Loughton Residents Association

 

District

Epping Forest District Council has a total of 58 councillors, headed by a cabinet of nine councillors, each managing an area of the council’s operations.  The LRA now holds six of the 58 council seats (see Your LRA councillors).

District Council portfolios:
Epping Forest District Council as a whole takes major policy decisions. Officers are delegated responsibility for routine decisions and day-to-day service operation. The Council is headed by a cabinet of eight councillors known as portfolio holders, each responsible for an area of the Council's operations: for the current holders, and for details of what each portfolio covers, see

These councillors are chosen according to the election results, so at present are all members of the Conservative party. They are empowered to make many decisions affecting their services, either alone or jointly with other members of the Cabinet, having received advice from officers.

As minority members, LRA councillors are members of the Planning Committee and the overview and scrutiny committees, which review decisions made by portfolio holders and officers. They may call for reviews of any aspect of services and they also review performance data on a regular basis.

Epping Forest Youth Council:
The Youth Council’s website gives information about the Council, who the Youth Councillors are and what they are currently working on, plus links to other youth projects and services that provide information and advice on bullying, sex, drugs, health, crime, internet safety, policing, domestic violence, youth democracy, what's on, revision, skills development and human rights.

Revision of the District Local Plan
The District Local Plan affects us all.  It is the “bible” that guides planning decisions taken by officers and councillors.  Decisions on individual planning applications must be consistent with the policies in the Plan or they will be open to challenge from applicants or government inspectors.  It covers many recommendations such as areas zoned: residential, retail or recreational.

The present plan was adopted in 1998 and was last updated in August 2006.  For further information, see Epping Forest District Council.
Proposals for thousands of new homes in the Epping Forest District, which were now under consideration by the previous Government, were not included in the Local Plan.  The LRA was very concerned about these proposals and responded strongly to them (see Regional Plan].

District Council opening hours
The District Council desk in Loughton Library, and the planning office in Epping, are now only open to the public between 9am and 1pm, Monday - Friday.

The Present Constitution
 Currently the District Council is operating a Leader & Cabinet Executive. The law requires that consultation with the public takes place to ratify that this will continue. This has to be achieved by 31 December 2010. Any consultation would have to take account that this is the only "fallback" position if a mayoral referendum/petition does not succeed. There are now only two executive options: Mayor and Cabinet or Leader and Cabinet. The County Council also operates a Leader & Cabinet Executive.

The main difference
The main difference in the options is how the head of the council is elected. Under the current system of Leader and Cabinet, the Leader is appointed by councillors. A Mayor would be directly elected by residents of the District. Other councillors are able to remove the Leader from office whereas a Mayor could only be removed by residents at elections every four years, unless they resign or become disqualified.
A referendum is not an election. It would give residents the chance to say which system of local government they want. If they voted in favour of the Mayoral system, the Council would then hold a subsequent election where everyone could vote for their preferred candidate.

Cost of referendum
The cost of a mayoral referendum is estimated at £160,000 for this district. If this were to be combined with a referendum for an Essex County Council mayor, this cost would reduce by 50%. These costs would fall in the 2011/12 financial year. However, costs may be incurred if the current year in terms of checking and validating the petition and public notices. This checking work will depend on how long that process actually takes. Checking 4,900 signatures etc is unlikely to be a quick job. This may mean hiring additional temporary staff or re-directing existing staff to this task. It is clear that work on the petition must not disrupt work on the electoral register or work on preparations for the elections/national referendum in May 2011, which will be going on at the same time.
It is important at the present time to think hard before spending money on new ventures. Council Tax is frozen and Government grants reducing, with inflation likely to "spike" because VAT will go up to 20% on 01/01/11, and services are being cut.
One way of looking at this is to ask oneself which service will you cut to raise the £160,000 (or £80,000) needed for a mayoral referendum, and which will you defer because Council staff are diverted to this process instead of doing their normal jobs?

Furthermore, the new Government are committed to allowing councils to return to the committee system in a year or so, so if the Council prefers the current system the whole petition exercise would be pointless.

Epping Forest District Council Budget Cuts
The Conservative-led administration have decided on various cuts, including:

  • Town Centre Officer post to finish at the end of July 2011. [We are disappointed, as the present incumbent has started some useful local initiatives.] The District Council expects Loughton Town Council and the District’s parish councils to take on more of this role, engaging with local people and businesses to do more self-help.
  • Building maintenance of council properties will be done only where expenditure is necessary or where there is a realistic pay-back period.
  • Capital schemes will be reduced.  In particular, off-street parking schemes on housing estates to be reviewed with the intention of scaling back the number substantially (current budget £2.4m over 5 years). [LRA councillors have fought hard to get funding to relieve the parking problems suffered by Debden residents, and this is a major set-back. Although the parking review of the roads round The Broadway survived this round of cuts, its funding is not guaranteed.]. More.
  • Police Community Support officers (PCSOs). Council joint funding (with the police) to be reduced from 6 posts to 4. [We regret this, as PCSOs have become increasingly useful locally.]
  • Area Planning meetings (which decide on planning applications) to be reduced to monthly meetings instead of once every 3 weeks. [We had opposed the original move to a three-weekly cycle, which created problems and extra expense, although changing back achieves only a very small saving.]
  • External recruitment freeze to be rigidly enforced.  No agency staff will be employed whatever the difficulty.  Consultants will only be used for projects likely to be of long term financial benefit to the Council. [We support the general approach, but suggested an amendment (which was not accepted) to deal with the problems that will otherwise arise when staff with special technical skills are needed.]

There will inevitably be a reduction in service performance next year as a result of further cuts in the budget.