→ The first item raised was the Council’s Community Safety Partnership Strategy.

The District Council works in partnership with various agencies on matters of community safety and crime reduction. With Kent County Council, with the Police, or with residents directly. One success story on partnership working over the last four years has been the reduction of fly tipping at what was previously a fly-tipping hot spot (see picture). This was one of my two Ward priorities four years ago, and action by both KCC and Residents has largely eliminated the industrial level fly tipping which we had seen here over a decade or more. The primary landscaping measures that have been taken are the introduction of a sturdy metal fence, following a thorough clear up. Additionally, and importantly, Residents themselves have acted assertively to physically deter fly-tipping gangs. The combined effect has been a substantial success, solving an issue, which (if I am frank) I believed would take far longer than a single four-year-term to address. The fence itself is quite austere looking, but that will be naturally ameliorated over time as vegetation entwines itself the steel.

I was also able to raise the issue of the recently smashed up phone box in the centre of our village. I am pleased to say that BT have now replaced the glass on this box and the phone service remains operational. However, it is also worth noting that, despite this happening right under the watch of District Council CCTV, the cameras have, once again, proved to be of no value in either deterring or detaining perpetrators. Of course, no one of moral substance would seek to justify the cost and privacy invasion inherent in surveillance, simply on the basis that it might detain a petty vandal who would probably, in any case, receive little in the way of a serious deterrent through the courts, however the fact that the CCTV has been unable to assist with this crime, once again, underlines that New Ash Green CCTV is a prime candidate for removal.

→ Cash Payment at Leisure centres

Sevenoaks has now been able to reopen the leisure centre following Sencio’s ceasing to trade. I am keen that Leisure centres (and all other services) offered by the council continue to be available for cash payment. Whether leisure centres, Car Parking, or other services, it is important that when the council provides, franchises or subsidises, a service, we should ensure that cash payments remain an option for all residents, alongside card payments where possible. I hope that, as SDC looks to keep this centre open, and as we look to find a longer term provider also, we ensure that keeping cash payments is prioritised. 

Though some agencies (such as TFL in London) have, for a long time, been seeking to punish users of cash with higher fees, the push to really suppress cash, to remove the option entirely, has really accelerated since since the pandemic. Suppression of cash is both excluding unfree, and the primary duty of any elected politician is to the freedom, of those we represent, and also of others more broadly (including, for an SDC councillor, to those across the whole District).

→ Assurances given at Scrutiny Committee 

Finally, we saw retiring speeches from both the outgoing Chairman of the Audit committee and similarly from the Scrutiny committee. Both are committees on which I have served for the last four years, and I thank these Chairman for their work here. It was also important to put on record a reminder of some of the factual assurances which Sencio gave us at the penultimate Scrutiny session, including about the way in which their debts were structured. The Council is rightly, for now, focussed mainly on the future, but it is important to be sure that no false assurances were given.

In sum, this meeting covered three or four of the themes which I have prioritised over the last four years.

One has been seeking to solve longer term difficult issues within the Ward.

Another is Scrutiny, Audit and Partnership working.

And finally, the protection of Liberty, which should be the universal calling of everyone within any form of Governmental or Democratic body.

I ask that you carefully consider your vote on Thursday.

Some of you may have received a political leaflet making a number of statements that need to be corrected:

1. Contrary to what is heavily implied in this leaflet, I have knocked on something like a thousand doors since being elected in 2019. Having detailed conversations with hundreds of residents that start in exactly this manner has informed my view of many issues. Even more often this has improved the way I represent residents as a whole. If we have talked, I am grateful. Of course, with four and a half thousand (adult) residents in the ward I haven’t been able to speak to everyone. If that’s you then please do drop-in to my surgery on the third Saturday of every month, 10pm-midday at the VA small room. There is no need need to book.

2. On the matter of the Children’s centre: see here.

3. i. The village centre. The freehold to the village shops has recently been sold to someone based in the UK. I have had a cordial exchange of correspondence with the controlling agent but they, understandably, would like to complete the purchase and their initial assessments before engaging substantively with local councillors. When I was elected there were two crucial ward-local issues* which I knew (or thought) would take more than one term to crack, because they had both been getting worse for at least 20 years. The most significant of these was, and remains, the village centre. The strategy of the District Council over the last four years has been to seek to encourage the centre into new ownership, because engagement from the previous owner was very poor. This has now come to pass, and I am now asking you to give me the opportunity to see the job though. We must use the planning system, not just to manage the risks, but also to grasp the opportunity which a new and more engaged owner can represent.
   
       *ii. The second issue was fly-tipping on the access road to Barnfield Park. This involved working with County Councillor David Brazier and KCC officers. Just as importantly, it involved dozens of discussions with BP residents, supporting their desire to mount an assertive community response to groups who were driving from far away to dump on their doorstep. Those of you who have known this road over the years will appreciate what has been achieved here. This would not have been the issue to prioritise if I were merely interested in maximising votes. However it was a solvable problem which severely affected a small community of residents and I’m glad we have been able to hugely improve this road.

4. This leaflet also seeks to imply that Conservatives don't hold the Conservative administration to account. Of course, I have supported my party's position when I agree with it, but a brief enquiry with either Opposition or Conservative Councillors, or any regularly attending meetings, will allow residents to determine that I have not been shy to speak out where I have disagreed - and representations I have made, both in private but also publically, have sometimes lead to policy changes, at least as often as the work of the most active opposition counicllors.
   
   A trawl of this website will throw up areas where I have publically disagreed with Conservative policy. Nonetheless, I am pleased to say that it is on some of our biggest and most important areas of policy where I have found it very easy to actively support this Conservative administration in the council chamber: For example: Over the weekly refuse service, Over the Sevenoaks' local plan principles, On long term budgetary stability and on the Drive to reduce council CO2 emmissions.

5. What would election time be without a dodgy bar chart  set of rectangles masquerading as a bar chart, from an opposition politician. We don’t do electoral bar charts in election leaflets (not even honest ones) because Claire, Andrew and I all know that this election is not about the last election. However truth matters, and the graph presented in this leaflet bears very limited relation to the truth.

We know, from the national picture, to expect a stronger challenge this time from both Labour and other parties, every vote will count, which is why it is imperative that everyone reading this goes out to vote. I would, of course, be most grateful if you returned me, and your other Conservative candidates on Thursday 4th May. There is work started still to be finished here (see above) and we need to protect District Council services like the full, simple, weekly bin collection, and a sensible, balanced planning policy.

In January I wrote to our KCC member, David Brazier, asking that, if there isn’t budget to maintain the children’s centre in its current form (and there may not be), that we maintain the current level of service, using different local venues (of which there are quite a few possibilities).

In particular I stressed the importance of the Child Health Clinic (both the monthly drop in, and the scheduled development checks), the Stay and Play services, and the Rhyme Time groups (which are already held in our New Ash Green and Hartley libraries).  I have also subsequently responded to the consultation (see photo).

It is important that children’s services remain accessible by foot for our community, and keeping the services run locally is also useful in allowing referrals to some of our excellent volunteer groups. (e.g. Mums' and babies' group, the sling and nappy library, Ash Church Saplings etc.)

David’s response has been excellent.  He quickly ensured that discussions were set up between KCC officers and the management committee of the Youth Centre, as well as suggesting a number of other potential local venues which could be hired in the event that there isn’t budget to continue the lease on the existing NHS owned building.  I was present to hear him address the Parish Council on this issue, and it is clear he intends to fight hard to ensure services continue to be provided locally.

I would also like to thank those I have been able to speak to about this issue, including those running the local volunteer baby groups, as well other parents who use the Children’s services, and the very helpful KCC manager of Children's centres.  Additionally, the Acting Chairman of the Youth centre (retired Councillor for Hartley, John Kelly) has also been a great help as well as Parish Councillor, Jill Clucas, who has ensured that Ash-cum-Ridley lobbies KCC intelligently on this issue.

As a result, all three levels of local Government representatives are aligned in seeking to ensure these services continue to be provided locally.

This kind of collaborative working is part of the everyday business of all local government representatives and, in normal circumstances, I would not be posting about it here until the resolution of the issue (which I would hope to happen in April).

However, following some public statements from a (briefly) former Parish Councillor, I have found it necessary to write something here, at an earlier stage than usual.

This service, run by the North West Kent Volunteer service, sees local volunteers take residents, over 60, to and from nearby locations of their choosing (for example Darent Valley Hospital).

The cost of this is more than a regular bus fare, but substantially less than a commercial taxi. Users book this service three or four days in advance (but it might be a good idea to book earlier if you are using the service for the first time). It is a door to door service. The phone number for the service is 01322 294 600.

The service is also always looking for new Volunteers.

What you pay

You pay a millage fee directly to the driver (about 30-40p per mile, based on the millage the driver drives) as well as a small admin fee of a few pounds on top of this to cover the administration of the service. There is also an (annual) £20 registration fee.

What about people under 60 with severe health needs?

The Volunteer Transport service is for people over 60. People of any age, with severe health conditions, may wish to check if they are eligible either for the Kent Karrier Service (which, like the Volunteer transport service, is not merely for hospital transport) or for the NHS dedicated hospital transport service.

