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Rochford District Council
Rochford District Council
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Interview with Paul Warren, Chief Executive of the RDC PART 2
Paul: Of course we also provide the quarterly newspaper, Rochford District Matters and that goes to all households. From the feedback we get, people tend to find that a useful information tool. We have been working on it over a period of time and we have never regarded it as an end state; we’ve never been entirely happy with it and we have continued to work on it and try and see from the feedback what interests people. I think part of the problem that we’ve got on the web-site is that we’ve got hundreds of pages there and yet when we do some analysis only 70 odd pages are actually the ones that people regularly go to, but there is a wealth of information there. I suppose it is getting the right mix and reconciling the way we provided the information and whether the information is information the public want. Very often people will have different interests and be involved in different things and to some extent it will be where they are in their family life cycle that counts. The young mums or young and dads, or whoever, required different information from other groups,and their requirements are likely to be totally different from someone who is about to retire or in the retirement. It is about how you try and meet these requirements.
The Example of Recycling
RL: It almost seems like a no-win situation.
Paul: Well, if we look at the way we approach recycling, that is a good example of what we try and do and where we succeed and perhaps don’t succeed, and how we are always working on trying to improve things. We had a waste collection service with the contract coming to an end and we wanted to provide more emphasis on kerb-side recycling and improve our recycling rates. At the time we were the lowest in Essex, round about 19 per cent. We are now one of the best in the country, one of the top three. We went through a period that didn’t start the day before the new contract but three years out, and we started by looking at best practice, talking to our residents about the do’s and don’ts, what they liked or didn’t like, what they found useful, what they regarded as an inconvenience, and trying to work on the terminology and communications.
Working on all of that, we then constructed a contract, and awarded a contract, and through that process we now have a kerb side recycling contract where we have gone from 19 per cent to over 65 per cent.
We are now having to work on including the flats and caravan sites as part of that but, for example, each flat complex is different so we are having to tailor the solutions to different complexes and that involves quite a lot of staff in dealing with individuals and dealing with the clusters of individuals, working around “This is what we would like you to do”. In some cases people embrace it and in some cases people are cynical and in some cases people will say “We’ve always done it this way, why do we need to change?” We have to explain that if we don’t change it is going to cost you a lot more and we can’t afford this service to escalate up, and in the long term it is better for everyone, and that is quite an intensive process which is still going on.
We are still seeing our recycling rate improve because we’ve had issues with some cases of individuals putting the wrong things in the wrong things BINS, and I think it is quite difficult for people to understand the impact of this. If you put the wrong things in the wrong bin and that goes in the lorry, it is not just their bin that is contaminated, it is the whole lorry, so we then can’t recycle that lorry. The lorry then has to go to the land fill which is a cost and at one stage that was costing us £80,000 a year. We now have the contamination level down to below five per cent, but it is a continuous process of trying to explain to people. We now go into schools and do the events with particular themes, and do out of school activities in holiday times with the theme of recycling so that we can increase awareness that way, and to family events, working on a number of levels.
Part of my job and the job of the members is to set the policy, the strategic framework, then my job is to advise the members and to help them through the organisation and deliver that so that the messages are as consistent as we can make them.
Policy & Spending
Rochford Life: So in its simplest terms, you input into the policy making process and then you actually administer their policy?
Paul: Basically I am what is termed, the head of paid services. Organisationally I am responsible for the running of the organisation that is the Council. I work closely with the members so that I am clear about what they would like to see and where budget is going to come from. With that, accepting various parameters that come with that, there is only a finite amount of money throughout the year and the budget process starts earlier each year when we say to members, “Look, we are going to have this amount of money to spend, this is what we are doing, and this is how much it will cost. On this basis, you’ve either got no more money to spend, or you’ve got less money to spend, or you’ve got a bit more money to spend. What do you want to do? Given that these are your priorities, are these areas that you want to retain, or in these areas do you want to spend a bit more money and do a bit more?” These are the areas we dialogue in, in the budget process, and we then agree the Council budget in January, where our priority areas are, and then we set the Council tax on that basis.
RL: Not wanting to identify any political party by name, over the years that you have been here is there a measure of to and fro as parties change?
Paul: I think each year each group of politicians that come in, want to look at what the Council is doing and react to the environment that they find themselves in, so there will be changes in emphasis over time. Some is prompted from within the organisation. For example, if a contract is coming to an end, it means that over a period of time members, whether they like it or not, given that the contract is coming to an end, must ask how they are going to go ahead in the area, so sometimes it comes from within. Alternatively there may be new government directives, or new legislation coming out, where we have to say to members, “Look, this is coming out, how do you want to deal with this, are there things you want to look at?” So there will be changes in emphasis over a period of time. It could be that in some areas, for example, you could see, in the national economic climate, a rise in the number of benefit applicants and benefit claimants, which therefore makes members look at that particular service and think about whether we have the right level of resourcing in there for the demand. It comes in a variety of guises.
Housing in Rochford District
RL: Housing has been a matter of contention recently. How would you reply to those who say that Rochford District is having more than its fair share of new housing?
