The good ship Boston - the view from the Harbord side

There are, as they say, two sides to every story. Yesterday we reported on the Council Leader's comments in the foreword to the borough’s annual report.
Aside from a hint of no jam tomorrow, the leader was so gung ho about the council’s achievements that you could have canned it and sold it.
However, the next page of the report - from Interim Chief Executive Richard Harbord took a less sanguine view.
Under the heading “Immense change and more to come,” he warned that the immense change that there has been in  Boston will continue “without abatement” - thus extending the meteorological metaphors adopted by his leader.
We were reminded that the Audit Commission branded Boston’s performance as “unacceptably poor” - which apparently had more to do with the fact that Boston had become complacent about its systems and procedures and as the national measures of these things moved Boston failed to move with them.
The authority had failed to take the necessary steps to retain its “adequate” rating - although we would have preferred to have heard that it had been striving for a “good” assessment.
That led to changes in management of the authority and to the appointment of an external Improvement Board to ensure that the necessary steps were taken to secure continuous improvement.
We’re interested in this Improvement Board. We hear much about it, but know nothing of its operation.
Perhaps our “open and transparent” borough might like to tell us more about how it is cleaning up its act - but somehow we feel that hell will freeze over before this happens.
A good for instance of this is tomorrow’s additional meeting of the cabinet, at which the only item listed - a report by Mr Harbord entitled “Transformation” - is being discussed in secret.
The council now faces cost cutting to the order of 25% over the next four years, and it will be interesting to see where the axe will fall.
News of the much vaunted healthy eating cafe has been conspicuous by its absence of late - not that there was ever much of it because again for some bizarre reason it has always been discussed in secret.
Where are the window stickers which we were promised would camouflage our plethora of unsightly empty shops in Boston?
And what about the refurbishment of the Market Place? Again, the sound of silence is deafening.
Expect more of the same in the years to come.

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