1970s PRIVATE LIFE
9199 Elmbridge Northern Area Planning Committee
My main work, as a councillor on Elmbridge Council, was on its planning committee -- more specifically on its Northern Area Committee. This was more powerful than it might sound. In theory planning decisions were taken by the main planning committee, and then approved by the full council. In reality, both these committees were open to the public, and the council much preferred to work behind closed doors. Accordingly, the real debate took place in the subcommittee – to which the public were not admitted.
I enjoyed the work on the subcommittee, since there was a real feeling of being able to take meaningful decisions. My place on Policy and Resources, which was supposedly the senior committee, on the other hand was rather meaningless; since in reality it rubberstamped decisions taken by the Conservative Party. Accordingly I soon gave up my place on that.
I and the other members of the Northern Area Subcommittee got on well together. This was not least because most of us were residents association councillors. There were only one or two from the Conservatives -- since the members had to come from the wards in the northern area of Embridge, the area then already dominated by residents associations. Even so, the Conservatives were able, through their control of the council overall, to nominate the chair.
I was surprised, therefore, when I found myself in nominated -- admittedly by one of the residents association councillors -- for the deputy chair of the committee. I was much more surprised when the Conservative powers that be accepted this. In this position, however, I felt - as did all residents association councillors -- that our role was to do the best for our community not to play politics. Accordingly, I worked very closely -- and very productively -- with the Conservative chairman to create a cooperative environment.
Even so, I was flabbergasted, when time came along for the new chair to be elected, to find Conservatives were actually proposing me for the chair. I thus became the only non-Conservative to hold any position of power across the whole of the council.
On the other hand, I used this position to consolidate the concept that we councillors -- from every party -- were there to take the best decisions and not to play politics; even residents association politics. Over the next several years, therefore, I built great deal of trust across all members of the subcommittee. This was ultimately tested on what, at the time, I saw as a fairly uncontroversial planning decision -- albeit for a fairly large development. When we came to the full council meeting I was expecting it to go through without too much comment. In fact, to my surprise, I suddenly found people speaking against it. It was, however, my privilege, as chairman of the relevant committee, to speak last. I used this time to make an impassioned speech about the rights of the local residents to decide. To my surprise we scraped through by just one or two votes. I was surprised because, based on previous precedent, I had expected to win hands down. At the end of the meeting, though, I found out what had happened, when the leader of the Conservative party rushed across to me and shook my hand. "That's the first time anyone has won against a three line whip"
Apparently, the Conservative hierarchy had issued a three line whip to all its members. We had, of course, gained the votes of all the non-Conservative councillors. But the interesting thing was the fact that the Conservative councillors on my committee had also voted with us.
It turned out later that the reason for the Conservative leaders wanting to stop the application was that they had been informed that there was some corruption amongst the officers. Sometime after I left the council, indeed, the local government ombudsman investigated this. I am glad to say that she found my committee didn't have a stain on its reputation.
The most interesting thing was that the Conservative councillors on my committee, even those rotating through from the other committees, seem to get infected with the whole idea of co-operation. By the time I left the council, it had become a much more representative organization. People, of all the parties, were actually considering the facts behind issues.
Indeed, it looked much more like the residents association council. To compound matters, the Conservatives - worried by our growing power – co-opted the heads of the residents associations outside of our control to be their own councilors. This stopped the residents associations’ power spreading to these areas but, as a Trojan horse, it ultimately meant that these councillors proved to be more residents association than Conservatives. Power eventually passed to the residents association -- and the council became the only one in the country controlled by residents associations.
Above all, I feel this demonstrated the power of co-operation: based on building trust between participants. I have been able to do this number of times in the teams that I have run. In fact, I was largely following the example of John Elliot at Gallahers, who created this atmosphere for all of us; with the result was that this was one of the best teams ever, who all prized working together.
At BTR, I was able to produce much the same effect with a team of new managers I recruited – together even with some of the ones that were already there – and not least with the unions.
In IBM I was able to produce a similar effect but, in terms of the personnel reporting to me, on a much smaller scale
It was probably at the OU that I was able to have the greatest impact on course teams; not least because this style of management reflected the OU's own values. Thus, from something like 30 participants on the original B885 course down to a handful on B851, there was an incredible amount of team spirit built -- which stretched across the supporting functions as well.
The lessons I drew from those experiences represent a fundamental underpinning for much of this compendium. The most important is that co-operation is much more powerful, when it works. In other parts of the same organizations, though, the politicians still wrecked those parts of the organization they were responsible for. I regret to have to say that, because the rest of us are the ‘good guys’, they will almost always be much more effective in furthering their careers. That is the price the rest of us have to pay, until we stop them!
In terms of the work of the Elmbridge planning committee itself, most of it was very routine. Elmbridge had long been a built up area of suburbia. Accordingly, most of the work concerned extensions to existing property. These were very easily categorized. Most were for simple extensions which posed no problems for anyone, and for which we had received no objections from the neighbours who we had notified, so we quite easily rubber-stamped the officers’ recommendations. Just occasionally, someone was being too greedy or there was a dispute with the neighbours. Then it was my job to step in and try to find a suitable solution. Even rarer was there a major planning decision; and then all hell broke loose!
At the opposite extreme, however, was my work on school playing fields. Surrey County Council, which was being squeezed for money, had found a new source of funds. It found that it could sell its playing fields for development, by giving itself planning permission even in the green belt. This brought in large amounts of money, but deprived the schools of their playing fields. I eventually persuaded Elmbridge Council to give me its full backing to try and stop this happening. I then managed to get the Association of District Councils to also back me. With this support I went to the DoE (the Department of the Environment) whose (Labour) ministers were also sympathetic. It took more than a year of arguing with their civil servants, however, to make an unassailable case. I was finally able to defeat them on every point of law; and the Minister was about to issue a departmental circular – all that was needed – banning such developments. At that point, in 1979, the Thatcher government came in and the circular was never issued; and I had not a hope in hell of getting it through the Conservatives. In 2004, some 25 years later, the Labour government at last issued the necessary instructions; but it closed the stable door far too long after the horse bolted!
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