It is the time of year when those of us with the ego to put our thoughts down so that anyone might even consider reading them, produce a review of the last 12 months.
I don’t intend doing that,
We have shouted many times about the huge, yes huge, achievements and happenings in the Forest in 2022.
So instead, I intend looking forward and to be frank, beginning the bean spilling process and explaining some of the juggling someone leading a council may have to do, just to get by.
With 5 months to the elections, I think it’s now time to really reveal my thoughts and views, rather than those thoughts of a council leader.
You might be surprised how many times the Leadership position must take precedence over my own personal views. Sometimes the needs and progression of the Cabinet and the Council will override my own wishes or views . It’s how things are.
The Council is however now very much moulded in the strategies that my cabinet members and I have put in place.
Its all the better for it !
Allow me to lay out the position of all involved in the administration of this wonderful district.
I do this as Tim Gwilliam and NOT as the Council Leader. Thats really key. These are my views not Council Leaders. When I write with that hat on I must adhere to all sorts of protocol, I've learnt in 6 years to be able to separate the two roles.
I am an Independent Councillor leading a Council made up of about 6. possibly 7 groups, I am socialist leaning although not in the Corbyn camp, more centralist,a Blairite some have called me. Well illegal wars aside, they may well be right. My cabinet is made up of two further ex-Labour Cllrs , an ex UKIPer and an ex Tory. I did have two Greens until September and Ill go into their removal from my cabinet later.
Politically tricky!
The County Council is Tory controlled and most of the Forests County Councillors are Tories.
Politically tricky!
We have a long standing and currently secure Conservative MP who trust me, probably borne from his party rather carelessly losing control of the council 6 years ago, has been and is very quick to question Council policy and procedure.He publicly criticised our investment plans when the neighbouring Tory led Council was doing exactly the same but he failed to mention that. He is Conservative through and through and will do all he can to promote Conservatives and Conservative values. That's his position, he doesn't hide it and so we all know where we are.
He and his office scrutinise what we do and how we do it and are not shy at showing their distain.
I will say however that he also has been actively supportive of the successful levelling up fund bid and subsequent development. We work together and its worked for the Forest.
Politically Tricky!
The Publica partner Councils who The Forest share service provision with are Lib Dem led.
Its all rather fractured , and this is especially true during election years as we are currently facing.
Politically Tricky !
For six years I have been shouting about a district council being NO PLACE for party politics.
We have seen at National level whether it be Brexit, Austerity or Covid just how party politics thrives on negativity and being divisive. It’s how it survives, pointing out failings rather than promoting ideas. Waiting for a mistake and not offering help or assistance. You must follow the party position or your out. If it’s their idea, it’s a bad idea and all must be done to stop it succeeding. Your either with them or against them.
At Council level , especially in the Forest of Dean with its history of hung councils, such politics have only damaged the Forests future and its position. It has led to town speaking out against town, damaging investment opportunities. They simply don’t want to see the opposition succeed , so its better politically if they don’t and if the Forest suffers or loses out because of it , well so be it.
We had decades of this, it’s why we couldn’t become the district we all wish it to be.
The last four years has seen something of a sea change in that my pleas for us to be as Councillors a “Team Forest” ,determined to achieve for the district have been heard. Councillors such as Labours Di Martin, The Conservative Alan Preest and Gill Mosley of the Lib Dems have led the way in putting the politics aside and wanting to work with us to deliver for the Forest. They have brought many Councillors with them and that has meant that the Forest has become successful in attracting business, in getting funding and in achieving. We are a hugely different Council and district now and that is because of this cooperation, of working with one voice and showing unity.
The Local Green Group were a major part of this new way of doing things until September. They had played a senior role and their support had been utterly vital.
