Waffle without syrup: The Council’s “Vision” about the Future of Housing on Islay

Ian Mitchell

Port Ellen, Isle of Islay, Scotland

Filed 16 Dec 03
www.land-care.org.uk

The Argyll & Bute Council has just released a document entitled “Local Housing Strategy 2003-2008” which it wishes the general public to read and respond to. This paper outlines what the Council officers (not to be confused with the elected Councillors) call a “housing strategy”. Housing is one of the most important issues which any community faces so this document ought to be given serious consideration by the electorate.

I have tried to do this, but without forgetting the fiasco of the Kilnaughton beach housing development which I wrote about earlier this year. Then, it took two meetings of elected Councillors to overturn the recommendations of an unelected officer, Mr Richard Kerr, who invoked, amongst other things, the cultural history of Islay, a subject on which he is not, to put it at its kindest, an acknowledged expert. The people of Islay voted 1,089 to 32 in favour of this development. In a democracy, such a vote should have been decisive, more or less instructing the Council to reject Mr Kerr’s attempt to stop development round Port Ellen bay. But it was not. It was taken as merely advisory. A further meeting of the full Council nearly scuppered the plan when Councillors from Helensburgh and Dunoon voted against the clearly expressed wishes of the people of Islay.

To anyone who believes in democracy as a system of government, there is something wrong with a situation in which so strong a local view on so important a matter as housing can be ignored by so many people in power. The main question which the Council’s new “housing strategy” ought to answer is whether it has any intention of addressing the issue of what might be called the democratic deficit in the aspect of local politics. In other words, does this document give us any grounds for hope that in future the Council will listen to the people of Islay on the subject of housing on Islay?

What the strategy is

The document starts by saying that the purpose of a housing strategy is to “assess the current and future balance of housing supply and demand; maximise effective working of the local housing market; and ensure that the impact of housing conditions on people’s lives is beneficial.” Since the most important fact about the housing market on Islay at the moment is that it is far too expensive for most people to afford, and that much of the cost pressure comes from the credit-related housing boom in England, I started by looking through this 74-page document for any reference to these factors. In vain: there is not a single direct mention of money, despite the fact that that is the main problem. Neither is there any solution offered to the other crucial factor which came up during the Kilnaughton dispute, namely the absurdly limited amount of land on which officers like Mr Kerr are prepared to give their blessing for new housing development by private builders.

So what is in these 74 important pages? We are given a description of the Council’s two “visions”: its general “vision” and its “housing vision”. The former talks about “partnership”, “communities” and empowerment. The second vision refers to “sustainable housing to help sustain development of all the communities that we serve”—whatever that means.

From visions we move on to themes. Not surprisingly, a Council which has two vision—double vision?—has no fewer than five “themes”, involving “securing access”, “addressing issues”, “community regeneration”, “addressing needs” and “achieving Best Value”. This last is such an important phrase that it is capitalised. But what does it mean in practical terms? Having given careful consideration to the full text, I have to report that I have no idea. These words have no reference to anything real—no objective correlative, as philosophers might put it. They are simply “feel good” words imposed, I am informed, by the Scottish Executive.

Reading all these harmless-sounding platitudes, I was reminded of Winston Churchill’s comment about Ramsay MacDonald, the socialist idealist from Banffshire who became the country’s first Labour Prime Minster in 1924. Though honest and personally kind, MacDonald was a vague and wordy character who rarely made a firm commitment on anything. Churchill described him as “the boneless wonder”, adding he was the only member of the House of Commons who could fall over without hurting himself.

My response to this document was to conclude that its only serious purpose is to provide cover in the bureaucratic jungle for those officers of the Argyll & Bute Council who have to carry out the Scottish Executive’s instruction to produce a Council Housing Strategy. The Council needs to be able to fall over without hurting itself. When the policy changes within central government, the Council will have to change too, adopting new visions and themes, not to mention strategies, frameworks, structures, procedures, protocols, parameters and principles. It might well also need to reassess the Joint Future Agenda, the Joint Community Care Plan, the Supporting People Strategy, the Tenant Participation Strategy, the Fuel Poverty Strategy (this aims “to achieve a long-term lifestyle change in the perceptions and use of domestic power”), the Agenda for Growth, the Community Futures programme, “partnership working with a collaborative and multi-agency approach”, transparency in the options appraisal process, accountability to stakeholders, effective synergies and, amidst this cacophony of clichés, a consistency of objectives due to “a cross-cutting and integrated approach”—all of which reminds me of another Churchill witticism.

The great man once said, “During a long life I have had to eat my own words many times, and I have found it a very nourishing diet.” Let us hope the Council has the same experience when it has to eat this document. But how nutritious are sentences like this: “The Executive has advised that sustainability and equalities are all essential of Best Value”? This is written exactly as printed. It makes no sense to me at all. I haven’t the slightest idea what the author was driving at. It is not even funny in its impenetrability. To continue the food metaphor, it is waffle without the syrup.