*Note on buses

The loss of the weekday Bus service to Dartford (423) has been sorely felt locally, especially for residents who need to attend regular medical appointments at Darent Valley hospital. To be fair to KCC, this was never a subsidised service, and the decision to remove the service is a purely commercial one made by Arriva. Three is also no money to chase the withdrawal of a commercial service with a subsidy. We are pleased that Arriva have decided to maintain the commercially provided weekday service to Gravesend.

All of your District councillors have emphasised the importance of the Dartford service (especially for hospital patients) in our representations to the County Council, and we also recognise the work of KCC in mitigating the issue for school pupils by providing busses which work for them (and, incidentally, for a small number of people who might wish to use this service for a day out in Dartford - on a weekday, in term time).

However, as Councillors on the District Council, we also need to focus on what can be done to mitigate, as far as possible, the inevitable problems caused for those who used to rely on the Dartford Bus. Hence the above post.

So the next few dates are:

Saturday 17th December

Saturday 21st January 

Saturday 18th February

…

… and so on, on whichever Saturday falls between the 15th and the 21st of the month (inclusive).

This is an opportunity to come with either a particular personal issue which needs fixing for you or your family, or any broader policy issue which you would like to discuss in person and this can be either by arrangement or simply a drop in.

Of course, all the existing channels of communication remain open as well (link).

If you are not sure what level of local Government your concern relates to then do not worry, even if the District is not the key decision maker on an issue, we will work with collogues in other layers of Government to ensure your concern in heard by the appropriate person.

Although this information is available on the Kent County Council (KCC) website, and on a well known social networking site, it is not immediately obvious how to find it, so I have reproduced it here.

I am very pleased that Kent County Council have, at a time of extraordinary budgetary pressures, decided to (and been able to!) prioritise early years' development in this way. I know from long running discussions with our own County Councillor and New Ash Green resident, David Brazier, that he has given this matter significant attention over the last few years.

It is very welcome indeed that the County Council has felt able to offer three weekly drop-in sessions (i.e. no need to book) across New Ash Green and Hartley (one in the Children's centre itself, and one in each of the libraries - see above image). If you attend one of these sessions you may also be consulted on the future shape of the Children's Centre offer.

What ought we to be looking for in a new leader?

Here is my check list of essential (and desirable) characteristics.

1. Policy instinct domestically must consistently lean towards liberty and must be prepared to risk unpopularity to defend freedom. Ideally, someone who can articulate how liberty helps everyone, how it helps the least well off, or how a lack of liberty is harmful to both rich and poor.
   
   
2. Needs to be someone whose Foreign Policy instincts are solid (but not viciously bellicose), principled, fairly consistent, and basically moral – this is particularly important because the UK, as a medium sized sovereign nation, now seeks to build a foreign policy based around ongoing voluntary cooperation with others, rather than, for example, through sovereignty pooling within larger international organisations, or via detailed treaty commitments).
   
   
3. Economic instincts (of primary importance is to be able to avoid siren calls for quick fixes and schemes which would make inflation or national indebtedness worse – while it is desirable that a prime minister maintain a policy environment in which we see the flourishing of modest initiatives to assist with the cost of living, especially if such initiatives are not primarily spending items, a good prime minister will be honest that additional Government activity can do more harm than good and so cannot be the solution to all woes. Ideally will be able to articulate how opponents’ short-termist ideas could increase our long term difficulties).
   
   
4. Needs to be someone who adheres to the value of every person, and for creation as a whole, but also needs to be someone who is comfortable being criticised as not caring about about others in these terms – because such criticism is simply a fact of life for politicians who adhere, in particular, to principles 1 and 3 above.
   
   
5. Must have British political instincts. For example must be a supporter of the Jury system, the presumption of innocence, routinely unarmed policing, and heavily reduced mass surveillance.
   
   
6. Needs to be someone of high personal integrity (because of the current political weather, it might be useful if the new leader's personal life is fairly mundane). Ideally will have already demonstrated some courage – the courage itself is, of course, essential.  Ideally, someone who has shown more commitment to right political cause, than to personal advancement.
   
   

A Government which adheres to these six values will also tend to make useful contributions to questions like how to fix the NHS backlog, or courts system, how to restore British economic fortunes and that of the freer countries more broadly, how to meet our environmental responsibilities as a medium sized nation, without destroying liberty at home and abroad, how to fix British Policing etc. - i.e. Get the values right, and answering the high profile questions will become much easier.

The statement reads: “We call for a ban on the sale and operation of Hikvision and Dahua surveillance equipment in the UK and condemn their involvement in technology-enabled human rights abuses in China. We call on the Government to commission an independent national review of the scale, capabilities, ethics and rights impact of modern CCTV in the UK.”

This is quite right. Locally it is quite clear that HikVision and similar cameras should be removed and henceforth excluded from the Sevenoaks’ District Council Surveillance Camera network. This would:

1. Represent a reduction in mass surveillance
2. Remove a significant data security threat (as these cameras run opaque propitiatory software which may well remit data to China, for this reason the USA has banned Hikvision cameras under their "secure equipment act").
3. Be in line with our duty to the Uighur people. We must take the opportunity to hit the reputation of this horrible company which has advertised their cameras as being able to recognise Uighur “with a hit rate of at least 90%" (source: "We have been Harmonised - Life in China's Surveillance State - Kai Strittmatter" Chapter: "The Eye", page: 205 in my copy - an online article, from the wider CCTV industry, can be found here)

It just so happens that the only HikVision cameras on the SDC network are currently limited to two places.

Firstly, the cameras in the centre of our own village. These cameras should be removed as soon as possible, followed by a discussion over whether or not to replace them with alternatives; however, based on the council’s data, the New Ash Green cameras are the least effective of any of the town centre cameras, though evidence taken in a recent review suggested that the effectiveness of cameras, in general, was minimal at best.

The second set of HikVision cameras are the very small number within the council offices itself - these cameras also include built-in audio recording capability – something which is totally discouraged even by those who have been supportive of surveillance cameras more generally. (See item 2.3 here).

*************************************

It has been interesting to browse the list of signatories (bottom of this page) which shows an emerging Cross Party alliance on this issue.

The letter was initiated by Big Brother Watch working (I believe) with the group of Conservative MPs whose names appear as the first signatories on the list. In signing this statement these MPs represent the best strand of thought within the Conservative Party, supporting liberty at home, as well as a morally solid response to the threat represented by the evil of the Chinese Communist Party. Despite the current dreadful behaviour of the Russian regime under Vladimir Putin, it is still the CCP which represents the biggest long term threat to the free world.

As well as strong support from these fantastic Conservative MPs is noticeable that an even larger number of Labour MPs have signed the letter (although, sadly - but not surprisingly, not particularly from the section of Labour Party most loyal to Sir Keir Starmer – a man whose wider policies have generally shown an intent to resurrect the domestic authoritarianism of Tony Blair).

Additionally, we see almost the entire Liberal Democrat party, and the two most significant Green Parliamentarians signing up to this statement. I therefore hope that any Green or Liberal Democrat candidates will commit their support to this policy, including the obvious local implications, as outlined above, but I also hope that us Conservatives can make such a stance unnessesary by removing these cameras much sooner than that.

As well as the significant cross-party Parliamentary support, the following organisations have joined Big Brother Watch in support of the statement: Rene Cassin (a Jewish human rights organisation), Stop Uyghur Genocide, Free Tibet, Hong Kong Watch.

Further links:

Big Brother Watch campaign page (including petition), BBW Report

Of particular interest to residents of Ash and New Ash Green may be rides around the world-renowned circuit at Brands Hatch (Monday 22nd August and Saturday 24th September) and family fun days in New Ash Green (Tuesday 9th August) and Hartley (Tuesday 16th August).

There are also rides around Knole Park, in Sevenoaks, and, in total, 24 family fun days will run at different places in the district, between Monday 25th July and Friday 19th August (i.e. every day within that period, with the exception of the weekend 30/31st July).

For full details of either of these activities, including precise locations and timings, see the links at the top of this page.

The cycle rides are bookable from today (the easiest method may be to call 01732 227000). There is no charge for joining these rides (though, because places are limited, we may charge £5 to anyone who doesn't show up after a place is confirmed).

For reasons primarily to do with legal liability, insurance and, potentially, agreements with the hosting venue, you may be asked to abide by safety rules which are additional to the normal legal requirement of cycling (this should not be taken to imply that SDC is calling for any extension of the general legal requirements imposed on cyclists, for example when using public roads - we aren't and I would oppose any such call for principled(1), pragmatic(2) and jurisdictional(3) reasons - i.e. 1. Liberty is good, 2. Barriers to cycling wouldn't be good for health, 3. It wouldn't be SDC's place in any case.

There is no need to book family fun days, just turn up and enjoy the day.

It is important to exclude coercion in this area for a number of reasons. Some are obvious and I addressed them in February, but there are two others which might be considered relevant in this case, even to those who are relatively unconcerned about liberty in general.

