In a plaintive bleat to the local papers, Boston Borough Council Leader Peter Bedford praised the authority’s recently published annual report, which showed the council to be ahead or on track on most of its performance targets.

He said: “This is a good news story all around and I hope it’s produced as such in our local papers as much as the usual negatives.”
Ignoring the whiff of paranoia given off by the appeal, we have to say that good news is in the eye of the beholder, and that there are still serious flaws in the way the Tories run the council.
Not only that, but the report also cover the last days of Boston Bypass Independents’ administration – which had previously been blamed for all the borough’s ills – thus blurring the distinction between the BBI’s “good news” and that prior to last May’s elections.
The dominant features in the report seem to be sport related.
It says that the first phase of the Geoff Moulder Leisure Complex has been completed and the next phase – refurbishment of the training pool – starts next month.
Spending on that project already seems to be higher than planned, in that – whilst £195,000 was allocated,  monitoring of the bills over the past year shows a current total approaching £260,000.
That money, by the way, came from the reserves – which in total  were pillaged to the tune of £1m to fund transport initiatives and the leisure training pool spending.
And let’s not forget that the main beneficiaries of the pool improvement are two select groups – the Witham Schools Federation and the Boston Amateur Swimming Club.
The report claims that the council’s handover of the Peter Paine Sports Centre to Boston College was” justified” as the college then accessed more than a million pounds for improvements.
Two things that went unmentioned amid all this was last year's report by veteran Boston Target columnist George Wheatman  that the trustees at Peter Paine were threatened that the centre would be closed if they didn’t spend £400,000 on refurbishment … or hand the lease back to the borough.
Nor does the report mention that the deal has now allowed the college to profit by selling its De Montfort campus for £1.5 million.
It also remains to be seen what use the public get from the facility, as they will only be allowed access outside of college hours.
Something else that we had thought was long off the agenda was the news that “a great deal of work has also taken place at the Princess Royal Sports Arena” – and we are looking forward to a successful conclusion to this in the next few months.”
So are we all!
The report tells us that at the start of the administrative year in March, 2011, coincided with the news that Boston had the biggest year on-year reduction in crime in Lincolnshire – although precisely how much credit the council can claim for that is anyone’s guess.
And the same is true of the £2 million project to revitalise the Market Place was announced – which was approved by the BBI.
Again, the claim that in May, 2011, the Improvement Board signed the council off- “satisfied with the advances it had made” –  marks the achievements of the previous regime, although the overall impression is that the present leadership deserved the credit for things that it has not initiated.
One thing that we do welcome is the news that the council signed a commitment to the councillor charter to support the development of elected members with an aim of securing charter status by December this year.
Charter status is recognition that a council has achieved best practice in the way it provides learning and development opportunities for its elected members.  This helps ensure that elected members have the skills and knowledge they need effectively to represent the community.
Given the recent performance of the Tories – led by the cabinet’s appalling example of secrecy and dismissive treatment of the electorate – we would like to hope that this will bring about some improvements.
But we shan’t be holding our breath!

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