Task, finish, ignore, and do nothing ...

In a recent burst of openness and transparency, Boston Borough Council not only published its annual accounts, but its annual scrutiny report as well. The scrutiny procedure allows non-cabinet members to question decisions by the autocratic cabinet.
The report tells us that the Policy and Projects Committee met seven times during the year, and, according to chairman Councillor Michael Brookes “You will note … that the Committee also facilitated a successful Task and Finish Group which undertook a thorough review of a local issue.”
By all accounts, this refers to the group set up to investigate the running of the Boston Business Improvement District – the BID.
The group was established at the end of September 2010 and its final report was issued five meetings later on 30th April this year.
Among its recommendations was a call for more openness, a review of management costs, issuing of dates for meetings, and general correspondence and information from the BID manager to be improved significantly.
A report on the progress of the BID is to be bought back to the committee in spring 2012, “to allow members to monitor the recommendations tendered by the group.”
They may well find that the job will not be too onerous.
So far, the BID appears to have done nothing by way of adopting any of the recommendations.
Worse than that, it has become more secretive rather than less, and continues to demonstrate its legendary incompetence when it does try its hand at anything.
The secrecy aspect is quite blatant.
When the BID manager was asked why minutes of board meetings had not been published on the company’s website for several months, a reply came from the BID’s solicitors, who declared: “Minutes … will no longer be available on the company’s website. There is no requirement that a company publish such minutes.”
Then there is the question of what the BID has been doing.
Recently, we cited the refurbished tourist information boards which reappeared after a respray at a “secret” location peppered with inaccuracies.
Last year there was the spectacularly incompetent 2010 business directory– published a cost of £10,000.
And what about the 3D map – due out more than six months ago at a cost revised upwards from 66p a copy to £1.04? What a good job we are not trying to travel anywhere, as there is still no news of the map’s arrival.
The BID will soon be three years old.
Each year it extorts £125,000 a year from its members – and we use the word because members have to pay the levy whether they want to or not, and are taken to court by Boston Borough Council if they don’t.
It is also supposed to obtain matched funding equal to the levy – which means that by December it should have raised around £700,000 for the benefit of Boston business.
We wonder what has actually been raised and what it’s been spent on so far, as there is so little to show for it.
In an apparent sign of trying to be more member friendly, the BID issued a newsletter in May. Naively, we assumed that it would be the first in a monthly – or failing that, a quarterly series.
But no. In true BID fashion, no other newsletters have followed.
We mention all this because Task and Finish groups have become something of a fad with Boston Borough Council in recent weeks.
One  has been called to discuss concerns over migration levels in Boston, and another to review the council’s greedy attempts to force its allotment holders to pay more than 400% extra for their plot rental -  in they admit is a bid to drive the tenants into taking over their own affairs to save the borough money.
If the task and finish group that reviewed the workings of Boston BID is regarded as a success, we shudder to think of the outcome had it been seen as a flop.
Not only has it achieved nothing at all, but the committee has apparently washed its hands of the whole business and decided to sit on its hand until the review next year.
What this implies for the next two sessions on the cards is anyone’s guess, but we are not expecting anything much.

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