Firstly, recent years have seen substantial improvements in air quality, these have been delivered, and will continue to be delivered in future years, without recourse to local coercion, and without much in the way of mass coercion either (though changing upstream rules, for example for vehicle manufacturers; changes in MOTs, may well have had an effect too).

Secondly, the implementation of coercive measures is often a massive distraction from what can be achieved on a non-coercive basis. The importance of this bandwidth effect should not be underestimated; avoiding coercion (and, where possible, ruling it out at an early stage) simply leaves a lot more thinking space available to do the non-coercive stuff better.

The following is a rough transcript of the video:

Cllr. Pender: "I would like to welcome the plan, as it is, but also to express one reservation about some of the supplementary information that's come through this evening. Firstly the very good things about the plan: This plan consists substantially of non-coercive behaviour campaigns which have been very effective over a period of time and we see an improving trend in air quality which we continue to monitor. We have substantial action to reduce our own emissions as a council as well as using interactions with the private sector; using our megaphone to incentivise the private sector to reduce their emissions, and to praise them for that, to leverage a reduction in emissions. I was struck by the arguments made at cabinet in favour of the Air Quality promotions officer to run these softer campaigns.

"Clearly any form of public spending is a coercive matter, because taxation is raised coercively, but beyond that the document is broadly an attempt to convince rather than to coerce, and I very much welcome that. I think that can work, and it has worked, and I predict we will continue to see a substantial reduction in the emissions of Nitrogen Oxides and Particulates, under this plan.

"The one reservation I have is the last part of the supplementary information. I'm told it's not particularly unusual to allow the portfolio holder and officers between them to update the plan within the course of its duration, to remain relevant. I really hope that we will avoid any coercive measures coming in through that mechanism, particularly any fines or zoning where certain vehicles are prohibited, or a charge to drive or anything which requires parking to be more surveillance heavy than currently. I'm sure I'm about to hear some reassurance, having given indication of the tenor of this speech to the leader in advance - I'm sure I'm about to hear some reassurance which will allow me to vote in favour of this plan this evening."

*The leader of the council pointed out that, the supplementary information was not entirely new in our information packs as it had come before cabinet. [Although I had chosen to attend Cabinet last week, not being a member of Cabinet, I had not thoroughly reviewed the supplementary paperwork for Cabinet]. The leader was also able to say:

"I can assure Cllr. Pender that the sort of coercive behaviors or instruments that he is talking about would need full Council approval, and therefore it's not covered in item d."

An answer which I warmly welcomed.

*********************

Additionally yesterday evening, effectively, saw the handover of the Chairmanship of the council. The New Chairman (who will be confirmed in post at the next Annual Council) has decided on a simpler style in relation to debate and questions. It seems that, for most items, rather than trying to separate “Questions” from “Debate” she will take the two together. On balance this is probably rather a good move as questions and debate are often conflated in any case. Though, of course, it still remains open to the new Chairman to explicitly separate questions and debate for any particularly technical item where she anticipates many members will have significant points they wish to clarify.

While the new style is good and takes very little getting used to, its introduction did catch me on the hop during the first item this evening, the safeguarding policy. I had intended to speak in the debate following questions, but found that the opportunity for questions had been the debate. In any case, many important safeguarding matters, including the investigation of almost all allegations, fall under the remit of KCC rather than SDC, and it is in the area of investigations and how to deal with allegations justly, where safeguarding policies can sometimes fall down and fail to uphold basic principles of justice.

The main substantive issue discussed was fly-tipping and it is possible that this episode was removed because I praised some robust (but I believe legal) grassroots responses to fly tipping in the worst effected fly tipping location we have historically seen in Ash.

Interestingly the KMTV produced clip on rural fly tipping vividly showed the ineffectiveness of an electronic-surveillance-led approach to the crime (showing an interview with a farmer whose CCTV system had itself been stolen). On the other hand, I do think a robust community response can be part of a solution to most common types of crime and, if anything, I probably understated this during the programme.

I want to examine two theories of crime prevention and policing. The first we might call the "wolf, sheep, shepherd" model, tactically promoted by many official sources. This sees the criminal as the wolf and the ordinary citizen as the livestock, to be protected by the shepherd (a role taken by the police). In my view this is likely always to be an ineffective model, not least because the police can never be numerous enough to cover all areas (and, perhaps, in a free society, they also ought not to be).

A better approach, in my view, is the infantry/cavalry model. Which sees us ordinary subjects (acting under the law) as the first line of defense against crime, and the police as the cavalry, to be called upon particularly to deal with the threats which the people cannot cope with directly, but also to support and inspire the public to respond with a well judged level of human courage, on the rare occasions when we see a crime in progress.

This kind of inspiration is far easier to achieve if people can identify the police as "one of us". This is, I hope, the thinking behind the (now trite) saying that the police need to "look like the community they serve". However, those who trot out this phrase often limit its application to the ticking of certain equality and diversity boxes. If this idea is to have value, it must be extended to the method of patrolling, and the kit used.

It needs to be appreciated that a traditional police officer, tackling criminals armed with nothing more than a radio and a (hardly ever used) metal stick, and often patrolling alone, is much more likely to inspire members of the public than an officer jangling with electric shock firearms, body cameras etc. (what Peter Hitchens called in his book, "the abolition of Britain" - "paramiliatary style" equipment).

In actual fact it is in the best tradition of British policing that members of the public (who feel able to) directly defend their community. As Robert Peal put it, the police are civilians turning their full time attention to duties incumbent upon all of of us, on a part time basis.

However, this is generally not the model that is promoted at an official level today, and it is more common to suggest members of the public are merely "the eyes and ears" of the police, and (with the push for greater electronic surveillance) perhaps even this is now considered an optional extra. An increasing litigiousness has also, sadly, seen workers sometimes being told explicitly, as company policy, that they are not to intervene to prevent thefts.

Clearly people's circumstances vary, and each of us must make our own decisions; the best community response to crime will normally involve an overlapping tapestry of both police and citizen responses, but those who feel able to, for example, chase after a shop lifter (and there is a bit of a tradition of that locally), or give a hard time to someone they spot using illegal drugs in public (such that the experience is rendered unenjoyable for the drug user) or, indeed, those who use a certain level of force against fly tippers on the access road to their small community, should, in my view, feel justified in doing - so long as a jury would consider the force used to be reasonable in the circumstances.

Furthermore I'm fairly sure these ideas receive fairly widespread acceptance locally, in fact, this may be one of the reasons why many types of crimes are rather uncommon locally.

I recently walked through Sevenoaks High Street with an asthmatic family member and the report I received is that air quality in Sevenoaks is noticeably less good than in Ash, but only in very specific locations, such as Sevenoaks High Street. On the other hand these small areas of worse air quality have air which would be typical of most places within London. These limited observations tally with my instincts and the data we were given on air quality.

There was, however, at least one misleading statistic in our paperwork which was an evaluation of the mortality due to polluted air which didn’t ring true (a figure of, effectively, 6% of UK deaths being put down to air pollution). On further inspection it seems there were a number of problems with this statistic, including that the effect of primary smoke exposure from cigarettes was included.

One proposal is for some of our street cleaning vehicles to shift to zero-tailpipe emissions (i.e. electric). This is exactly the right kind of measure.

An aspect of this strategy is that our proposals are intended to align with our climate goals. This is right and would, in my view, preclude any suggestion of seeking to exclude, for example, diesel cars from particular areas. I would not support this. The minority of diesel cars are responsible for a very significant proportion of many important forms of short lived, local air pollution but, in terms of the global and persistent effect of CO2 emissions, diesel cars are marginally better than petrol. What is more, excluding certain types of cars from certain zones is likely to lead some people to pursue actions with ecologically worse outcomes, such as driving larger distances to skirt around excluded zones, potentially contributing to traffic etc.

There is no suggestion that Cabinet intends to pursue ideas such as this, indeed there is every suggestion Cabinet would consider such a move heavy handed and wrong.

The good thing is that the problem of air pollution in the district (and the nation as a whole) has been on an improving trend for some time now (see above graphs).

The conversation on Covid has now pivoted from arguments for and against new coercive proposals, to questions of the timescale for the dismantling the existing measures. It is quite right that compulsory masking, for example in shops, is now to be dropped. The most pressing matter for further review is the policy on compulsory vaccination for NHS and Social care workers, and I very much hope this will be reviewed (perhaps as "no longer required"?) before any NHS sackings kick it (perhaps after reconsideration in the light of emergent omicron data?). Nonetheless, the policy on Covid is, in my view, now in a far better place than it has been for any of the previous 22 months.

Additionally, in just over a week, it will be two years since Britain left the EU. The time since then has, obviously, been dominated by depressing news about Covid and Covid restrictions, both at home and abroad. However, the purpose of this post is not to reprise arguments about the past, either on Brexit or Covid matters.

Rather, recognising the current signs of sustainable optimism, now seems a good time to return to discussion of our longer term priorities, both in Ash and New Ash Green, and across the district more broadly.

