Very successful Action Day in Cardiff on Saturday May 19^th. TPA supporters gathered in Queen Street opposite Cardiff Castle and helped voice the concerns of local shopkeepers by raising a petition against the 5p plastic bag tax introduced by the Welsh Assembly six months ago. Lee Canning, Welsh grassroots co-ordinator spoke to camera teams from both ITV and the BBC, explaining how the bag tax is causing problems for small businessmen and traders.

‘No-one wants to see plastic bags littering the streets of Wales,’ Lee told ITV, ‘but this is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. It adds an unacceptable burden on small businesses that are forced to comply with the regulation or risk a hefty fine. The Welsh Government should be encouraging families to reduce their reliance on bags, not punishing them when they don’t.’

‘This is not a tax,’ hit back a Welsh Government spokesman.’No money from the charge will come to the Welsh Government but will instead be passed on to good causes by retailers. The TaxPayers’ Alliance are a Tory front organisation. They speak for no one but themselves.’

But Cardiff traders have a different story to tell. ‘It can cause real problems with security,’ said the manager of a city centre sports shop. ‘One time a customer bought a ball and because he didn’t want it in a bag, he threw it to a friend and one of our assistants thought he was stealing it! Generally, we like out customers to walk around town with our products in our bags—it’s good advertising—this bag tax is nonsense.’ A retailer from Castle Arcade hated the extra level of bureaucracy it added. ‘I can’t put the charge through the till,’ he says,’ because I’ll have to pay tax on it. At the end of the day it’s another job to do, it’s fiddly and tiresome—it’s a pain in the neck.’ Many independent shopkeepers are paying the tax themselves rather that bother customers with it.

On top of that tourists are nonplussed by it, frequently wanting to see their souvenirs wrapped in several bags and not understanding why they have to pay for it. ‘It’s going to turn tourists off,’ says Lee. An Australian tourist told him he’d rather carry an uncovered bottle of wine around Cardiff because he thought it was ridiculous to pay for a bag for it.

Not all supermarkets support the bag tax either. The environmentally friendly Co-operative Group has argued against it in the past, citing evidence that paper bags are more of a pollutant and environmental concern than plastic bags. For a Green defence of the plastic bag see this story, which cites the British government’s environment agency report of 2006 that found that HDPE (high-density polyethylene, the typical lightweight plastic bags) are superior to paper because they require less energy and far less water to make and take up less space in landfill.

On our Action Day, 150 signatures were gathered in just one hour and we could have gone on to raise many more objections to this ill thought out tax.

MPs in the South-West have joined the growing wave of anger against the government’s proposed tax on static caravans. Cornish MPs Dan Rogerson and Andrew George have both signed a parliamentary petition against the VAT hike, seeing it as a tax on holiday park caravans—a key part of the West Country’s tourist industry.

So far, the cross-party petition has been signed by 49 MPs, many of them coming from the north of England where the tax increase will effect the manufacturing of caravans, but now MPs see a direct impact on tourism too. ‘It’s clear that the industry is very concerned about the impact this change will have on jobs,’ says Rogerson, North Cornwall’s MP.

West Country holiday park owners claim that the application of VAT will add thousands of pounds to the cost of staying in caravans, leading to a drop in sales, vacant pitches and less tourism. The protesting MPs estimate that caravan owners contribute up to £334 million to the local economy in rural and coastal areas.

‘Static holiday caravan sites are an ideal solution to managing the demand for a permanent location for those regular visitors who wish to have a stake in our area without denying a local family a home,’ argues Andrew George, St Ives’s MP. ‘The last Conservative Government introduced a very significant tax rebate for second home owners which had the opposite effect—a 50 per cent council tax reduction which cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds and which helped better-off people with their second homes when there were thousands of local families who couldn’t afford their first. The Government should be doing the opposite to what it is proposing to do with static holiday caravans.’

The period of consultation on these tax change and others, including the Pasty tax, ends on Friday. High street baker Greggs is still battling against this ‘unworkable’ VAT rise, saying it will have a disproportionate impact on the specialist bakery sector, ‘resulting in further unemployment, high street closures and reduced investment’. Let’s hope the government sees sense and listens to the protests against these tax rises.

