Andrew reappointed to Cabinet

 

 

Conservative Order Paper passed at Annual Meeting

Andrew will retain the Housing and Estate Renewal portfolio for another year

 

At the Annual Meeting of Basildon Borough Council held on Thursday night, the Conservative Group formally presented its Order Paper following our success in the local elections three weeks ago.

The Leader of the Council has asked me to continue as Cabinet Member for Housing and Estate Renewal. This will be my third year in the brief and, without wishing to pluck at the world's smallest violin, I have to say that it is extremely hard work and a not inconsiderable challenge undertaking responsibility for such a large and important brief whilst also holding down a full-time day job. Not wanting to sound smug, but my casework stats' are the highest of any member of the Cabinet. As a humble backbencher, representing Billericay East, I used to deal with about two or three hundred cases a year. Last year, I dealt with well over 700. But I never certainly never received 'thank you' emails like the ones I get now. Because the issues I am taking up and the things I am helping people with are so absolutely vital to their happiness and well-being. It is hard work but it is very, very rewarding.

None of this would be possible without the support of my beautiful wife, Rosie, and my stepdaughter, Poppy. It is their ceaseless encouragement and understanding that enables me to take on this task and I want to put that on record.

"None of this would be possible without the support of my beautiful wife, Rosie, and my stepdaughter, Poppy. It is their ceaseless encouragement and understanding that enables me to take on this task and I want to put that on record."

At yesterday's meeting, we also passed the 2023-27 Corporate Plan, outlining the Administration's strategic priorities for the coming year. This afforded me an opportunity to talk a little about what I have been doing over the last municipal year and what I hope to achieve over the next year.

As I told the chamber, there is no doubt that the last year was challenging for everyone; not just the council but the communities we serve. All of us are keenly aware that there is a lot going on in the world; things largely outside our control but affecting all our lives. The Conservative Administration on Basildon Council has been working hard to deliver support and good reliable services and nowhere more so than around Housing Services.  

Basildon is the largest borough in Essex and with an ever-growing population. Our council is a stock-owning authority, with over 10,000 properties. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that one of the main areas of activity has been repairs. I do not think I would be 'talking out of school' if I said that I inherited a repairs contractor that is, shall we say, not entirely beloved (though, to be fair to Morgan Sindall, I can think of no time in recent history when people have not routinely hated the repairs contractor - it is certainly not an easy gig!). Since I took over, I hope I have introduced a more proactive approach to disrepair. Morgan Sindall have completed more than 18,000 responsive repairs, mostly without incident (but, obviously, I only tend to hear about the ones that go wrong!). We held workshops in early January and undertook a comprehensive Housing Repairs Review. That has now concluded and we will be taking a robust Action Plan before the Place Scrutiny Committee in July. We are working in close partnership with Morgan Sindall to make improvements and ensure we are providing a good reliable service.

"We are working in close partnership with Morgan Sindall to make improvements and ensure we are providing a good reliable service."

A particular focus has been damp and mould. I established a Damp and Mould Task Force to ensure the Council as a landlord takes robust action to address it. I briefed Full Council in December, following the inquest into the death of Awaab Ishak in Rochdale, and we had all-member training sessions in the New Year, along with additional staff training. We have now installed well over 1,000 Switchee units and over 400 Golden-I units to monitor condensation and allow us to manage damp and mould risks. I want to continue to roll these out and my long-term hope is that we can get these installed in all council-owned properties and really start to proactively manage those risks.

We also chuffed to bits when we secured £4 ½ million from the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund. This is going to allow us to retrofit energy efficiency works to our housing stock. It is a really exciting project, currently being scoped out for delivery, focusing on our priority estates. We are hoping to improve around 450 properties over the next 2 years. The Conservative Administration is investing in our stock because they are not just houses; they are homes.

This is also why we have committed significant investment into our estates across the Borough through our flagship £40 million Safe & Sound programme. We have been carrying out substantial tree works, de-weeding, trimming hedges and removing fly-tipping on a number of estates, to make them tidier and more attractive. We have installed more dog-waste bins and installed new CCTV at Felmores shops in Pitsea and Elizabeth Way shops in Laindon. The only CCTV did not link back to the main hub at the Bas' Centre but now does. We installed entirely new CCTV at Ballards Walk shops, which is the first time those shops have ever had CCTV coverage.

"The Conservative Administration is investing in our stock because they are not just houses; they are homes."

Safe & Sound is now starting to be rolled out on the Five Links and Lee Chapel North estates. The Estate Improvement Plan for the Felmores Estate went to Place Scrutiny in February and was approved by Cabinet in March and officers are starting to establish key milestones against the EIP, such as the Bin Store Pilot to try to improve the communal refuse arrangements on the estate, which local residents were very clear was entirely not fit for purpose and a big priority for them.

