A Week of Revelations? - an Active Citizen's View

I've just had something of a week for revelations, though of a prosaic nature rather than evangelical.

---

Monday the 17th October started the week in an unexpected manner. A visit to the SheffEx Conference at the Royal Victoria Hotel, the first, if Tony Carrol's hopes are met, of a forthcoming series of such events. The invite came through late last week but the running order had two interesting items for me. An update on the proposals for the Sheffield Retail Quarter (SRQ) and one on the inward investment from China.

Before that however were some other speakers. First up was Yuri Matischen, MD and part owner of Sheffield Sharks basketball team. This provided my first revelation, sports, leisure & tourism contribute £2.2Bn to Sheffield City Region economy and employ 44,000 people. That's something not talked about enough and they hope to put together a strategy to grow that with events that we can 'own' locally and that cannot be lost to competition from other cities or regions.

Next came Professor Vanessa Toulmin, head of Sheffield University's Public Engagement team. Less revelatory to some of us but still worth a comment, Sheffield's international reputation stands on four things; the 'Made in Sheffield' brand (much counterfeited in the past), Music, Beers & Arts. These also contribute to the idea of Sheffield as a 'Magnet City'. Developing and promoting these reputations and products should therefore increase the economy and inward investment.

---

Then we had David Slater, who made his fortune off building (what an emeritus professor of Urban Policy & Planning called) student warehousing in the St Vincent's district. He is now keen to see redevelopment of the Don Valley & Attercliffe, whilst changing it's designation to Sheffield East to avoid bad associations with sex industry and decay. This idea has since surfaced again in the Sheffield Star. I'm not sure that thousands of new family homes in one of the worst polluted districts in the city is an ideal solution to our housing problem but David Slater clearly sees money in it.

Later in the event, Chris Dymond of Sheffield Digital provided another revelation. Although I knew we had a thriving games & digital economy in the city he revealed that there were more than 14,000 jobs in this sector, providing 18% of the city's jobs, with high average salaries. On the down side however he also commented that each digital job was worth 5 traditional jobs to the economy and that in the next 20 years automation would take over some 20% of current jobs. This is something many of the Political Parties are failing to address in either their economic or education policies.

---

Bracketing Sheffield Digital were two contributions from Simon Green, Executive Director of the 'Place' portfolio, responsible for seven of the Councils directorates for business strategy, growth and regeneration. He addressed two issues, the Sheffield Retail Quarter (SRQ) and secondly the newly agreed Chinese inward investment to the city.

On the SRQ the big reveal was that Council, as the owners of the land and a now active development partner has listened, not only to it's own advisors but to the mood of the public (as expressed very well by the likes of Rupert Wood and the Alternative SRQ group, Nick Roscoe of Hallamshire Historic Buildings and others) by adapting the plans originally put forward, away from a single major shopping mall type project, to what is now termed a “retail led, mixed use scheme”.

It also appears that they will be respecting traditional street patterns and despite delays still maintain a healthy relationship with the key Major retailer in the City Centre, John Lewis. Changing shopping patterns have been a big reason for this change of mind, recognising the impact of internet shopping and the revelation (to them at least) that local independent shops are a major draw for increasing the spend in a city. Sheffield looking to be the first of the new, not the last of the old retail schemes.

---

Simon then talked about the inward investment expected from China. There was less to say here as the deal is very new but is basically contextualised by the changing face of inward investment from 'traditional' sources in USA and EU to newer Asiatic economies and investors. It may also be a way of private Chinese capital ameliorating their exposure to the weaknesses and risks of the Chinese economy. The initial information is that there will be £220M to be invested in 5 physical projects within the City & Region, both public and private. The first may well be announced within a matter of months. He highlighted that issues around the complexity of the British planning processes and finding projects that can be delivered in a timely manner are outstanding.

---

Further revelations were to appear later in the week, at the Sheffield City Council Cabinet Meeting on Wednesday. Regular readers will know that I am not averse to asking the occasional question at these meetings. Generally these questions are aimed at improving transparency in the way decisions are made or, sometimes, as a means of improving the lot for the City and Citizen.

Although I asked five questions at the meeting, only one would qualify as generating any revelation but a second revelation came after the meeting.

---

My first question was the revelatory moment: “It appears from a SY Police budget report that the force is utilising covert technology to capture data from the public's mobile phones without their consent.

"South Yorkshire Police report. A 2015/16 budget item called “IMSI Covert Communications” was earmarked £144,000. A separate line in the same budget – again called “CCDC” (covert communications data capture) – was allocated an identical amount: £144,000. South Yorkshire police confirmed that ‘CCDC’ and ‘IMSI Covert Communications’ are the same budget item." Quotation from Bristol Cable report.

Were Council aware of this system and it's use? Were the Council's representatives on the Police & Crime Panel aware of this system and it's use?”

The question was answered by Cllr Jackie Drayton (Cabinet Member for Children, Young People & Families) one of four Sheffield Councillors on the Police & Crime Panel. She admitted to not being aware of this matter, having recently being appointed to the PCP. She has promised to look into it and let me know. I find it quite disturbing that this technology can be implemented without, apparently, any knowledge within the City Council.

It illustrates, once again, the problems encountered by regularly changing committee members, caused mostly by the City's continued use of elections by thirds. Rather than all out elections. The latter would allow committee members to serve for four straight years gaining greater experience, rather than chopping and changing every year, leading to poor levels of quality scrutiny from our elected members.