After weeks of heavy rain, the sun shone in Nottingham at the weekend where TPA activists were collecting more signatures for our petition calling on the city council to publish online spending above £500. Perhaps it was an omen, as the disinfectant of light certainly needs to shine through the corridors of power. Recently, Jeannie Packer, a former Lord Mayor resigned from the ruling group. This is part of what she had to say:

I believe the council is poorer for the way it is governed. More needs to be done to make the council more democratic and accountable. The council lacks transparency and proper scrutiny. I find Nottingham City Council to be a secretive council…

After the dismal turnout at the recent local elections, it is clear people feel disengaged from the political process. It is vital we know more about how our money is spent. It is vital the army of armchair auditors are allowed to do their job.

The political leadership in Nottingham says it cannot afford to publish spending online, despite every other council in England managing to do so. Despite those assertions, it can still find money to support a ‘Warming up for Wimbledon’ campaign. They even erected temporary tennis courts in Old Market Square.

It is all about priorities. As Cllr Packer said, Nottingham City Council lacks transparency and proper scrutiny. This suits the political leadership as they can spend our money anyway they like and more or less get away with it. If they have nothing to hide, they should publish spending and give the rest of us the opportunity to either agree or disagree with them.

Southampton City Council, in common with many others around the country, changed political colours last week. Shortly after the empty ballot boxes were locked away, a report in the Southern Daily Echo entitled ‘What now for the red city?’ contained a quote from Cllr Richard Williams, the new leader of the council:

I want to empower all the portfolio holders to work in their area- I want it to be decentralised. That team could include more Cabinet members drawing the additional £11,000 allowance than the previous six Conservatives. There could be a different-sized Cabinet.

With all the problems Southampton faces, it seems rather strange that one of  Cllr Williams’ first announcements after becoming council leader was to propose more full-time politicians! This hardly comes top of the list for hard pressed council taxpayers in the city. To the best of my knowledge, none of the previous cabinet members went on the record saying they were so overworked they felt they needed additional colleagues in the cabinet to ease the load. If the previous administration coped with six cabinet members, why can’t the new one?

Hopefully this idea will – like so many announcements from politicians – never come to fruition. Cllr Williams should be concentrating on making further efficiency savings which will help protect front-line services and ensure council tax is not increased next year. He should not be proposing ideas which may result in higher bills.

Cornwall Council’s recycling collection incompetence, reported recently here, continues to cause distress to local taxpayers. Not only are residents being baffled by a complex array of colour coded bags and boxes, which change from area to area, but the contracted refuse collectors are not even removing the recycled rubbish on time—some left uncollected for over a month.

The situation has reached such a state that South East Cornwall’s MP has had to intervene after photographs in the local newspaper showed the streets of the pretty fishing port of Looe strewn with garbage.Normally steering clear of council business, Sheryll Murray MP has been forced to get involved, encouraging local people to attend a meeting on the subject on May 12^th at Looe Community Academy. ‘It is not only the obvious health concerns,’ she said, ‘but also the impact it may have on the tourism sector, which is such a large employer in my constituency.’

Picking up on the bad publicity created by the council’s confusing array of colour coded recycling, an opposition spokesman said: ‘It seems everyone in Cornwall recognises the chaos caused by the council’s incompetence over the new waste and recycling contract.’ But there is worse. Not only are locals baffled, but their bins are not being emptied on time. ‘The last straw,’ says an angry councillor, ‘was when residents of Bonson Close, a sheltered accommodation complex, contacted me because they had not had their recycling collected for over four weeks, despite it being reported several times. This is disgraceful; the elderly should not be subjected to this sort of stress.’

Calls to help centres have gone unanswered and collections missed. Critics are amazed the situation hasn’t been dealt with more urgently as Sheryll Murray MP’s office manager just happens to be the wife of the councillor in charge of waste management! Surely, they could have had a few quiet words about it?

‘I have been appalled by the sheer scale of the failure of the contract and the lack of ability on the part of the council to remedy the situation,’ says another local councillor. ‘I fear the end result will be that people will decide recycling is just too much hassle—especially those with no place to store the box and bags—and we shall in fact send even more to landfill.’