Perhaps the biggest new Challenge that faces the council is the local plan, which now needs to be redone following its rejection on a technicality (the “duty to cooperate”). For what it’s worth I think the arguments put by the Council’s leadership were correct (broadly that the duty had been correctly discharged, and that further emails would have been futile). Unfortunately a court took a different view; we are, as they say, where we are. The revisiting of the local plan could be seen (especially by those who drew up the plan last time) as a needless duplication of work. However, it is also a renewed opportunity to shape a new plan, especially for those of us who weren't as heavily involved last time.

The biggest contentious area is always the matter of building on green belt and the principle employed by Sevenoaks District Council has been, and will undoubtedly remain, that we will only accept building on green belt if there is a significant benefit offered to the existing local community. That seems to be a reasonable principle.

Nonetheless we also do have a duty to genuinely take up the challenge to look for such benefits. We should recognise that there is a moral good seeking to address the issue of housing availability, though it would, of course, make a mockery of greenbelt rules to release greenbelt for development based on this factor alone.

Nonetheless, I was struck by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent words on building homes and, not just homes, but also building homes that will allow the formation of decent communities, or genuinely add to existing communities.

Building communities is certainly a key benefit and, in my view, the presence of camera surveillance is almost always a sign of a failure to build a proper community. CCTV cameras looking over public spaces, almost always ought to be removed, and certainly that is the case across this ward (see CCTV review).

In my view, the council ought to be looking for area to start a gradual reduction in the number of CCTV sites, New Ash Green would certainly be a good place to start, and the eventual aim should be for the cameras to be removed from the district entirely – mainly on privacy grounds but also on the basis that, at nearly half a million pounds per year for SDC, they are not a cost effective way to reduce crime, which is best addressed through the building up of the community. Such a reduction can be done without an increase in crime, because cameras have very little impact on crime levels (and, indeed, even the direction of any slight overall impact on crime, is very unclear).

However, arguably even worse than the longstanding cameras is the new ANPR camera on the roundabout between New Ash Green and Hartley (which, when consulted by Police, I objected to in the strongest terms). This logging of literally billions of totally innocent journeys, stored on a national police database, for at least a year, is simply wrong; Ash and New Ash Green should have no part in it.

I would also ask residents tempted to put up their own (public facing) CCTV whether they really feel they have the right to put their neighbours, and the other users of public space under surveillance in this way (and clearly, it does not matter, for moral purposes, whether a camera is of the traditional kind, or whether it is integrated into another device, such as a doorbell - in fact, the doorbell camera may be worse, since the data from these devices is likely stored in a central corporate database, by a company, Amazon, which already profits hugely from building up mass data sets on innocent people). However, the law currently (effectively) leaves such a decision to the conscience of the householders*.

Having written critically about the policies enacted by my own party locally, in respect of surveillance, it is only right to laud the many good things being delivered in a collegiate fashion by Conservatives locally.

We are committed, as ever, to a full weekly bin collection of both black bag waste and recycling.

Above you can see a 2019 map showing that the vast majority of our fellow citizens must put up with fortnightly collection. Conservatives on SDC are rightly committed to maintaining a weekly refuse collection and, we are equally committed that this collection should include refuse of both kinds.

The usual counter argument given by opponents is that a move to fortnightly collection could allow for things like household (rather than collective) glass collection, or a separate food waste collection and, although we keep these things under review, I remain of the view that glass recycling in the local bins works well enough and that there are a number of positive and negative reasons to refrain from a separate food waste collection at this time (chiefly, on the positive side, the availability of household composting locally and the combustibility of much food waste - effectively burns as biomass in Kent’s waste to power plant - and, on the negative side, the difficulty and cost of making separate food waste collections - including environmental cost of sending heavy goods vehicles on 30 mile (or so) round trips. [I hope to write again about this after I visit the Kent waste disposal centre].

Another good new development, centrally, is the introduction of the new, longer, and simplified, opening hours, for the District’s contact centre (7am to 7pm, Monday to Friday - on 01732 227000). Again, this is illustrative of a commitment to simple, high quality, services.

While we have seen some limited progress with the village centre, we all continue to exert what influence we can to try and encourage other incremental improvements, while being on the look out for longer term ways to address what has, for decades, been the biggest local priority in Ash and New Ash Green.

Another long term challenge faced locally has been fly tipping on the road to Barnfield park. This may not effect a large proportion of local residents but the scale of the problem is abhorrent, as are the evil actions of fly-tippers whose selfish profiteering blights the lives of so many decent and often houseproud local residents. I am supportive of the residents who have shown themselves increasingly prepared to exercise their perfectly legal right to use force against the people - and vehicles - who have been inflicting this scourge upon them and their neighbours, for so many years. Although this is a KCC matter, I have spoken to the officers looking at this problem, there have already been some positive moves from KCC, but equally important is the burgeoning resistive spirit amongst the people effected.

Other, more minor, personal positives, have been improved street signage on Church Road in Ash, saving the phone service in the centre of the village, as well as changes to the wording of council tax statements to provide council residents across the district with clear and correct information about the year-to-year percentage change in the council tax precept from the various strands of local government.

Some of the most rewarding work has been dealing with individual issues of casework, especially where a positive resolution has been reached. If you have had need to contact me about a matter with a housing association, or a community issue, one of the Council’s direct services, or a matter that comes under another local or national jurisdiction, then I hope you feel that, in each case, I have given the matter the appropriate attention, and that your three Conservative district members (as well as your MP, Laura Trott, and your KCC member, David Brazier) have working well as a team on these issues.

Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you are struggling with an issue where you feel a district councillor’s attention could be useful.

Clearly many local commuters travel from Ash or New Ash Green, down to Longfield Station, to take trains to London so, while the law in this area is a matter for Parliament, there is clearly an important local dimension. The trip to/from Longfield (2-3 miles with a height gain of about 60 metres in the evening) is exactly the sort of regular journey where a bit of power assisted personal transport may seem attractive. Especially if it can be folded up and used for a similar journey at the other end.

Below is a summary of the current law in this area, together with my own estimate as to how it might (and ought to) develop, in respect of e-scooters.

The law on e-bikes is in a good place currently. An e-bike slots into the highway code like an any other bicycle and is, as such, released from the regulatory and bureaucratic burdens which would fall upon, for example, the owner of a motorbike. As with bicycles, helmets are only advised, rather than being a legal requirement. Similarly, there is no requirement to have a licence, insurance or MOT, nor to register ownership, nor to affix a numberplate, indicator lights etc. The quid pro quo for this is that the electric power of an e-bike is limited to 250 Watts and power assistance must cut out over 15.5 mph. Finally, the electric motor is only allowed to assist the cyclist when he is actually peddling. It is this final requirement which prevents the use of e-scooters on the road. [You also have to be at least 14 years old to ride an e-bike on the road.]

Under the current law e-scooters have a totally different status. Currently it is only legal to ride them on the road as part of a licensed e-scooter hire scheme, of which there are none locally (to the best of my knowledge the only such scheme is Kent is in Canterbury). A privately owned e-scooter, if taken on the road, becomes a moped for legal purposes (effectively making its use here illegal – e.g. no insurance, no MOT, etc.).

The legal requirements on e-scooters in hire schemes are similar to that of e-bikes. Their maximum power is 500 Watts (double that of e-bikes) and their maximum (powered?) speed is limited to 15.5 mph (like e-bikes). The extra power does mean they are capable of fairly high (and surprising) initial acceleration from a standing start.

Clearly, as a destination for the law, it makes no sense to ban you from riding your own e-scooter, while allowing you to ride someone else’s (i.e. one belonging to a scooter-hire company). However, it is fairly clear, I think, that the current position is not intended as the destination, but rather as a point on the path to greater freedom in this area. The Government have, quite reasonably, decided to allow a limited test of (on average more responsibly ridden, and well maintained) e-scooters on public roads, through the licensing of hire schemes.

Eventually the thinking must, surely, be to try and put privately owned e-scooters onto public roads, legally, to be ridden like bicycles, in much the same way as e-bikes currently.

Perhaps the above parameters might need to be tweaked slightly. The 500 W maximum power may allow too great an acceleration at slow speeds (though power limits must be sufficiently high to allow hills to be climbed at the speed of a typical cyclist).

There are, of course, safety issues with both new and existing road transport (1390 people were killed on the roads in 2021 – almost all killed by, or in, motor vehicles).

The main safety concern with e-bikes and e-scooters is in respect of the danger to pedestrians. There are concerns related to the quietness of electric transport, or their irresponsible use on pavements, but most of these are familiar issues in the context of bicycles. So it seems that aiming to make e-scooters behave like bikes, and then treating them like bikes, will be the right approach in the long term; pedestrian fatalities at the hands of bicycles are about as frequent in the UK as deaths by lightening strike. Of course there is also the risk to the user herself, but this is manageable and, in any case, accepting that risk is, of course, a matter of individual liberty (though an age limit, as for e-bikes would be reasonable).

The potential benefits of e-scooters could, in the end, be considerable, they can be potentially be made considerably lighter than folding e-bikes as well as being less expensive.

In particular, being able to take a sub 20-kilo e-scooter up and down the hill to Longfield, perhaps to then carry it like a backpack on a train, could be of considerable benefit to a large number of local residents, who might otherwise have to either make the journey by car, or travel to a bus timetable which may not work well for their individual journey.

