerable to developers coming along and putting pressure on for other areas, as happened with Coombes Farm, and they can go to the Government Inspector who decides these things, not necessarily the District Council. When you look at things like the Rayleigh development, from that we got about six or seven million pounds’ worth of infrastructure, investment in schools, upgrades in roads etc., but if you were to turn that down and it goes to the Government Inspector you might not get anything and that’s quite a bit of worthwhile investment, and these are the sorts of difficulties you face.

Devolution

RL: Are there other new things of interest coming up I may not pick up on?

Terry: Well one of the interesting things coming up is about devolution which is one of the things I am involved with at the moment. All fifteen councils in Essex, and that includes the County and the two unitaries, are talking about devolution.  We’ve had lots of meetings so far, and we have signed certain letters going to government saying, not necessarily a commitment but saying we are all looking at how we can work together.  They use the words ‘combined authority’ and I think that frightens a lot of people because they envisage this great big monolith of combined authorities, but I think a better way to put it is ‘combined authorities’. I am involved in talking through the governance side of it and the trick really is to work through that governance side.  If we can get an agreement that takes us forward, the plans are to turn what is at the moment a £33B economy (the whole of Essex) within about ten years, into a £60B economy, which is quite ambitious, and this comes from the growth we have been talking about. If you look at some of the other counties, they make more money than we do and we’d like to bring us up to their levels. If you look at budgets for training, education etc. and things like the Saxon Park development, there is a very high level of employment coming there. Now if we can train local people and use the budgets that government provide for this sort of thing, rather than bring in people from outside that has got to be good for Essex, and there are lots of efficiencies we can employ that we can do, and there is a plan for this.  The plan is to really get growth going. Now of course that comes at a cost and you have to think about that.

RL: How does this affect Rochford?

Terry: Well it is interesting when you look at Rochford that I think we are about second or third in the country as far as small businesses is concerned, because we haven’t got a lot of big businesses, but something like some three thousand small businesses run in the Rochford District. We need to make sure they can do things properly, getting the infrastructure right, getting enterprise going.  It gets investment in, and if you look at the airport, there is £160M of investment had gone into the airport, most of which lies in Rochford. These are the sort of things that can happen and of course the Airport and Saxon Park are catalysts, with high level research type jobs coming forward. Part of our plan going forward is that we attract those sort of things. If you look at south Essex alone, it has an economy greater than Cambridge. If you look at the SELEP (South East Local Enterprise Partnership) area that includes us, Kent and East Sussex, the economy is greater than that of Belgium. That’s what we talking about here, and if you can get that going efficiently and working together you can do some pretty good things.  It’s working with industry, working with businesses, making them confident that they can operate their businesses profitably in our area and, going full circle in this discussion, the business rates we would get from that would be good. The government would obviously get a share in that as well and they would benefit, we would have fewer people claiming unemployment benefit or benefits of any kind, and that’s how the economy grows. It is purely by encouraging that that you can take these things forward. So it is very ambitious and it’s not everybody who will agree with it.

Coming Elections

RL: This sounds good but you have a whole series of elections coming up in May. Will they get in the way of all this?

Terry: Well it will be business as usual as far as the Council is concerned but yes, certainly there will be a lot of people out there putting leaflets through doors and so on.  The Boundary Commission have rearranged all of the boundaries so all of the wards will now be 3 member wards, 39 councillors in total, and they are all up for election and because wads are now different shapes no one knows how it will all work out when it comes to voting. So yes, a certain amount of possible upheaval.

County Council

RL: OK, can we try and pick up a little on your activities as a County Councillor as well as a District Councillor?

Terry: I was very busy with County because I was involved with the care side but I have changed what I am doing there now.  I chair the Audit Committee but it’s a committee that only meets every three months, and we’re looking at a budget of just over £2B and it’s about how that is spent efficiently and so on and so forth.  From January I’m also going to be Chairman of the Standards Committee, but bearing on mind that Standards only meets about once a year, that’s easier for me, and that’s my extent of input at County

RL: Well Terry, I think we’ll stop it there so that we don’t give our readers too much to handle. Thank you so much for your time and the insights into some of the key things happening around us at the present time as we near the end of this year. The coming months clearly have large question marks over them but we hope you’ll still be here in six months’ time, continuing your work with the Council and in the wider afield. Thank you again.

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