Please keep us informed about the latest costly twists in Cornwall Council’s torturous recycling contract.

It is six months since the Welsh Assembly introduced a 5p tax on each plastic bag given to customers in shops—and not everyone is happy with it. Plus, there are plans afoot to expand it to the whole of the UK. The TPA is organising a protest petition against the bag tax in central Cardiff on Saturday May 19^th at 11.30am. Please let us know if you can come along and support us.

In the face of concerns from the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) and other retail business groups, the Welsh Assembly had to backtrack on part of its implementation, saying that shops with less than 10 members of staff would not have to keep records of the plastic bag charge. ‘The complexity, as well as the added time and cost, in administering this would add further pressure on small businesses,’ said the FSB’s Welsh representative. But their customers still have to pay the tax.

Bigger stores are also having to waste money and time recording the charges and accounting for how the proceeds of the bag tax are spent—the money collected can be donated to a charity of their choice. Businesses can be fined £5,000 if they do not comply with the levy.

Frequently, small businesses are paying the bag tax themselves rather than pass it on to their customers. Bob Rice, owner of Castle Welsh Crafts in the heart of Cardiff, a favourite destination for tourists from around the world, says it is ‘awkward’ and ‘an irritant’ when he has to ask customers to pay for their bags, especially after they may have spent £100 or more. So, he digs into his own pocket to pay it. ‘I don’t want tourists and visitors going away with any negative feeling about Wales,’ he says. ‘I know just how important packaging is in some cultures.’ His bags are biodegradable and made from recycled materials. Frequently, he says, his bags are ‘a little reminder of the country they visited which is totally different to a supermarket plastic bag.’

The problem for many retailers is that customers don’t always travel with shopping bags to hand. ‘Some members have reported specific problems,’ said Iestyn Davies of the FSB, ‘such as a noticeable decrease in impulse buying, which many retailers rely on as a key source of revenue.’ Why should shoppers be penalised for not carrying bags with them all the time—and how are they then supposed to carry their goods?

The environmental impact has also not been fully thought out as shoppers use heavier bags made out of non-recyclable materials, such as plastic coated fabric, to pick up their regular shopping. These bags will have a bigger environmental impact when they are consigned to landfill sites.

Unsurprisingly, six months after the tax was introduced, the use of plastic bags has plummeted in Wales by 90 per cent. People don’t like paying taxes! But this doesn’t give the full story of customer inconvenience, lost sales and costly extra bureaucracy. Champions of the bag tax—such as the Daily Mail—now want it introduced across the UK. A Europe-wide bag tax is also being considered by the EU.

Please let us know if you can come along and support us on our day of action against the bag tax in central Cardiff on Saturday May 19^th at 11.30am (exact location details to come).

TPA supporters braved the wind and rain in Grantham on Saturday to campaign for lower fuel taxes. We were protesting against George Osborne’s proposed 3p per litre increase in Fuel Duty, scheduled for August, and collected signatures on our petition calling on him scrap those plans and commit to further reductions.

Despite the rain, local people stopped and signed the petition, angry the Government is still willing to heap more pain on motorists. For those living in rural areas in particular, filling up their cars with petrol or diesel is not a luxury, it is a necessity. It is the only way they can get to work, go to the shops and lead normal family life. Motoring taxes hit those in South Kesteven, which covers the Grantham area, harder than they do in any other part of Lincolnshire. Residents there pay over £440 per year in excessive motoring taxes. Many said to us they have to think before they make a journey and ask themselves if they can afford it. Excessively high motoring taxes are having a detrimental impact on the way they lead their lives.

We will be back in Lincolnshire ahead of August, and in other parts of the country too. If you want to help us send a message to the Chancellor that enough is enough, please get in touch with me.

More council false economies put young people at risk in Exeter. Devon County Council (DCC) wants to turn off city lights to cut carbon emissions and save £280,000—but it’s going to cost them £1.7 million to implement. If that’s not bad enough, by turning off inner city lights, they’re endangering Exeter’s student population.