I removed two successful Green members from my Cabinet because they would not support the redesigned local plan. The Local Plan strategy is a Council and an administration ( cabinet) position on how the district should be developed going forward It is a Cabinets proposal, voted on by full council before it goes out to consultation. It goes out only if and when the majority of the Council approve it. That's democracy, that's what happened
Despite repeated pleas from me to the two Green members who I considered not only colleagues but friends, they refused to distance themselves from misleading and damaging publicity from the local Green Party about the Local Plan proposal. I wanted them to distance themselves from such comments made by The Local Greens about the plan among other things meaning Forest waste would be built on, at no point was that ever even hinted at .
They wouldn’t or they couldn't
I wanted them to be honest with the public and state that they saw a new settlement ( an idea that saw nothing but opposition when put forward previously from both developers and public alike) as their preferred strategy to a sustainable development.
I wanted them to be open , to be positive about their wishes, to distance themselves from incorrect criticism and to instead positively lobby their supporters to tell us, if not the new strategy , what should be our way forward ?
Go out and prove your single settlement proposals have support was my clear message.
Repeated pleas, personal phone calls, even a meeting with the entire cabinet and they refused to do it.
They told us that if they stated publicly their intention to develop a new settlement, they would then have to say where and that would cost them votes.
They also informed us that as they now have National Party funding, they will be standing in every seat in the council elections. Throwing out 6 years of partnership working with cabinet colleagues of all parties and groups ,for the sake of political ambition.
Its quite difficult to be working with colleagues, telling the world how great the administration is doing and exampling its achievements in the knowledge that some of the Cabinet intend and had begun the process of actively removing the rest of Cabinet from office.
You simply cannot be in the administration and in opposition at the same time . It had become a farce. They were asked to put the administration and the Councils wishes first and they decided to put their party first, simple.
That's a decision they had to make and they did so.
It left me with a decision to make and I did so.
That’s the truth as to why they were removed. And I hated doing it, I felt a complete failure. How could they not see that they have become the very thing they were so vocal about opposing within the Conservatives.
Political ambition and the interests of a party overriding the right and proper way to administer the Council.
The Green Party and local Green members have assisted the development and realignment of the Council hugely in the last 6 years. They have brought many , me included, into understanding more fully that climate change is real, that carbon reduction is paramount and that we need to find a different future as the one we have is not sustainable for any level of government and I thank them for what they have done.
However , locally, they have been managed ,they have been kept restrained.
I suspect the Green party nationally is a very different and more malleable beast than the local group appears to have become.Greens on the whole I have found progressive , locally balanced and also with very healthy socialist leaning.
I don't recognise what I now see in good people locally.
What they have become is politically savvy and perhaps they needed to .
They place question upon question about the use of council resources at Council meetings. Questions they could easily get answered just by emailing an officer or cabinet member but instead they choose to waste those very resources by questioning council resource publicly and getting officers to answer it publicly.
Motion after motion, apple pie stuff many councillors call them, things that have nothing to do with the Council or has already been agreed by Council previously ( a rehash of a four year old anti fracking motion for instance).
A Cabinet member told me its “I move that the council doesn’t murder kittens” stuff.
And why do these Cllrs do this? Look in the local press the week after, the local press reports on the questions and on the motions and the Forest of Dean Greens have worked out that their campaign for dominance in the Forest of Dean , and that’s what it is, will be aided and abetted by using the councils meetings to express their views , to get their name in the papers.
All perfectly within their rights, and constitutionally acceptable
The Greens have simply learnt to play the political game.
They are doing it well and have confidence that they will take control of the council in May
It’s the same political drive and utter ambition that they so despised in others and that's what I find a little disappointing.
But they are not doing it to please me, they are reaching out to the electorate, its electioneering first class style.
The Forest of Dean needs Green party initiatives and ideas and will do in the future.
Individually they have so much to offer, but for some reason the local group has become viciously ambitious, and it doesn’t care what it has to say or do to get power, it will do it.
For me they are collectively not the cuddly Greens who will protect our forest and such. They have become a slick, smart and funded political party , be in no doubt about that.