The Council has also been working closely with Trust Links, a local mental health charity, to transform green spaces. Lots of local residents have mucked in and it has been a huge success and I really commend their work.

Safe & Sound is really trucking now. We are going to draw up bespoke EIPs for all our estates. They all present their own unique challenges and priorities, but the Conservative Administration will continue to develop and deliver this programme. Our Administration remains committed to carrying on that investment to refresh our estates and homes.

"I look forward to doing my bit to carry out the promises in our Corporate Plan, to drive forward our plans to enhance and improve our Borough."

In addition to enhancing our estates, we are building new homes for our residents, like the excellent new council homes at Valerie Lodge in Vange. We’re working with Sempra Homes to bring forward new affordable housing across the Borough with priority given to Basildon people to enable them to gain their first step on the housing ladder.

The other big area of activity is homelessness. All 10 units at our new homeless facility at Nevendon Place are now occupied. Our teams have also provided homelessness prevention advice to 130 households and provided support and advice for residents experiencing financial difficulties.

So, there is lots to be getting on with over the coming year but I look forward to doing my bit to carry out the promises in our Corporate Plan, to drive forward our plans to enhance and improve our Borough.

God save the King!

Reflections on the Coronation

Below is a speech Andrew delivered at the Basildon Side By Side Coronation Big Lunch at Wat Tyler County Park on Sunday

 

Madam Deputy Mayor, Deputy Lieutenant, Dr. Ukpaka, members of Basildon Side By Side, ladies & gentlemen,

Thank you all very much for allowing me and my family to join you this afternoon and for allowing me to say a little bit about the momentous event in our nation’s history, to which we all bore witness yesterday.

"The Crown is the fixed focal point in our national life. It links us in a very visceral way with our history and traditions and, often counterintuitively, rather than anchoring us unhelpfully to our past, provides a sense of continuity and stability that enables us to move forward and embrace great change with courage and confidence."

I have acquired – indeed, cultivated – a reputation among my colleagues as a devout monarchist and, I have to say, it is a reputation that I wear proudly and as a badge of honour. Aside from a brief flirtation with republicanism in my misspent youth, I have been an entirely convinced supporter of the monarchy almost all my adult life.

I am often asked, ‘What is the monarchy for? Why do we need it?” I think we saw the function of the monarchy in spectacular effect in the ceremony that took place at Westminster Abbey yesterday. Not just the glorious and magnificent state ceremonial, at which this country is a world-beater. The monarchy does provide us that in spades! But the primary function of the monarchy, above all, is stability. The Crown is the fixed focal point in our national life. It links us in a very visceral way with our history and traditions and, often counterintuitively, rather than anchoring us unhelpfully to our past, provides a sense of continuity and stability that enables us to move forward and embrace great change with courage and confidence.

For 70 years, that symbol of continuity amid the changing times was Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Great. You would have to be well into your 80s or even 90s today to remember a time before Elizabeth II sat upon the throne. She had already been Queen for 30 years when I was born. She was the longest-reigning and longest-lived monarch in our history and the longest-serving female Head of State in the world. Her reign saw 15 British prime ministers, 14 U.S. presidents and 7 popes. Her first Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, was born in 1874 and Her last, Liz Truss, was born in 1975 – 101 years later!

"Yesterday, those lining the streets of London or watching on television at home or out in their communities, were spectators to an event unseen in this country in seven decades."

She must have been the most widely travelled and universally respected world leaders ever to have lived. She visited more than 100 countries. She presided over the transition of the British Empire into the modern Commonwealth and, over the course of Her reign, made over 150 visits to countries across the Commonwealth, to which She was completely devoted. During Her reign, She carried out tens of thousands of public engagements, assented to around 4,000 pieces of legislation, hosted hundreds of state visits and garden parties and met every world leader you can imagine. She was stability personified. With superlative canniness, She provided us with a fixed point in our national life. Amid all the tumult of the past 70 years, Her late Majesty remained reassuringly unchanged. That did not mean that She was static – She was the first monarch to send an email, the first to have a website and the first to ‘tweet’. She was on Instagram. She could still surprise us. Who could ever have predicted we would see Her Majesty leap from a helicopter with James Bond or co-star in a comedy skit with Paddington Bear? She did keep the same hairstyle for about 60 years, so She was always very recognisably and unmistakably Her. 

And then She left us. Our beloved Queen, who had been a beacon of stability to all of us, was gone. But the Crown was not. The Queen is dead. Long live the King!