DCC has passed plans to switch off city lights just after midnight, between 12.30am and 5.30am. That’s just the time when many young people, including students, are heading back home after a night out. ‘The money being saved is at extreme detriment to safety,’ says a University of Exeter Students’ Guild spokesperson. ‘The way students move across the city late at night fit directly between the proposed hours. It only takes one person to walk down one street and for it to be dark and for something to happen. I think that is enough to keep a light on.’

A council representative says the £1.7 million answer is to install a web-based system of sensors that can be used to monitor city footfall and enable the 12,000 streetlights to be turned on and off accordingly. Hmmm, that sounds like an overly complicated and expensive solution to a problem caused by the council in the first place. Just keep the lights on!

Street lighting is one of the fundamental public services we pay council tax for. It seems our current age of austerity is constantly being used by local government as an excuse to cut back on the services we want, in order to pay for a bloated public sector we don’t want.

If the Exeter experiment works, the costly streetlight monitoring system will be installed across the county. In the meantime, the streets of Devon will go dark after midnight with a consequent impact on late night businesses and the safety of local residents.

Richmond Borough Council in south-west London has spent more than £100,000 of taxpayers’ money employing accounting firm Price Waterhouse Cooper (PWC) — to help it work out strategies for saving money.

Not all councillors supported the decision. ‘I had absolute confidence in our own officers to come up with ideas,’ said Councillor Geoffrey Samuel. ‘But they went straight for outside consultants.’ Councillor Stephen Knight commented, ‘Arguably the money might have been better spent providing better services.’ Well… yes.

The £100,000-plus figure was cited in response to a Freedom of Information request. As part of an efficiency review, PWC carried out an audit of the council’s finances to identify duplicate payments. It found so many duplications that £100,000 could be saved, offsetting PwC’s £95,000 fee. However, a look at the minutes of council meetings during 2010 and 2011 suggests the council spent more on PWC fees.

The accounting firm also reviewed ways of raising more council income—for a fee of £45,000 rising to a possible £190,000. And for a further £145,000 it is helping council officers to improve procurement and contract management.

No doubt PWC’s analyses and recommendations are first-rate (although at one point council minutes state: ‘the cost of changes suggested by Price Waterhouse Cooper, compared to the savings, meant that their recommendations were not worth implementing. The new assessment [by yet more consultants] would assess the entire working structure of the Council.’) PWC has after all provided similar help for other councils.

But surely, rather than council after council paying for expensive separate consultants, couldn’t local government as a whole codify best practice in areas like procurement and contract management, based on the findings of PWC and others, and make it available for adoption by councils nationwide?

In the last few weeks I have updated you on the campaign against the introduction of VAT on static caravans. There has been times when I thought I was banging a solitary drum, as other than the local media, this issue seems to have taken a back seat to other measures in the Budget, such as the Granny Tax and the Pasty Tax. MPs for Hull and East Yorkshire though have been working hard to ensure this issue gets a national audience, and eventually this has worked.

As I have previously said, 95 per cent of static caravans manufactured in the UK are built in Hull and East Yorkshire. The decision from George Osborne to slap 20 per cent VAT on the cost of a static caravan will have a profound effect on jobs in the caravan industry. Rather than end a tax anomaly, the Chancellor has decided to widen the VAT net. This decision could result in thousands of jobs losses, and end up costing more than it brings in extra revenue.

In a vote in the House of Commons on Wednesday, all the local MPs (with the exception of Greg Knight, the Conservative MP for East Yorkshire) voted against this measure, however  the government still won the vote with a narrow majority of 25. Graham Stuart, the MP for Beverley and Holderness, has secured another debate in the House of Commons  next week in an attempt to change the government’s mind. The consultation period has also been extended by two weeks.

Tax simplification should mean just that: taxes are transparent and easy to understand. It should not be used as an excuse to raise taxes, which is exactly what George Osborne is doing. Jobs are scarce in Hull and the East Riding, and the Treasury admits its decision will have a dramatic impact on the caravan industry. At a time when we all are trying to kick start the economy, the last thing we need is the Government jumping in with two feet and derailing the economic prosperity of Hull and East Yorkshire; an area which is already suffering high unemployment.

