Ric Metcalfe

By Ric Metcalfe City of Lincoln Council Leader

I took on my first allotment when living in London in 1968, and got one here in Lincoln soon after I moved to the city seven years later. I’ve not looked back since then, and now my daughter (who lives in Brighton) has one, and my grandchildren have got involved as well.

Unfortunately, allotments have been the poor relation for years and were not seen as much to do with the main aims or priorities of the council. That’s the most fundamental thing that needs to change and I have already made it clear to colleagues and officers that it must.

I would like to see more time given to the views and wishes of allotment holders and wider participation in allotment gardening among other under-represented groups.

The infrastructure of allotments had, until recently, been sadly neglected. This was one of the main reasons we had a detailed report compiled about the investment needed to make sure the city continues to have allotments that are fit-for-purpose and situated in the right places.

The report made around 30 recommendations in total, including:

• Changes to the way allotments are managed day-to-day
• Improvements required to infrastructure valued at an estimated cost of between £880k to £1 million
• Suggestions of options for raising the cash either by developer Contributions or by sale of some plots and reinvestment of the proceeds into allotments

The report has now been through the Scrutiny Committee, and will be going in front of our Executive Committee in the near future.

We have been getting on with things in the meantime, including:

• Getting rid of asbestos, –both loose and where it’s being used as roofing material
• Consulting on the use of the £75,000 we allocated last year to make a start on the infrastructure problems
• Trying to get going some representative structures across the city (some areas have allotment associations, others do not)

Since the report, we’ve been hit with a financial firestorm, with £3 million of savings to find because of a drop in funding from the Government. Some very unpopular decisions will continue to have to be made for reasons that are not of our making.

However, this will not deflect us from the things that matter, even if it means that some of the things may now take a little longer to complete.

The very least, what we need to do is maintain the current provision, meet any increase in demand, and explore if there is any appetite for self-management. This would not mean the council is abandoning its responsibilities, but rather encouraging and supporting people who genuinely want self-management to make some decisions about how we secure the £1 million needed to ensure allotments are fit-for-purpose, secure, well drained, and with good facilities that continue to attract a broadly representative cross section of our communities in Lincoln.

Why do I love my allotment so much?

There are many benefits to having an allotment, not only physically but also for your mental well-being. It definitely helps me to unwind from my role as leader of the City Council!

Self-sufficiency is a strong motivator and the sheer pleasure of eating food you have grown for yourself, which isn’t tired and starchy like a lot of shop-bought produce.

Having your own patch also means you’re reducing the miles food has to travel and huge bio-diversity benefits result from allotment sites, especially in cities.

And last, and by no means least, is the camaraderie among fellow allotment holders. There’s a real pleasure you get from sharing the activity with others and I’ve been fortunate to make some great friends over the years.

Let’s try to secure as important a future for allotments as they have had in the past!

Councillor Ric Metcalfe is the Labour Leader of the City of Lincoln Council.

By Ric Metcalfe City of Lincoln Council Leader

Chancellor George Osborne announced the result of the government’s latest public spending review today, which included a proposal for a further cut in local government spending of 10%.

This cut is on top of the 30% cut in local council budgets which will see the City of Lincoln’s net revenue budget fall from around £18 million to £12 million by the end of the period to 2017/18.

This will continue to result in cuts in services that the council and the people it represents have valued over the years and utterly deplore having to lose.

Public services cannot continue to take this level of punishment, nor should they have to.

As Leader of the City Council I am frequently asked why all this pain is necessary.

The current gap between national income and expenditure (“the deficit”) is not about excessive spending, it is about loss of tax revenues and the grossly unfair, but largely unseen distribution of the tax burden between rich and poor.

Tax revenues have fallen steadily in recent years by an annual rate in excess of 10%. There are a number of reasons for this:

• A long term decline in the UK’s tax base (the number of parties who can be taxed) by the flight of manufacturing and other businesses to lower wage economies around the world reducing tax revenue from high value industries.
• Higher rates of unemployment leading to loss of tax revenues and a greater call on public spending to provide income support
• The fractionalising of jobs – splitting jobs into part time/ small number of hours/zero hours contracts which means low pay and little or no tax revenues (this has produced the current paradox that the Government boasts about, that there are more people in work- not really, its more people in the labour market but with considerably less work each)
• Loss of tax revenues is also about the effect of pay restraint both in the private sector and the public sector- typically people getting 1% pay increases or less and paying less tax as a result and depressing consumer demand
• There is also the reduction in Corporation Tax (what companies pay on profits) and the reduction in the higher rates of income tax both significantly lessening what comes into the Exchequer
• There has been a significant fall in tax revenues from the financial sector-notably Banking and other City of London financial services
• Then we have the “Tax Gap” this is the difference between what the Chancellor gets in by way of tax revenue and what he should receive. Estimates vary between £35 billion and £120 billion(about the size of the public deficit)
• Tax evasion and tax avoidance and late payment of taxes owed, often by very large companies, has rightly been getting a lot of attention lately.Some large, well-known companies found to have used all sorts of methods for paying little or no tax- an absolute scandal that people are just beginning to recognise.

You did not hear much about these issues in the Chancellor’s statement today. It was more of the same old mantra that we have seen since 2010; that the way out of recession is to go on cutting public spending and taking away the public services that, in hard times, people desperately need.

So what’s the alternative I hear you cry!

We need to concentrate on getting economic growth going and generate the tax revenues that will flow from this.

There are three specific things I would have liked to see the Chancellor do:

• A large scale public investment programme in housing, transport, education, and green technology, underpinned by a boost in demand and financed by the two banks currently in public ownership
• A lifting of the current cap on the borrowing powers of local council’s for council house building. This can be supported by the £27million a year received in rent paid by council house tenants in Lincoln- and would help us meet the desperate shortage of affordable homes and be a terrific boost to jobs in the local building industry,get people off the dole and increase tax revenues !
• Stop the phoney rhetoric on tax avoidance and legislate to stop it and introduce a financial transaction tax. According to the Institute of Public Policy Research, a tax rate of just 0.01 % would raise £25 billion a year

Councillor Ric Metcalfe is the Labour Leader of the City of Lincoln Council.