Another of those documents that wishes us all we would wish ourselves is being discussed at tomorrow’s Corporate and Community Committee meeting.

In 1,100 words of optimism and ambition, the report presents the council plans for the next three years.

As always, we are struck by the way that documents like these manage to appear highly progressive, when closer analysis often dispels that idea.

On the top priority of “revitalising and promoting our town and rural borough,” the report declares: “We will immediately improve town centre facilities with schemes such as the market place project ...”
Of course you will – it’s happening here and now, before our very eyes - in fact stopping it would be a greater challenge …
So, too, with a pledge to “work with Lincolnshire County Council to offer joined up, accessible council services.” As we reported last week, Boston Borough Council is already well down the road towards letting County Hall take over a sizeable chunk of its West Street offices.
A promise to “help to maintain and develop rural communities by permitting development for housing and generating jobs wherever possible” is another statement of the obvious. If the council does not permit development whenever it is possible –ie not contrary to planning regulations – it would find itself constantly fighting planning appeals.
And so it goes on.
What we’re saying it that most of this plan is just a collection of words that look good and sound convincing, and in fact a lot of the pledges involve working with “partners” to achieve targets that are really the job of the partners rather than the council.
We had to smile at the promise to “work with our parish councils and BTAC to maintain essential services” – which appears to be to try to cajole the parishes into taking on the cost of their “footway” lighting from the borough – something that could force them to increase local precepts by between 13.6% and 105%.
More positively, the section on safe, secure homes and neighbourhoods does contain some new promises – and even goes so far as to mention the “M” word.
It pledges as an immediate priority to work with the government to better understand the impact of migration on our community, and among other things to deliver new homes that meet local needs, begin to revitalise neighbourhoods by targeting its homes bonus on returning empty houses back into use, and to continue to help people use, enjoy and remain in their homes by investing in a disabled facility grant programme.
The latter, of course, could be seen as another nod to the County Council, to support its cuts in the  social services budget – but hey, let’s be charitable for once.
The report’s final section – “Delivering better council services to you with less money,” is perhaps most interesting for what it doesn’t say, but implies.
“Our resources are limited and we are facing a continuing reduction in government grant. We have to allocate our scare (sic) resources to the most important areas including where we invest in equipment and infrastructure.
“We will be investing in our crematorium to reduce emissions and provide a better service to you; our refuse fleet to provide a more efficient, cost effective service and our car parks to improve the town centre for you.
“However many of our other services are vital to you and we recognise the importance of these.
“Where services are chargeable such as car parking or obtaining planning application advice for example we have to balance the need to retain affordable charges with the need to obtaining sufficient income to invest in improving the facilities on offer (our italics.)
“We also have to transform the way these services are delivered to make them affordable and sustainable in the future.”
Brace yourselves for higher charges!

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