The waffle extends to purely practical issues. At the Kilnaughton meeting earlier this year, my namesake Ian (“Hammersmith”) Mitchell made the reasonable point that one of the constraints on housing development on Islay is the shortage of builders. “I can hardly cross the road,” he said, “without being nearly knocked down by one of Colin Logan’s vans.” How does the Council propose to deal with that situation? Does it say the market should be left to its own devices, as shortages will drive prices up, which will tempt others into the market (complete with hydraulic painting platforms perhaps) which will tend to bring prices back down again?

Or does this document say the market mechanism is inappropriate, so we should have a direct labour force as before? Both approaches are quite respectable and have their adherents. The problem is both also have their opponents. The key skill in bureaucracy is never to offend anyone since the main rule of survival is the old Soviet one, namely that as the risks of failure are greater than the rewards of success, the rational thing to do is nothing at all, or as close to nothing as you can get while maintaining the appearance of focussed industriousness.

Applying that principle to the problem of a genuine, practical obstacle to house construction, the Council has come up with the creatively empty solution of starting a roadshow! This is what the document says: “Lack of capacity in the construction and contracting industry has also been recognised as an economic constraint… Therefore the Council is supporting a Scottish Executive initiative to improve the performance of Scotland’s construction industry. The Council has organised a series of awareness raising roadshows to highlight to local contractors how they can modernise their operations under the banner ‘Modernising Construction’. A Construction Liaison Officer has been appointed…”

Leaving aside the sulphurous whiff of Leninism about people marching forward with bright faces under banners bearing idiotic slogans like “Modernising Construction”, this approach essentially boils down to the Council telling builders how to run their businesses. That is absurd, when the Argyll & Bute Council came second from bottom in a league table of Scottish Local Authorities for efficiency and quality of service which was published by the Sunday Herald on 18 March 2001. Only North Ayrshire is more incompetently run than Argyll & Bute, yet our Council glibly proposes to take on the new task of teaching local builders how to do their jobs.

After twenty or so pages, I found myself searching for the most vacuous euphemism or the most childish statement of the obvious in this strange, unworldly document. Though tempted, I rejected “Social Inclusion Partnerships” (whatever they are), “Social Justice” (never explained in this context), “Sustainability” (irrelevant in this context, since houses cannot be used up), “Closing the Opportunity Gap”, “Tenant Empowerment”, “Putting Our Communities First”, “Valuing People” and even “A Scotland where Everyone Matters”. In a strong field, I had to award the palme d’or to the last seven words of this passage: “The Homelessness Strategy, Supporting People Strategy and Local Housing Strategy [are] complementary… The strategy’s vision is: Good Housing is Crucial to Family Life.” Well, I never did! Whatever will they think of next?

So we have three strategies with one vision, produced by one Council with two visions. Ricky Gervais could hardly have done better.

Though the ostensible purpose of this document is to consult with the people, the vocabulary is really designed to exclude them. Hardly anyone in Argyll outside the Council knows the meaning (if any) behind the slogans and euphemisms quoted above. In fact, this is an old-style elitist document, designed for the Council only. Due to the current fashion for the pretence of open government, it has been published whereas fifty years ago it would not have been. Now the Council can say, quite untruthfully, that it has “consulted” the people. Consultation in a language the consultees do not understand is not consultation at all. More people would have understood this document if it had been written in Baghdad Gaelic.

On Islay

Three pages are devoted to detailed consideration of the position in Islay, Jura and Colonsay. The first definite statement I noticed was the exact opposite of the truth. “In respect of land supply, the extent of future housing development on both Islay and Jura will very much depend on the willingness of landowners to dispose of potential sites…” As everyone on Islay knows, the main problem is not shortage of sites but the Council Planning Department which has consistently over the years made the sort of footling, technical difficulties with planning consent which Mr Kerr attempted to do over the Kilnaughton development. When some of the schools cannot even fill their teaching staff allocation due to the lack of housing, this is a very serious matter.

To my mind, the worst of it is that this document is based on a report by a Glasgow-based consulting firm which the Council thought knew more about housing conditions in Argyll & Bute than it did. Large amounts of Council Tax-payers money were spent because our Council cannot be bothered to go face-to-face with the local people. This is the disease which is becoming known locally as Sinclairism, after Lawrie Sinclair, the managing Director of Caledonian MacBrayne who memorably refused a public meeting to discuss the Islay ferry service with the people of Islay last year because to do so would only confuse matters for his consultants.

Luckily the whole Council is not composed entirely of Sinclairoids, and the officer who organised this document, Mr Ronnie McKenzie, has graciously offered to come out to Islay from his Clydeside office to hear the views of Ileachs who feel that this Housing Strategy should not be the Council’s last word on so important an issue. Having spoken to him at length about it, I am persuaded that Mr McKenzie really does want to hear local views, so this opportunity should be grasped. The consultation period lasts until 30 January 2004. The full text of the Council’s strategy is available on its website: www.argyll-bute.co.uk.

If you would like to attend a meeting, or wish to write expressing a view about local housing, please email Mr McKenzie at ronnie.mckenzie@argyll-bute.gov.uk, fax him on 01436 658711, or write to him c/o Argyll & Bute Council Offices, 31 James Street, Helensburgh G84 8BW. Details of any meeting will be given in the Ileach in due course.

Ian Mitchell’s book, Isles of the West: a Hebridean Voyage is published by Birlinn
and is available in most bookshops on Islay.