The full 28 minute piece (including a skippable 3 minute break) can be found here.

It was good to be able to highlight Sevenoaks' ambitious commitment to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

The exam system this year (while obviously an improvement on 2020) clearly needs to return to normal in 2022. This is especially important to protect the long terms interests of A-level students who were largely awarded their GCSEs in 2020.

Other topics discussed were vaccination (which I have written about previously) and the migrant situation in the channel.

Clearly people’s underlying view on cameras will vary, some will say “nothing to hide nothing to fear”, others will be concerned about the financial cost (perhaps about other potential uses for the £400k per year which SDC spends on the camera systems), some would oppose mass-surveillance on privacy grounds, even if there were no financial cost. Others might be in favour of reducing the camera network if they thought crime levels would not be adversely affected, while still others might be in favour of expanding the network, subject only to financial constraints.

The underlying views represented within the working group (of four Councillors who conducted the review) were similarly diverse.

The group took evidence from council officers, from the Police, and also from Dr. Emmeline Taylor of City of London University, who produced an academic review of evidence for the effectiveness of camera systems (see page 81 of the reports pack).

The group was interested to note that in most of the cases deliberately chosen for us by the CCTV service, the utility of cameras was minimal at best (see page 15 of the report).

The group also proposed a number of unanimous (and therefore compromise) recommendations, which can be read on pages 22-25 of the report.

The only clear recommended reductions in surveillance capacity that we were able to agree concerned cameras and (shockingly) fairly extensive audio recording, within both public and non-public areas of the SDC building. However, serious questions are raised in the report about the whole network and, in particular, the three camera systems located beyond Sevenoaks and Swanley (including the New Ash Green cameras).

An interesting local aspect was that, as part of the review, we discovered that the cupboard under the stairs in the clock tower (which contains the relay computer for the New Ash Green system) was left open and unsecured for at least a month (only actually being secured due to our review). It is not clear whether this would have allowed unauthorised extraction (or infiltration) of data from (or into) the system but it would, of course, have allowed any member of the public to switch this system off and on (see page 37 of the report).

Sadly, the resolution passed by Scrutiny committee was watered down further from the compromise recommendations of the report.

For example, Scrutiny Committee is now only asking the Cabinet to “consider” removing audio surveillance hardware and there seemed to be an attempt to argue that the absence of audio recording in the reception area would put council staff behind the reception desk in some kind of danger(?!)

Some people would prefer never to reduce surveillance systems. They may claim this is out of fear that crime would rise. But, perhaps their greater fear is that it wouldn’t, and that this would generate further calls for surveillance reduction.

Note on Redacted pages:

The group took a (majority) decision to redact a number of pages, published as appendices available to councillors, but not published publicly.

These redacted pages included:

A. Maps of camera locations (though four out of five of these maps had already been put into the public domain and were available on the council's website from 2013 to early 2021 - indeed these maps can still be found online for Edenbridge, Sevenoaks, Swanley and Westerham) and the locations are listed (just not mapped) on page 27 of the publicly available report.

B. Details of exactly when the camera control room is unmanned (though much of this information on this is given on page 7 of the publicly available report)

C. A little more detail on the five items of exemplar footage provided by the Council’s Camera service (most of this information is, however, given on page 13 of the publicly available report)

The following link sets out some of the privacy concerns with this (as well an instructions on how to opt out - which I have copied at the end of this article):

https://bylinetimes.com/2021/05/19/the-government-wants-to-sell-your-gp-medical-records-heres-how-to-opt-out/

The Health Secretary has long been convinced that the use of AI crunching bulk patient data will have huge benefits for patient outcomes:

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252488719/Matt-Hancock-announces-50m-for-healthcare-AI-projects

He would, no doubt, claim that the privacy concerns above have been overblown.

I try not to weigh in on national politics on this website, nonetheless residents ought to know that, rightly or wrongly, it has been decided to make this an opt-out process, rather than having patients specifically opt in to data sharing.

For residents that do wish to opt out clear instruction can be found on the bylinetimes article above (a broadly left of centre news outlet) however, these instructions have, in turn, been taken from the medconfidential website, and can be found here:

https://medconfidential.org/how-to-opt-out/

While there is a ticking clock at the top of this website the NHS maintains that you can opt-out of data sharing at any point (including after 23rd June). However, clearly if data has already been shared with outside organisations prior to your opting out, it is unlikely that it can be easily "unshared" so if you do wish to opt out, and you are reading this in early June, you'll probably want to do it fairly soon.

The location of the cameras can be found here (edit: 7/8/2021 - although these maps were available on the SDC website for many years, they have now been removed - this represents, effectively, a change of policy. This policy change is somewhat regretable in my view. However, once placed into the public domain it is not possible to remove them and the maps can still be found online here for Edenbridge, Sevenoaks, Swanley and Westerham along with an out of date map for New Ash Green):

Do write to me at cllr.pender@sevenaoks.gov.uk and let me know what you think about the presence of these CCTV cameras.

Does the presence of Cameras make you feel safe? Or spied upon?

Perhaps you oppose mass survillance on prinicple? Or maybe you feel that the innocent should have nothing to hide?

Let me know.

Thank you to David for taking the time to chat, and especial thanks also to the production team: to James Clark for the camerawork and technical assembly, and to David Irving for the sound recording.

Elections for Kent County Council representatives and Kent Police and Crime Commissioner are on Thursday 6 May 2021.

It is sad that some who seek to represent local Government as a whole (such as the Local Government Association) have decided to object to this.

It is quite obvious, both in theory and in practice, that the level of influence a back bench councillor is able to exert over council policy, when meetings are online, is far less than when councillors are meeting in person.

This is for a variety of reasons, chiefly the fact that pressure/influence on any issue builds by increments, including in the conversations before and after formal meetings.

Additionally, technical issues (with internet connections etc.) mean that full participation in online meetings is often haphazard.

For example, at a recent meeting of the Community Infrastructure Levy Spending Board I was having to flit between a computer screen and a telephone connection each with their own drawbacks (on the telephone it was impossible to see visually presented information, as well as being difficult to indicate a desire to speak – on the computer, the connection would, intermittently, simply drop out). It was just about possible to get this to meeting done, but it was certainly not a proper way to run meetings to decide millions of pounds of public spending, in the long term.

Furthermore, there were at least two significant misunderstandings during this meeting, neither of which would have occurred if the meeting had been conducted in person – these probably didn’t effect the decisions made, but they did lead to needless rancor.

This meetings was, if anything, one of the better examples of an online meetings and in every single online council meeting, committee meeting, or working group which I have attended over the last year, there have been significant technical issue effecting more than one participant.

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The other problem with online meetings is that those chairing or controlling such meetings have hugely more power to silence dissent, when they have the mute button (or worse) at their disposal.

For this reason, we shouldn’t be surprised that the Local Government Association has taken the disappointing position that they have; they are (perhaps especially at this time) likely to be more sensitive to the views of senior council officials and council cabinet members, than to back bench councillors wishing to influence local policy. [Though, I should be clear, there is no suggestion that a return to in-person meetings is being resisted at ANY level, within Sevenoaks' District Council, and the chairman of SDC, Cllr. John Edwards-Winser – our equivalent of Lindsey Hoyle in Parliament – has stated plainly that he wishes in-person working to resume ASAP]

Of course, Parliament itself has been meeting in person for a number of months now. The comparison between a typical local Government assembly and Parliament shows that, in reality, MPs and ministers wishing to avoid a charge of utter hypocrisy, have little choice but to allow councils to resume meeting in person.

Sevenoaks' District Council has a tenth as many members as Parliament, and every member must either live or work within the district of Sevenoaks. On the other hand, Parliamentarians naturally live all over the country. Furthermore, Parliament was working in-person when Covid-19 case-rates were ten times higher than presently, and before any vaccine had been approved for use in the UK, while now the vast majority of vulnerable people (~99%?) have had a chance to receive at least one vaccine dose.

Can we be sure that no councillors will face a barrier to participation if in person meetings return? Answer: No more than we could before the pandemic!

Can we be sure that the numbers facing significant barriers will be less than the numbers rendered intermittently blind, deaf or dumb by internet connection issues under current arrangements? Answer: Undoubtedly Yes, but, more importantly, a return to in-person meetings means that back bench councillors actually have half a chance of doing the job for which we were elected (i.e. to scrutinise and influence council policy) as job which, if we are brutally honest, we have hardly been able perform during the last year.

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Another person who seems to be opposing the return of in-person meetings is the notorious Jackie Weaver, of Handforth Parish council fame. As you may remember from the national media, a widely reported dispute arose in January, centred on whether Mrs. Weaver did, or did not, have the authority to preside over a meeting of this Cheshire Parish council. Online opinion seemed to split between those opposed Mrs. Walker’s disregard for democratic procedures, and those who felt the discourtesy of others meant she was entitled to eject members from the (virtual) meeting. Whatever view one takes on this, it was clear that the only “authority” that really mattered was the fact she was in control of the digital meeting room.

If you watched or read about any element of this, I invite you to consider what would have happened if this had been an offline meeting.