We urge the Chancellor to think again, and give our full support to the MPs who voted against this measure on Wednesday.

Why is Bath & North East Somerset Council persisting with its plans to introduce 20mph speed limits across Bath? They waste taxpayers’ money, are environmentally unfriendly and are either legally unenforceable or ineffective. 20mph zones are only enforceable if they come with expensive (and unpopular) traffic calming measures, such as humps and road narrowing; the idea being they are self-enforceable. 20mph speed limits are only enforceable if they are accompanied by frequent repeater signs; miss one out and that invalidates the whole area.

The Transport Research Laboratory concluded that signed 20mph speed limits only reduce traffic speeds by about one mph and deliver no significant reduction in accidents. In contrast, 20mph zones achieve average speed reductions of 10mph with more dramatic accident reductions.

Either way, the police are generally very uninterested in enforcing 20 mph speed limits. In Oxford, last year, the Chief Inspector of roads policing rejected a council call to enforce their 20 mph speed limits, saying ‘Simply putting a different number at the end of a road and relying on enforcement alone to achieve compliance is not the answer.’

In Lancashire, the worst the County Council can come up with for those who persistently ignore the limits is to ‘deploy Speed Indicator Devices (SpIDs), commonly known as Smiley Face Speed Signs in order to positively reinforce driving at 20 mph in appropriate locations.’

The Association of British Drivers is more blunt about the political intentions behind these 20mph limits: ‘Local authorities must not be allowed the power to set 20 mph limits wherever they like, as many of them will certainly abuse this power by introducing inappropriate 20 mph zones as part of their “traffic restraint” measures to make car use unattractive compared with other modes of transport. There has already been significant abuse of 20 mph zones… by anti-car local authorities, and this has been shown to be detrimental to road safety.’

So what is it to be B&NES: expensive and unpopular but effective 20 mph zones, or ineffective 20 mph speed limits? Perhaps that distinction could be put clearly before Bath residents in the forthcoming wave of costly council consultations.

Some council taxpayers in the East Riding of Yorkshire are being forced to take part in a fortnightly rubbish collection trial. The council says this is to encourage recycling and it is what residents want, but when you delve deeper into the subject, all is not what the council wants us to believe.

According to the East Riding of Yorkshire Council (ERYC) residents have requested a fortnightly collection for their blue recycling bins. Currently, they are emptied once a month. To accommodate those requests, the council proposes to introduce fortnightly collections of non-recyclable waste. 

Whenever  there is a controversial decision to be defended, elected councillors in ERYC seem to disappear and let officers deal with the media.  This issue is no exception. The council fielded the Head of Streetscene Services, John Skidmore, who said:

“We’ve had hundreds of requests from residents asking for a fortnightly blue bin collection, so this trial follows feedback. The council has been encouraging people to recycle more material through bigger blue bins to cut the amount of waste going to landfill. The fact residents want a fortnightly blue bin collection shows they are enthusiastic about recycling. It is fantastic news.”

Catching his breath, he went on to say:

We have picked a variety of areas across the East Riding because residents throughout the county have wanted more blue bin collections. Less waste will mean less landfill tax, though this is about offering a quality service.”

Despite the spin, I have not watched, listened to, or read a report that has said residents have requested fortnightly non-recyclable rubbish collections. In neighbouring Hull, there is still a weekly bin collection, and recyclable waste is collected every two weeks. This has been happening for a couple of years.  A residents’ survey was conducted, and although people were happy their blue bins were collected more frequently, there was not an appetite to reduce the service in other areas.

ERYC is trying to present itself as a listening council, which is laughable based on previous form, however it is playing fast and loose with the facts. If other councils can collect recyclable waste every two weeks and still empty normal rubbish bins every week, why can’t ERYC?

Once again we see a basic service being eroded by a council that awards large discretionary payments to senior officers’ pension pots, has just increased car parking charges, and wants to introduce parking charges in some of the smaller towns and villages. Many residents in the East Riding don’t feel they get value for money from the council. With this decision, more will be thinking the same.