A RESPONSE TO CLLR SCHMETTERLING

Cllr Dori Schmetterling is well-intentioned newcomer to the Council. Naively he put himself in the line of fire in claiming K&C Council Tax is in the lowest quartile for council tax.

What Dori fails to grasp is that this sort of benchmarking requires a 'like for like' analysis. 

He may as well imagine he is a gazelle whilst shouting at the elephant and hippo "I am in better shape than you"!

What Dori needs to get his head around is this... a council's aspiration should be based on the best low-cost and efficient administration based upon what it has to do.

RBKC has a very high residential density in a very small geography. No other council compares with the compactness and huge wealth of this Borough.

It is also a very low-cost area to service with huge economies of scale compared with Councils with sparse geographies, distributed housing, and the absence of income streams like parking and penalty revenues to subsidise Council services such as dustbin collection and road maintenance.

Revenues from parking and penalties account are huge-something like 30% of RBKC revenues (including Council Tax).  RBKC is of course a transit Borough in London. 

All manner of people pass through; stop and pay huge parking charges to the Council and penalties for overstaying. 

On 25.11 The Taxpayers Alliance claimed that K&C doled out more tickets than any other Council.

Residents Permits generate a further £12m a year.

No wonder the shops are struggling to get customers with that sort of customer harassment.

It is a scandal. No possibility of highway robbery like this in Somerset or Devon or the Yorkshire moors.……and rich people in RBKC educate their kids privately so economies in public education. Plus high levels of employment so fewer people on benefits and not paying Council tax

What  Councillor S and others of his mindset needs to get their brains around is:

* We are supposed to be a Conservative Council

* What it should be doing is doing things EFFICIENTLY

  and then decide what they should NOT BE DOING 

Then he can start making a very long list of things that should not be a burden on Council tax. eg

* all the Nanny State initiatives like Safety Alarms and 'sitting out' benches

* all the vanity projects like Holland Park Opera and Exhibition Road

* all of the personal ambition projects like Holland Park School

* all of the misguided projects that belong to the private sector (Cockell's credit cards and 'paid for' care services that I seem to remember)

And after Dori has figured out what should be done and what should not be done, then he can take the organisation apart in Hornton Street and put together a structure that is fit for purpose - and save £ millions on staff costs and strip out all the job creation staff