Even if we assume the dispute would still have arisen (which itself is doubtful) it's likely that those who objected would have simply been allowed to say their piece, rulebooks/standing orders would then have been consulted and, after a pause, either the meeting would have continued with all participants (perhaps with a certain amount of bad temper) or it would have ceased as unconstitutional. At the worst, some members might have walked out in protest.

Mrs. Weaver would never have done the offline equivalent of what she felt able to do online. I.E. She would certainly not have detailed a couple of burly associates to physically eject three relatively elderly members of the parish council (including the council chairman) from a meeting room. And yet, online, she felt perfectly within her rights to do so, without even a prior vote.

In the unlikely event that she HAD taken leave of her sences and instructed some compliant lackeys to physically eject people from the meeting, she would certainly not have been praised by Nick Robinson on the Today programme the next morning, nor would she have received plaudits from left leaning national newspapers. If such a dispute had made the national press at all it would have been either to draw comparisons with officially sanctioned violence in ejecting people from other political meetings (e.g. the Walter Wolfgang - 2006 Labour Party Conference) or simply to report that a Parish Clark and a number of others had been charged with various offenses against the person, for the violent behaviour which this action would necessarily have required.

In other words, the practice of online meeting allowed Mrs. Weaver to achieve a level of control which would normally only be possible through organised violence, but it allowed her to achieve this without the social, legal, or physical consequences which normally attach to perpetrators of violent acts.

Perhaps that is why Mrs. Weaver has lined up with those objecting to the return to in-person working.

- To require all public firework displays within the local authority boundaries to be advertised in advance of the event.

- To actively promote a public awareness campaign about the impact of fireworks on animal welfare and vulnerable people–including the precautions that can be taken to mitigate risks

and

- To encourage local suppliers of fireworks to stock ‘quieter’ fireworks for public display.

The RSPCA are also seeking national legislation to reduce the statutory limit on sound energy to one thousandth of its current level (i.e. to 90dB from 120dB, at a horizontal distance of 15 metres, 1m from the ground).

Over the last year and a half a few residents have written to me asking for a response to these proposals and, it stands to reason, that this may be a matter of more general interst.

I think we all understand the issues which fireworks can cause in respect of animals. On a personal note my cat seeks shelter indoors when fireworks are let off; he clearly dislikes all types of fireworks, and the louder variety in particular. Fireworks can also cause issues in trying to get to sleep, especially for young children.

On the other hand everyone, including the RSPCA, also accepts that fireworks can bring much enjoyment to people, both big public displays, such as the New Ash Green fireworks (which sadly could not happen in 2020) and displays in back gardens. I have vivid and enjoyable memories of home firework displays as a young child, memories which I hope to recreate for my own children.

Under current legislation fireworks should not be set off between the hours of 11pm and 7am, with the exception of Guy Fawkes Night (when the cutoff is midnight) and New Year, Diwali and Chinese New Year (when the cut off is 1am). An RSPCA campaign from 2018 sought to limit any private firework displays to just those four days, though since 2019 they seem to have moderated their public position on this.

Nonetheless, if residents know of fireworks being set off illegally at night then I would be interested to hear of it.

Turning to each of the RSPCA’s three proposals for local Government:

The first is that public firework displays be advertised in advance.

I presume the focus on public displays is because displays run by professionals are allowed to breech the noise limits which apply to publicly available fireworks.

In New Ash Green our annual firework display, run entirely by volunteers at no public expense, to a very high standards of safety, does advertise in advance. The Social Comittee who organisse it want people to come to it after all, and I look forward to assisting in the marshaling of the November 2021 display, as usual.

I suspect that, like New Ash Green's display, the vast majority of public displays do advertise in advance but forcing them to do so could impose a burden in terms of their needing to evidence their advertising to a sufficient standard, as well as imposing a burden on council tax payers, as the council would have to formally check that they have advertised. Such a regulation might also end up applying to other things which we might not typically think of as fireworks but which, clearly, on inspection, are (e.g. starter guns at sports days, flares used for various reasons including in acts of remembrance etc.) As such, I think this proposal may be a solution in search of a problem.

The Second proposal is that the council should promote a public awareness campaign about the effect of fireworks on animals and the wider risks of fireworks. Awareness of the impact of fireworks, particularly on dogs, was extensively discussed in the media in 2019 and what applies to pet animals clearly also applies to livestock. Animal welfare and fireworks was less prominent during 2020 (during which many big displays were cancelled, but there was also probably a slight increase in private displays in gardens).

As an illustration of this, prior to November 2019, Sainsbury's in Pepper Hill, stopped selling fireworks. Their stated reason for this was to do with safety, and not wishing to distress animals, though I suspect the costs associated with selling fireworks were quite high compared to the revenue generated (i.e. they were sold from a separately manned kiosk, so fireworks were not left unsupervised on shelves). I believe they have also stopped selling sparklers.

Nonetheless, awareness of this issue has grown hugely, propelled by organisations with a lot more publicity "reach" than Sevenoaks District Council (e.g. the BBC, and the RSPCA itself). So, again, I'm not sure how helpful it would be to commit council funds to a specfic public information campaign, although our general community safety advice will, no doubt, make mention of firework safety from time to time. Clearly firework instructions also detail safety advice.

Finally, there is the suggestion that firework sellers should offer quieter fireworks as an option. When Salisbury's did sell fireworks they came with various ratings, including a noise ratings. So, again, in so far as the market provides fireworks at all, quieter options are stocked, and considerate neighbours may well choose these, especially, perhaps, for displays at unusual times of year. Clearly some level of “bang” is, however, part of the point, especially on November 5th, in commemoration of the bang which would have resulted had the 1605 plot succeeded.

Assuming that the RSPCA suggestion means what it says, and simply asks that quieter fireworks are offered for sale (alongside nosier fireworks) this is already happening where fireworks are sold and so, again, this aspect of the proposal (which is not intended as binding in any event) would have little effect.

For these reasons I am not inclined to support the RSPCAs proposals. Nonetheless, those residents who have written to me in support of these proposals have clearly given us all something to think about when organising firework displays. They have also, clearly, written in good faith, in response to reasonable sounding proposals.

I am not quite sure that the same level of good faith can be imputed in respect of the RSPCA itself.

While the RSPCA undoubtedly cares about animals, it is not an organisation which has always held human freedom in high regard.

As an illustration of this, a number of years ago some friends of mine returned from holiday to find that their doors had been knocked in on the basis of erroneous reports of animal neglect (totally spurious reports which referred to animals not actually present on the property, but which a neighbour had thought were present). It was not clear, to them at least, whether this RSPCA led break-in was conducted with or without the presence of Police. These kinds of incident have been fairly common in the past, and the RSPCA have been fairly unapologetic about them.

The RSPCA was also a key institution in pushing for the compulsory microchipping of dogs (and now, I believe, mooting a similar idea for cats) which properly ought to be a matter for the owner to decide upon. This is an issue on which animal loving organisations disagree (see chip-me-not), but, fundamentally, it is a matter of human freedom (a commodity which is clearly, currently, in desperately short supply).

I do not believe that, were the RSPCA seeking a Royal Charter today, that it would be granted and it is notable that one of the first actions of Archbishop Justin Welby upon his appointment, was to reject the customary offer of a role as vice-patron of this organisation.

Time will tell what the RSPCA’s eventual aims will be in respect of fireworks but I suspect the firework related arguments the RSPCA are making currently are the deliberately reasonable sounding precursors to arguments which they later intend to make, in favour of, for example, a ban on over the counter sales of fireworks or, indeed, a revival of their previously stated aim to ban all private firework displays other than on the four days per year where they are currently permitted after 11pm.

Ending these restrictions is now clearly only going to happen once everyone over a certain age (who wants it) has been given a vaccine; likely to coincide with the arrival of spring though we still don't know exactly when we'll see the full restoration of normal levels of liberty. Some talk of Easter, others of over 65s being vaccinated, others of NHS emergency capacity.

Nationally vaccine distribution has been going well, and ministers have mentioned figures of two hundred thousand vaccine doses currently being administered daily, across the UK.

Locally, patients of the Jubilee Medical centre (New Ash Green and Longfield) can expect to be called for a vaccination at Meopham Medical centre (and many of you are, of course, patients at Meopham directly). I am personally very grateful for useful conversations with the Meopham Practice Manager, and for the fact that Meopham have been able to accommodate patients from the Jubilee Practice.

Of course, there are smaller numbers of patients of many other GPs within the Ward and, if you are still unsure at this stage, of how you will be getting your offer of a vaccine, then do get in touch and I will try to find out for you.

Also, if you are offered a vaccine, but do not know how you are going to get to Meopham (and if you are not able to find a solution through any obvious method) then do write to me or call about that also. It is very likely that, with reasonable notice, we can arrange something through the local volunteering network, or similar.

[Edit 7/8/2021: Sadly in the intervening months since this was first written we have started to see the introduction of vaccine passporting in various areas. While this is mostly a matter for central government I would, nonetheless, be very interested to hear from any residents for whom this is causing a difficulty in their lives. Clearly the introduction of a vaccine as an option for any adult who wants it is a very good thing. Having such an option for all adults, regardless of age or medical vulnerability, is a benefit to living in a rich society and its early availability in the UK is a credit to those involved in its distribution (see above), as well as to the Government for taking a risk to procure vaccine doses at an early stage. However, if vaccination becomes a condition for a return to normal life then we are into the territory of, de facto, forced medication, something which about which we should all have serious concerns.]