Yesterday, those lining the streets of London or watching on television at home or out in their communities, were spectators to an event unseen in this country in seven decades. I am sure many of you felt that you had been transported back in time. Indeed, contrary to popular myth, the coronation’s essential elements were not invented by the late-Victorians. Its roots are biblical and existed in this country long before even the Norman Conquest. The inspiration for the ceremony was the anointing of Solomon by Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet.

"Contrary to popular myth, the coronation’s essential elements were not invented by the late-Victorians. Its roots are biblical and existed in this country long before even the Norman Conquest."

When William the Conqueror defeated King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, he used the coronation ceremony to establish his legitimacy, using the abbey church that had been built at Westminster by King Edward the Confessor. For almost a thousand years, English and later British monarchs have continued to be crowned there. The Normans themselves drew inspiration from the coronation of the Emperor Charlemagne in the 9th-Century and the ceremony includes a series of ancient rituals and items of regalia that are steeped in history and course with symbolism and meaning. The Spurs and Armills, the Orb, the Sceptre, the Sword, the Ring and, of course, the Crown.

All these things are pre-modern era and therefore pre-democracy but, importantly, they imply the consent of the people and exemplify the need for the Crown to stand before them. But this was a new coronation for a new monarch in a new age. As we all saw, the Coronation is a beautiful ceremony. It has a deep and fascinating history and yet, this was a very different coronation to the one held in 1953. As I remarked at a recent Council meeting, at the time of the last coronation, Basildon itself was but 4 years old! A lot has changed.

"All these things are pre-modern era and therefore pre-democracy but, importantly, they imply the consent of the people and exemplify the need for the Crown to stand before them."

Much has been said about the Lord President of the Council, Penny Mordaunt, who looked resplendent as she bore the Sword before the King. In 1953, hardly any women were involved in the ceremony but this time there were many, and not just women but other faiths and races. The Armills were presented by Lord Kamall, a Muslim of Indo-Guyanese descent. The Orb was carried by Dame Elizabeth Anionwu, whose father was Nigerian. The Ring was presented by Lord Patel, a Hindu who was born in Tanganyika, and the Glove by Lord Singh of Wimbledon, a Sikh born in the Punjab.

A coronation is an ancient ceremony that necessarily echoes our past but it also speaks to our future. It affords us an opportunity to commence a new reign with a ceremony that underscores how we have changed and grown as a nation and I think yesterday’s coronation certainly did that. This curious marriage of stability and change is, in my view, made possible by the essentially human nature of the institution of monarchy.

Whereas some countries have strictly codified, written constitutions, scrawled on crumbling bits of parchment, unchanging and set in stone, our Constitution is a living breathing institution, incarnated in a human being. The Crown cannot be separated from the man who now wears it. What yesterday’s ceremony drew attention to repeatedly – from the touching moment His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales paid homage to his father to the shots of little Prince Louis yawning (because he’s a 5-year-old boy and bored out of his mind) – is that the King is more than just a Head of State. He is a son, a brother, a husband, a father, and a grandfather at the head of a Royal Family. It is this, I believe, that makes ‘The Crown’ more than just an overdecorated piece of millinery but an institution that forms the lynchpin and lodestar of our national life and gives our ancient constitutional settlement a human face.

"A coronation is an ancient ceremony that necessarily echoes our past but it also speaks to our future. It affords us an opportunity to commence a new reign with a ceremony that underscores how we have changed and grown as a nation..."

We all know the King. We have known Him for three quarters of a century! We could not hope for a more eminently qualified Head of State because He did a 75-year apprenticeship under the tutelage of the most gracious lady God ever placed on this earth. It is that ‘passing of the baton’, that continuity, that makes the person of the King, rather than the institution of the Crown, something tangible; a person we can trust as the guarantor of our laws and liberties, the head of our Armed Forces, whose face, like His mother’s before Him, will adorn our money, our stamps and whose signature will be borne on every law passed and every international treaty ratified and to whom every soldier, statesman, jurist, policeman, clergyman and various other public servants will swear their allegiance. (Personally, I think that should include councillors!)

I will conclude, ladies & gentlemen, with the words of Queen Elizabeth the Great following Her own coronation, “The ceremonies you have seen today are ancient, and some of their origins veiled in the mists of the past. But their spirit and their meaning shine through the ages never, perhaps, more brightly than now”. That was true in 1953 and I think it is just as true in 2023.

"We could not hope for a more eminently qualified Head of State because He did a 75-year apprenticeship..."

Thank you all very much for listening and nothing now remains but for me to end my remarks, as I always enjoy doing where possible, by saying God save the King!