In the same way I believe that a Conservative led Council would lead to a complete loss of services and lack of ambition ,I believe a Green led Council would mean there would be few or even no affordable or social homes due to the increased build costs their policy demands would place on developers .For me it would also lead to businesses having so many hurdles to jump I suspect the growth we have seen in recent years would come to a very sudden end.They would be a complete shambles unmanaged in an administration and I suspect, and I think that my Cabinet colleagues will agree with me. that they would cause the financial meltdown of our council within the first two years.
The Climate emergency is just that and it has to be a priority, but so does housing for local people, so does attracting business for local jobs, so does leisure activities so does sound financial planning and where as we all see those as equally important, if you put one of those priorities above all the others, everything fails and everything suffers.
That’s what the local Greens cannot grasp collectively.
For all the national funding. for all the brilliant climate change work .for all the environmental drive they offer and for the clear political skills they have developed, for the Forest of Dean to continue to be successful we need balance in terms of growth and the environment. This is particularly true in times of austerity and cost of living crisis.
These local Greens for me lack that balance, we will have to see if the electorate feel the same
I received much criticism and attack when I removed the Greens from cabinet,some of it quite nasty.There was even some very personal stuff by a future ward opposition candidate starting a whispering campaign that I was corrupt, on the take. That will be dealt with in due course and in my own way but this and also some other nastiness’s were key reasons for me deciding not to stand at the next election.
I take no pleasure in arriving at these views , in fact I wish so much things were different but alas they are not and this is very much my opinion.
There are others who also don’t appear to want to put the district first. I can’t name them for obvious reasons, but they are the ones with personal beefs, personal vendettas who continue to oppose and try to stop things for either political gain or worse for personal attack. They have even tried to question the fabulous Forest Economic Partnership and the wonderful work it has done, simply because it was set up by this administration .
They’ve been trying for years to damage and have failed miserably. I suspect and truly hope their constituents will well know who they are in May. I hope the electorate will ask who has made a positive impact in their ward and on the district. Look at voting records see behind those headlines.
The relationship with County Council is similarly , not without issues. In my role I must work with and alongside County colleagues on all aspects and that is what I have done and will continue to do as Leader. My cabinet has been of the same mind. Indeed, as that partnership continues it would be wrong to publicly air any differences .However I will add that I believe the district and borough councils to be fundamental to the growth and prosperity of the County. These are the local levels of governance that can join to form an overriding vision for the county and the region while they keep their independence. If any level of local government has failed it is not those district and borough councils , I will not support any wider bid or move for government deals that do not ensure the FODDCs future and its position. I will take that view into the next County Council elections if I must.
So , moving to the last five months of this council term , you will perhaps see that it’s a mixed up and crazy world in local politics.
We have indeed achieved so much, it’s actually been incredible.
However,
There are threats to that continued and further growth, there are threats to the Forests Independence and to the future social mobility of our young people.
The steps we have taken, although massive, can soon be lost if the wrong people are in charge for the wrong reasons and with party politics at their heart.
The Forest of Dean must come first other wise we will wither again, lack investment, and just become that abhorrent regional park that was the plan when we took over the administration.
Together we have shown the way forward, we have shown what works.
We have shown the strength of a collective Forest voice and while everyone standing will have their personal politics, some very much ingrained in their favoured political party, the judgement must be whether the day after the elections when they are in place in the council, will they put the Forest of Dean before their parties ideology and natural opposition or will we have 4 years of point scoring and decay.
The success we have gained, the steps we have made along with the threats to the councils future and the districts prosperity and heritage are leading me to have a change of heart.
As many will know I have had my own health issues and recent health concerns for my wife . That said and if those problems continue to improve , if I feel I can gain the support of my ward and my colleagues , then I will fight the personal abuse, I will fight for the Forests continued growth and for the future and I will stand for election next May.
I will fight alongside similarly minded colleagues and candidates, who share the view thet the Forest of Dean is what is important for its District Council, no matter what party they may align with Nationally ( within reason of course).
But we will need the public, local business , and organisations to be wanting more of the last four years.
And I'm going to need some help !
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