The Community Cupboard - our local foodbank. Email: comunitycupboard19@gmail.com and on facebook , the Co-op is still collecting donations. More details in above image (right hand side).

There are a couple of options for reasonably priced delivered meals for older vulnerable people (though you don't have to be all that old!):

The Cottage Community, see above image (left hand side), offers meals to over 55s, and the North West Kent Branch of Age UK also offer a fresh meals service.

Ash Church are, of course, offering both pastoral and prayerful support at this time. Much of the pastoral administration is being coordinated by the Church Wardens John (john.a.harding@btinternet.com) and Ian (ian_nurdin@hotmail.co.uk) as well as, of course, Rev. Helen Reeves (ashandridleyrector@gmail.com), all their phone numbers are here. Thank you also to Helen for the information about meal services.

The District Council itself is running a Volunteering Scheme and you can get in touch with any of the three of us using our widely available contact details (see, for example, the contact section of this website). Our County Councillor David Brazier will also be very happy to hear from you about anything relating to Kent County Council.

Finally, many people will, of course, have directly arranged to support neighbours, friends and relatives. Thank you for doing that, and thank you also for asking for help if you need it at this time.

• Car parking charges have been removed, clearly we are in unusual times and car travel is, for a time, to be encouraged in preference to using public transport.
• Maintaining our services in challenging circumstances. This includes the weekly bin collection in the face of higher levels of domestic waste, and obvious potential staffing issues. Note: Rotas may have to change slightly in order to allow staggered arrivals/departures from the Dunbrick depot to facilitate social distancing for our workers, but the frequency is unchanged.
• Implementing the various grant schemes for small businesses, as instituted by Central Government. The letters for this have now gone out.
• Housing Benefit and Council tax support is being arranged, including support which is not included in Central Government Schemes.
• The council has given some financial support to a scheme run by the Invicta Chamber of commerce, to help businesses within the district.
• Finally SDC is also launching a Community Volunteer Scheme but there are also a number of more local volunteering schemes.

During the Covid-19 pandemic we must all take seriously our duty to avoid infecting others with Covid-19. Clearly the best way to do this is by following much of the Government advice, such as the advice about hand washing, being careful with touch, in various ways, and social distancing - maintaining 2-4 metres separation between people not living in the same household.

Clearly we must also Self-Isolate if we have symptoms of Covid-19, as well as following the NHS guidance about household isolation).

We are now all very much more aware of when we touch our faces, and we all know about the benefits of washing hands with soap and water (preferably hot) while singing one verse of, variously: the national anthem, the red flag, now the green blade rises etc.

For other surfaces, the clear scientific advice is that surfaces not touched within 72 hours are prohibitively unlikely to harbour viable virus. This is true even for the worst surfaces, such as plastic, which may be able to remain damp for a number of days. Wood kills the virus faster, but dry, absorbent fibres (e.g. wool/cotton) or catylitic metals (e.g. copper) are likely to kill the virus quickest – though time frames are still measured in days or hours, so not as fast as soapy water.

We also know that coronovirus can be spread from tidal (i.e. ordinary) breathing, hence the new phrase for 2020 “social distancing”. There are some obvious scientific caveats, clearly wind direction can have its obvious effect, equally clearly, in very crowded places, even what might naively seem to be a proper social distance will not suppress the infection’s ability to spread in the way that operates in less crowded places (the inverse square law is probably a decent guide).

However, in a district which is 93% green belt there are plenty of places where, even before the “lockdown”, it is/was possible to remain a proper distance from other people, the footpaths in Ash are obviously the most isolated but it is more than possible to remain properly socially distant in every outdoor space in Ash and New Ash Green. (The one place this might be challenging is the village centre itself, but even then social distancing is still pretty trivial at most times of day.)

Locally, the vast majority of people are abiding by the proper distancing rules in outdoor spaces and, if you are doing that, then I suggest you can decide for yourself how seriously to take the idea of only leaving the house once per day for exercise. For example, I've been asked whether it is acceptable to spend time, alone, mowing the outfield of the cricket ground. Clearly this can be easily done without putting yourself or anybody else at risk, so the answer must be yes.

There are various coordinated volunteering efforts happening locally, and it is also fair to update you on some of what the District Council has been doing during this time.

Conditions mandating CCTV have often been included, in large part, because the police request it, and the applicant then, for an easy life, includes it in the operating schedule, which is then transposed into the licensing conditions, all dealt with under delegated powers, without a full licensing hearing.

I remain of the view that the best way to deal with this issue would be to prevent CCTV being included in licenses granted under delegated powers, thereby ensuring that such conditions will only attach to exceptional cases. However, the additional wording, insisting that a standard licence ought not to require CCTV will, hopefully, give pub landlords the confidence to reject police requests for CCTV, as well as, perhaps, reducing the likelihood of such a request being made.

To any landlords reading this I would point out that, if CCTV is included in your licence, then it can cause problems for you, for example I know of a local pub where details to do with the citing of their CCTV formed part of the substance of a police complaint against them, leading to an unwanted review of the licence. Equally police can get annoyed with landlords who are unable to access the CCTV at short notice, and the council, broadly, expects Landlords to comply with the CCTV code of conduct. On the other hand, you now know that no CCTV should be required at all as a condition of your licence, unless you ask for it to be included. So I humbly submit that you may now find life is easier if you reject requests for CCTV to be included as a condition of your licence.

The petitioner (Mr. John Stabolouian) made a strong case that the land, formerly the Farmers’ public house, opposite Sevenoaks’ railway station, was not being put to good use, that it is a prominent location, and could be used to provide housing (including affordable housing). Clearly it is sad to see land being wasted and the developer has now started to implement the existing planning permission (at what speed this is progressing is unclear, and it is worth noting that it was necessary for the developer to start some form of building work in order to preserve their existing permission). There was no suggestion that the land was a hotbed of antisocial behaviour.

The leader of the council responded with an alternative to compulsory purchase, which was to both approach the developer to determine detail about their plans (including timeframes) and also to press for CIL payment [link to be added] which is now due (and which can clearly then be used as a lever to encourage them to move towards getting some form of return for the site - either by voluntary disposal or by completion of their build). The main argument from the Leader, against compulsory purchase, was a pragmatic argument over the matter of financing a compulsory purchase.

However, in my view, this is not the kind of thing for which compulsory purchase exists. Compulsory purchase does need to exist, for critical infrastructure. For example, when a road is to be widened it might be necessary to buy some land to the side of that road. Perhaps this land is owned by 20 individuals and a negotiated price has led to 17 of them agreeing to sell, and maybe there are a few holdouts who are not willing to accept a reasonably generous price. Compulsory purchase can rightly be used to mop up this minority, to allow the infrastructure to be built (in such circumstances getting a negotiated price for the majority of the land will also help to determine a genuinely fair price for the Compulsory Purchase Order).

During the debate I said that the people of New Ash Green could certainly empathise with the petitioners (in respect of the upper units in New Ash Green Village Centre). And that clearly it was sad to see such a large plot of wasted land right opposite the largest railway station in the district.

However, in my view, it would not be a proper use of Governmental power to compulsorily purchase land merely because it was being wasted.

I thought it was important that someone made the liberal argument for voting against the compulsory purchase, rather than only the pragmatic one.

One interesting thing to come out of this is that the petitioners say that a number of housing associations would be interested in acquiring this land. Certainly a reasonably positive outcome might be a voluntary purchase of the site by a housing association, and I'm sure that a demand for the CIL payment (probably of the order £100,000) might increase the sence of urgency the owner might feel to agree to such a disposal, or indeed to build out their existing permission, or to find another productive use for this land.

Some will understandably be sad to see an increase in the Sevenoaks' portion of Council Tax. However, the upward pressures on costs (particularly homelessness provision, and new duties imposed by central government in an effort to reduce homelessness) are still considerable and the Council’s commitment to maintaining sound finances is, rightly, to be maintained. Overall the increase in the Sevenoaks' portion of the precept will add less than five pounds to the average (Band D) levy. This 2.3% increase is fractionally more than official inflation figures, which have generally been hovering around 2%. Bearing in mind that UK wage growth has been running at about 2% above the rate of inflation, and wages represent the Council's most significant cost, this relatively small increase in the Sevenoaks’ precept represents a significant degree of financial restraint. Needless to say, our commitment to the full weekly bin collection is, rightly, to be maintained (Update: to see how some collection days may change due to the coronovirus situation see here).

I would, as ever, be keen to hear from residents wishing to get in touch suggesting budgetary savings for future years.

A number of other issues were discussed, including a petition asking SDC to compulsorily purchase the Farmers’ site opposite Sevenoaks railway station, in Sevenoaks. There was also a welcome change in the licensing policy on CCTV in pubs.

Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) is charged in proportion to floor area when certain categories of new developments are built within the district, including new residential property. CIL is charged at a rate of £125 per square metre in most of the district while a minority of wards (including Ash and new Ash Green) see charging for residential developments at a lower level of £75/m2.

Of this £125/m2 or £75/m2 the local Parish/Town council retains £31.25/m2, to spend on local infrastructure improvements. 5% of the money collected goes into the District Council’s general funds, out of which the council also pays for the administration of the CIL. The rest of the money (something like two thirds of the total) is distributed by the CIL spending board, on which I sit as one of 15 members.

The CIL board meets twice per year, and is free to determine how it allocates money between the projects listed for it to consider. Any available funds which are not allocated are then rolled over to increase the funding available to the board six months later. In principle the board also controls the rules under which the officer-led sifting process is conducted, prior to the Board’s main meetings.

Most infrastructure is, of course, provided either by the County, that than the District Council (e.g. Roads, Buses, many schools) or another authority covering a similarly large area (e.g. Primary Care Trusts). Some County Councillors therefore see it as an anachronistic that Districts get to allocate this money. The justification for this is that Districts are the planning authorities and central Government wishes District and Parish residents to see a local benefit when they permit developments in their own areas. The main positive benefits which come about as a result of the provision of new housing accrue to the nation as a whole, in the incremental increase in the supply of housing in, say, “the south east of England”. Meanwhile, negative impacts of new developments (particularly pressure on infrastructure) normally crystallise quite locally.

CIL largely replaces Section 106 payments, which are normally earmarked to pay for particular identified improvements. On the other hand CIL funding is supposed to provide for contributions to improvements which are necessitated as a result of pressures driven by increased development as a whole.

The upshot is that, on 7th December 2019, the board met to allocate up to £2.03 million pounds, for local infrastructure projects.

Meeting of the CIL board – 7th December 2019

The considered requests, and the amounts allocated, were as follows:

The board was generally impressed with the proposal to extend Kemsing Surgery, but was concerned about how the funds allocated could be safeguarded to see long-term community benefit. Like most GPs surgeries in England, Kemsing Surgery is a privately owned surgery, treating NHS patients. The board was concerned to ensure that, when the current partners retire, most likely selling their surgery, the CIL money should be retained for public benefit (perhaps returning to the CIL board to reallocate, or being retained by the local NHS trust). I am hopeful that an improved proposal may be forthcoming in six months (possibly including some provision from Kemsing Parish Council). There clearly is a need for new GP provision and Kemsing (in common with Ash and New Ash Green) is one of those areas that has not yet seen a local project benefit from a CIL grant. For these reasons the board was keen to encourage a reapplication.

The Swanley Transport improvement proposals are a suit of measures, costing an estimated £5m in total, towards which a CIL contribution of £1m was sought. The board felt that other, smaller projects, ought to be given greater priority. This decision was, to the best of my recollection, unanimously agreed by the board. It is also noticeable that two Swanley Wards have, between them, received over a third of CIL money allocated since May 2018. This includes the 5% CIL contribution to the total cost of the reprovision of the White Oak Leisure centre, in Swanley. The board agreed that CIL should make a contribution to this, but there was some disagreement about whether this commitment should be made now, or only after cost certainty had been obtained. A majority decided to allocate the funding now.

The board was also impressed by proposals concerning the Improvement to Brabourne Lakes and for Parking in Westerham, the latter of which were supported by very convincing proposals from the Town Council (there was also a last minute reduction in the amount of funding requested, together with a boost in contribution from the Town, which the Town Council judged prudent in order to maximise their chance of success at the CIL board. A number of Cllrs were keen to ensure that the improved parking would not lead to the introduction of parking fees, although it was not possible to attach specific conditions relating to this.

Finally, the board also accepted the application from Go-Taxi Hire Ltd. And Go-Coach Ltd. for the purchase of small buses to run within the district (though, for regulatory purposes, they would be large taxis). The idea of smaller busses is certainly a good one, although I was concerned that these busses were going to somewhat excluded non-smartphone users and the owner also seemed to be promising the installation of surveillance cameras within the vehicles, while explicitly stating that there was no particularly pressing need for them.

The decision to award Go-Coach this funding was, therefore, the only decision on which I voted in the minority, though the idea clearly does have its strengths, and I wish the provider well in establishing this service now that his application has been successful.

The official minute of the meeting can be found here.

At her initial selection meeting, and in conversations before and after this, she has come across as someone of high intelligence and integrity, and someone who listens well. She knows how the machinery of government works and she is used to handling national media. In short, she has the skills to hit the ground running as a highly effective MP for the whole constituency.

If her Labour opponent wins, he will seek to usher in a Jeremy Corbyn government, potentially propped up by minor parties including the Scottish Nationalists. One of Corbyn’s first acts would be to seek to negotiate a deal to set against “Remain” in a second referendum.

It is probably fair to say that at least 80% of Corbyn’s prospective negotiating team (and 100% of the EU negotiators) would prefer Britain remaining in the EU to any realistic Leave option. It is therefore obvious that such people will have every incentive to negotiate as unattractive a “deal” as possible.

Similarly, Labour’s economic policies would risk the very public services which they claim to wish to safeguard, including our NHS, by endangering the economic growth that is required to sustain them.

By contrast, Laura is committed to delivering Boris’ Brexit deal by 31st January, to implement the democratic decision of the British People, and to start bringing the country together again. She is also committed to the economically balanced approach set out in the manifesto.

Laura on an old Routemaster, a bus built for a free people, living in solidarity with one another.

“Mr Chairman,

“There are a number of positive measures to welcome in what the Leader has committed to today. Some of these will be of particular interest to residents in Ash and New Ash Green. This beautiful ward is twice named for our most abundant species of Kentish Tree, sadly now vulnerable to the fungal infection, Ash dieback, so the council’s commitment to tree planting therefore also presents an opportunity to increase species diversity across the district, including in the most rural parts of my own ward. The village of New Ash Green itself has already been planted with, probably, the largest diversity of tree species in the district. This is something of which we are very proud and so I am glad to see the district council following where my own village had led. May I encourage the leader to see his welcome ideas for tree planting, as presented today, as just the start of a mission to simultaneously sequester carbon and build resilience to extreme weather events, through a wider tree planting strategy.

“In many ways there are particular challenges associated with public transport within New Ash Green (indeed with all forms of transport for that matter). The leader’s idea to establish transport hubs for short journeys could give a significant local benefit to people in my ward if it helped people with the two to three-mile journey between the centre of New Ash Green, and Longfield rail station. This might involve working with Dartford Council, but I know that Sevenoaks always shows extensive commitment to working with neighbouring authorities, both at the officer and political levels. So, I look forward to the local benefits that the proposal of transport hubs could eventually bring to my residents.

“I would also like to welcome the various commitments we see in this document, to assist with the roll out of electric cars. My predecessor, Cameron Clark, remains a member of the New Ash Green Village Association and he and his family have also been looking into what the Village Association can do to provide charging infrastructure within the village. I am sure that members who worked with Cameron and Carol before him, will not be surprised that the Clark family’s commitment to public service in general, and to sustainable rural living in particular, continues even now that both Cameron and Carol have retired from this chamber. I encourage the Council to work with the Village Association and others, if and when a local proposal for fast charging infrastructure is forthcoming.”

I went on to particularly welcome the commitment to:

• Providing advice to residents to improve energy efficiency, and, in particular I suggested that we should be advising people about the Energy Company Obligation [which can help to provide people with home insulation] and the Renewable Heat incentive, which I am led to believe can assist with the cost of providing Heat pumps. I suggested that we should particularly focus this advice at householders who are not connected to the gas grid. [This was also in response to points of debate from other members, rightly pointing out that we need policies to reduce the carbon footprint of existing housing stock – in addition to the policies with respect to new properties, which were welcomed on a bi-partisan basis]
• Undertaking an audit of the council’s direct emissions, so that we will be able to know how much CO2 is emitted as a result of any particular service, in much the same way as we are currently able to know the financial cost of each service we provide.

I also said that Climate change is too important an issue to declare a “Climate emergency”. I explained that, to me, an emergency, is something short term like a fire, something that needs to be dealt with but that, after an emergency, we rightly ‘move on’ from the incident, in a way that will not be possible with the climate crisis. I gave my view that a perpetual ‘emergency’ mentality would be a threat to liberty [indeed, in many countries, a “state of emergency” is a specific technical term, meaning a ‘temporary’ suspension of civil liberties, normally in response to an unforeseen event, such as a flood, earthquake, pestilence, or attack].

Climate change cannot be dealt with simply by a short-term effort in the way that the term “emergency” implies. Instead, it is a generational challenge where Britain (and, by extension, Sevenoaks’ District Council) has a moral obligation to reduce our emissions, and to lead others in doing so, while preparing for the changes that we will inevitably have to adapt to.

However, it is important that an online presence does not become a major focus of my role on the council, so I do not intend to write about every committee meeting or event I attend. Also, much of the work of a Councillor is done outside formal political structures, for example, by speaking informally to officers or to residents, fellow Councillors, local groups, housing associations or, occasionally, national politicians. I do not intend this website to be a full record of those matters either.

I will, however, generally write something here when I make a speech at full council.