Paul: I think that wherever I have worked as a planner, the feeling of the residents has always been there is too much housing so I don’t think it is peculiar to Rochford. What I would say is, from where I sit, I also get letters coming into the organisation indicating a need for new accommodation, so we do have a dilemma between how we satisfy the demand that does exist and is generated within the community and how, on the other hand, we satisfy the feeling that we’ve already got enough housing. Another question is where do you put that housing? It has to go somewhere. What is happening over time is that household formation is changing. People split up, or people in Rochford live longer. If you live in Rochford, on average people live two years longer. Of course children are still being born, are growing up and in due course will want somewhere to live and we’ll need housing to satisfy the demand. I think if you consider the build rates that we’ve come up with in the local planning process – we are talking about less than 200 units a year – when you look in the District context, isn’t much at all. I would probably say that whenever people say there is too much housing, I would have to reply that, given the demand out there, you could well make the case for far more housing each year than we are going to have to provide.
RL: There seem no easy answers
Paul: No, in planning terms I see one thing but as a human being do I want a supermarket next door to me? No! But at the same time, do I use supermarkets, absolutely! Therefore I need it within proximity but hope it is never next door to me and that’s a dilemma we all always have. I remember public meetings around mobile phones, people not wanting mobile phone masts next to them but if you go into a room and ask, have you got a mobile phone, the answer is, absolutely!
There have always got to be choices but it does tend to come, at District level, down to the planning process, because planning will always give you, or will always be, a response to the needs of the community in development terms, and will always present a variety of choices and, of course, different individuals will be impacted in different ways. If you talk to an individual in general terms the answer would probably be positive, but if you talk to the individual in specific terms, about something which is really next door to them, it would be a negative.
If you actually take a plan of Rochford and take out the areas subject to flooding, and then you take out the areas of special interest, you don’t have much land left to make your choices on. You’ll find from quite a surprisingly big figure, you end up with a pretty small one. Once you have done that you have to ask where is the housing going to be built? We haven’t got a lot of used land; we can only look at green field sites.
The Road Network
RL: The other area of contention that seems to arise is in respect of the infrastructure, the road network. Do you have any input to that?
Paul: The county are the highway authority so therefore our input – before we do any what I call specially strategic proposals, where we put the housing or where we put the development – involves us working closely with the County and consulting with the County. So, to some extent, working with them we’ve got a number of infrastructure needs factored in to what comes forward. That said, traditionally if you look across the UK, the approach across the UK has been a development-led approach rather than an infrastructure-led approach. If you go to the Continent you will see roads and sewers laid out with no development but it is planned, whereas here the argument tends to be until you actually have the development you cannot get the resource. I think most people would like it to be, let’s get the resource first and then we’ll have the development, but the argument from of the central government and other funders is until you actually have delivered they won’t give you the money, and I think traditionally that has been a problem for decades in this country
RL: Do you have a say in that or do you just have to respond to it?
Paul: We are part of the bidding process but, that said, we are among a number of local authorities who are bidding. I have been to a number of talks recently, and I think we’ve done some work around Essex, where estimating the infra structure deficit is found to be in the region of six billion pounds. Now where is that money going to be found? Also, whether or not that infrastructure is provided, there are still going to be demands.
RL: Well, Paul, I appreciate you are very busy and we should stop. I suspect any new councillors would do well to take on board your comments. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing with us something more of the life and activity of the Council.
Paul: Of course we also provide the quarterly newspaper, Rochford District Matters and that goes to all households. From the feedback we get, people tend to find that a useful information tool. We have been working on it over a period of time and we have never regarded it as an end state; we’ve never been entirely happy with it and we have continued to work on it and try and see from the feedback what interests people. I think part of the problem that we’ve got on the web-
The Example of Recycling
RL: It almost seems like a no-
We are now having to work on including the flats and caravan sites as part of that but, for example, each flat complex is different so we are having to tailor the solutions to different complexes and that involves quite a lot of staff in dealing with individuals and dealing with the clusters of individuals, working around “This is what we would like you to do”. In some cases people embrace it and in some cases people are cynical and in some cases people will say “We’ve always done it this way, why do we need to change?” We have to explain that if we don’t change it is going to cost you a lot more and we can’t afford this service to escalate up, and in the long term it is better for everyone, and that is quite an intensive process which is still going on.
We are still seeing our recycling rate improve because we’ve had issues with some cases of individuals putting the wrong things in the wrong things BINS, and I think it is quite difficult for people to understand the impact of this. If you put the wrong things in the wrong bin and that goes in the lorry, it is not just their bin that is contaminated, it is the whole lorry, so we then can’t recycle that lorry. The lorry then has to go to the land fill which is a cost and at one stage that was costing us £80,000 a year. We now have the contamination level down to below five per cent, but it is a continuous process of trying to explain to people. We now go into schools and do the events with particular themes, and do out of school activities in holiday times with the theme of recycling so that we can increase awareness that way, and to family events, working on a number of levels.