The second revelation came after the meeting in a conversation with a Cabinet member who revealed the Council have decided to propose banning 'Fracking' on all Council owned land. This is not a total solution but, with the Council owning large tracts of land in the City (All parks, estates etc) this will go some way to hampering the companies that might wish to exploit this filthy and dangerous source of carbon based fuel.

---

A week of contrasts, good news and yet some concerning revelations. It is weeks like this that make me continue trying to make Sheffield decision making more transparent and simply better.

All or Nothing – Changing the Electoral Shape of Sheffield.

On Thursday 14th April, the above was the title for my first outing in this year's Festival of Debate. Following changes to the ward boundaries in Sheffield, we will have an ‘all out’ election in May where all councillors will be up for re-election. This is the ideal time to consider the impact of ‘all out’ and whether this is a change that should become permanent. These are my own thoughts on the evening.

---

The panel and audience for the debate heard a presentation from James Henderson, in charge of all things electoral as a Director in the City Council. He outlined for us the reasons behind the Boundary Commission becoming involved in our ward and electoral issues and the changes they made to our electoral geography. Essentially some of our ward demographics were out of balance. Too many people in some wards and too few in others, therefore the people are not equally represented by the elected Councillors.

The changes now give us a balanced ward structure but some of us, me included, will have to get used to a new ward name and a new set of Councillors. James also briefly outlined the difference between election by thirds, what we do now, with an election 3 years out of 4 and All Out elections, what we will do this year, 1 election every 4 years.

---

The rest of the panel were; Myself as Chair & Question Master. Cllr Terry Fox (Labour, Manor Castle) Cabinet Member for Environment & Transport. Vicky Seddon, Co-ordinator of Sheffield for Democracy & Edward Molloy, Nexus Officer for the Electoral Reform Society.

At the start, I have to admit to being disappointed by the audience turnout of about 20 but they were all engaged and interested in the subject so the debate did not suffer in that regard. The panellists were allowed an initial period to state their current position on the boundary changes and the option of all out elections. We then moved straight in to the audience questions.

I don't plan to try and repeat the debate word for word but to simply leave you with my impression of the evening as a whole.

---

Terry Fox was not, currently in favour of all out elections and the main reasons appeared to be that elections by thirds allowed the voters to pass comment on the performance of their councillors on an annual basis, holding them to account better. It also leads to more stable majority administrations as opposed to unstable hung or coalition councils.

Vicky Seddon was very much in favour of all out elections, the main reasons being effectiveness, with councillors able to work on the basis of a four year stable mandate to enact policy rather than constantly electioneering. Efficiency, with council being able to utilise the whole of the years in-between elections for business, rather than losing a month or more to election campaigning rather than council business. Cost savings, all out elections would save £150,000 a year, with extra savings coming from the efficiency already mentioned.

Edward Molloy, concentrated on the current crisis in democracy over voter engagement and reasoned that fewer local elections generate better turnouts and that people feel their vote counts more if an election has the potential of changing the administration, which rarely happens in elections by thirds.

So the three viewpoints seemed to come down to, the stability of the status quo, the improved effectiveness & efficiency of the Council and the fairness of the electoral process and making votes count.

---

The questions from the audience led us around these opinions and into areas about devolution, the complexity of the electoral system and why people are less engaged than ever? (voter turnout in local elections is generally less than 40% and getting worse) whether with central government making so many decisions for local government, they really had any power left?

An interesting point that came out early from both Vicky and Edward was concerning the potential for further devolution enabling councils to choose not only electoral periods but also whether to adopt PR as is now the norm in Scotland for local councils. Terry was not wholly against the idea, provided it also brought in mandatory voting to ensure fair distribution of votes. There was still concern expressed about weak or coalition governance though that hasn't proved the case in Scotland with a majority national government elected on a PR basis.

It also became apparent that even some members of this engaged audience were unclear on why the city used the elections by thirds system, what the alternatives were and were in some ways confused by the complexity of elections and options currently being used. Local elections are different to general elections, PCC elections and probably different to upcoming Regional Mayor elections.

After quite a long time discussing the various matters that arose I finally called for a straw poll of the audience, asking, do you think all out elections would be better for local democracy? 10 people or 50% voted yes. Asked whether they felt it would make local democracy worse, there were no votes supporting that opinion.

---

My own conclusion? This conversation needs to be had in greater depth within and without the council. The current system is broken with low turnouts and councillors being elected by around 1 in 5 of their voters.

Council operates on a permanent electioneering basis, impeding medium to long term planning and exacerbating the adversarial nature of council business meetings.

The strong leader & cabinet model means ordinary councillors can be seen as powerless and impotent (even amongst themselves) whilst stable 4 year election cycles would help those involved in committee work to better contribute to those roles.

Savings are, at the moment, never to be sniffed at and such savings could be used to improve other areas of democratic deficit around public engagement, such as webcasting and local public meetings.

---

Overall therefore, I believe an All Out election cycle would improve democracy locally and the better administration of council business. Further benefits may still be identified as a result of current and future devolution but the conversation must be had now to inform future discussions on the type of devolution we want.

---

My thanks to my partner organisations in this event, Opus Independents for their support in organising the Festival of Debate and to Sheffield City Council for organising and staffing what will probably be the most upmarket venue we will be using in this spring season. Thanks also to the panellists and audience for making the event so worthwhile.