Part of my job and the job of the members is to set the policy, the strategic framework, then my job is to advise the members and to help them through the organisation and deliver that so that the messages are as consistent as we can make them.
Policy & Spending
Rochford Life: So in its simplest terms, you input into the policy making process and then you actually administer their policy?
Paul: Basically I am what is termed, the head of paid services. Organisationally I am responsible for the running of the organisation that is the Council. I work closely with the members so that I am clear about what they would like to see and where budget is going to come from. With that, accepting various parameters that come with that, there is only a finite amount of money throughout the year and the budget process starts earlier each year when we say to members, “Look, we are going to have this amount of money to spend, this is what we are doing, and this is how much it will cost. On this basis, you’ve either got no more money to spend, or you’ve got less money to spend, or you’ve got a bit more money to spend. What do you want to do? Given that these are your priorities, are these areas that you want to retain, or in these areas do you want to spend a bit more money and do a bit more?” These are the areas we dialogue in, in the budget process, and we then agree the Council budget in January, where our priority areas are, and then we set the Council tax on that basis.
RL: Not wanting to identify any political party by name, over the years that you have been here is there a measure of to and fro as parties change?
Paul: I think each year each group of politicians that come in, want to look at what the Council is doing and react to the environment that they find themselves in, so there will be changes in emphasis over time. Some is prompted from within the organisation. For example, if a contract is coming to an end, it means that over a period of time members, whether they like it or not, given that the contract is coming to an end, must ask how they are going to go ahead in the area, so sometimes it comes from within. Alternatively there may be new government directives, or new legislation coming out, where we have to say to members, “Look, this is coming out, how do you want to deal with this, are there things you want to look at?” So there will be changes in emphasis over a period of time. It could be that in some areas, for example, you could see, in the national economic climate, a rise in the number of benefit applicants and benefit claimants, which therefore makes members look at that particular service and think about whether we have the right level of resourcing in there for the demand. It comes in a variety of guises.
Housing in Rochford District
RL: Housing has been a matter of contention recently. How would you reply to those who say that Rochford District is having more than its fair share of new housing?
Paul: I think that wherever I have worked as a planner, the feeling of the residents has always been there is too much housing so I don’t think it is peculiar to Rochford. What I would say is, from where I sit, I also get letters coming into the organisation indicating a need for new accommodation, so we do have a dilemma between how we satisfy the demand that does exist and is generated within the community and how, on the other hand, we satisfy the feeling that we’ve already got enough housing. Another question is where do you put that housing? It has to go somewhere. What is happening over time is that household formation is changing. People split up, or people in Rochford live longer. If you live in Rochford, on average people live two years longer. Of course children are still being born, are growing up and in due course will want somewhere to live and we’ll need housing to satisfy the demand. I think if you consider the build rates that we’ve come up with in the local planning process – we are talking about less than 200 units a year – when you look in the District context, isn’t much at all. I would probably say that whenever people say there is too much housing, I would have to reply that, given the demand out there, you could well make the case for far more housing each year than we are going to have to provide.
RL: There seem no easy answers
Paul: No, in planning terms I see one thing but as a human being do I want a supermarket next door to me? No! But at the same time, do I use supermarkets, absolutely! Therefore I need it within proximity but hope it is never next door to me and that’s a dilemma we all always have. I remember public meetings around mobile phones, people not wanting mobile phone masts next to them but if you go into a room and ask, have you got a mobile phone, the answer is, absolutely!
There have always got to be choices but it does tend to come, at District level, down to the planning process, because planning will always give you, or will always be, a response to the needs of the community in development terms, and will always present a variety of choices and, of course, different individuals will be impacted in different ways. If you talk to an individual in general terms the answer would probably be positive, but if you talk to the individual in specific terms, about something which is really next door to them, it would be a negative.
If you actually take a plan of Rochford and take out the areas subject to flooding, and then you take out the areas of special interest, you don’t have much land left to make your choices on. You’ll find from quite a surprisingly big figure, you end up with a pretty small one. Once you have done that you have to ask where is the housing going to be built? We haven’t got a lot of used land; we can only look at green field sites.
The Road Network
RL: The other area of contention that seems to arise is in respect of the infrastructure, the road network. Do you have any input to that?
Paul: The county are the highway authority so therefore our input – before we do any what I call specially strategic proposals, where we put the housing or where we put the development – involves us working closely with the County and consulting with the County. So, to some extent, working with them we’ve got a number of infrastructure needs factored in to what comes forward. That said, traditionally if you look across the UK, the approach across the UK has been a development-
RL: Do you have a say in that or do you just have to respond to it?
Paul: We are part of the bidding process but, that said, we are among a number of local authorities who are bidding. I have been to a number of talks recently, and I think we’ve done some work around Essex, where estimating the infra structure deficit is found to be in the region of six billion pounds. Now where is that money going to be found? Also, whether or not that infrastructure is provided, there are still going to be demands.
RL: Well, Paul, I appreciate you are very busy and we should stop. I suspect any new councillors would do well to take on board your comments. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing with us something more of the life and activity of the Council.
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