Whodunnit? Credit where credit is due, please ...

Here at Boston Eye, we are great believers in giving credit where credit is due. Sadly this has not often been possible in the past four years, as the Boston Bypass Independents achieved little that could be deemed creditworthy.
But we did something of a double take the other day when Boston Borough Council broke the news that the Improvement Board which has been monitoring its progress since it sailed into choppy waters some while ago no longer felt it necessary to meet.
There has always been contention over the establishment of the Improvement Board.
The record says that it was announced at the end of September 2009 at the instigation of former leader Richard Austin – but others claim that had this not been done there would have been more serious government intervention, and that the action was little more that a face-saving exercise to keep the wolves at bay.
Whatever the reason, the board’s life has parallelled that of the previous administration.
Which is why we were surprised at the phraseology of the announcement.
“The council has received final official recognition of its newly improved status” it read. “The Improvement Board declared it would not have to convene again, satisfied with all progress.”
So far so good …
The announcement continued: “Leader Councillor Peter Bedford said the board was satisfied that the council had political leadership and said the timing could not have been better.
“It’s excellent news – we have a new council, a clean bill of health and a new start,” he said.
Hang on a mo ...!
It doesn’t take much reading between the lines to interpret this as saying that the arrival of the Conservatives meant that the board considered that its work was no longer necessary.
The council’s status is surely not “newly improved.”
It has been achieved over 18 months, and has doubtless involved considerable effort and sacrifice on the part of the staff.
To say the board was satisfied that the council had political leadership seems to suggest that this is something of a miracle, which only occurred on the morning of Friday 6th May.
The BBI might have been a disastrous, ramshackle, misbegotten political ragbag, but it is obvious that it worked with the improvement board to achieve the result announced so fortuitously (for the Tories) just as it lost its grip on the reins of power.
And the council has a “new start” in political terms only. All the old problems remain lurking in the wings, and it remains to see what sort of fist the Conservatives will make of things. Let’s not forget that they played a key role in a lot of pre-BBI decisions that created many of the problems that the borough found itself in by 2007.
We feel that this is a case when generosity in victory could have been the Tory mantra – with acknowledgement that the good timing of the announcement for them was as a result of the efforts of the previous administration. OBE's they're called by some.
And we hope that they do not lose sight of the comments by Chief Executive Richard Harbord in the latest issue of the borough’s bulletin.
Whilst he says that Boston is well placed to not only survive but to flourish in the new world now slowly emerging, it will need considerable leadership and courage to make the necessary changes to survive.
This suggests that tough times lie ahead rather than an easy ride and perhaps not the “new start” so gleefully quoted.
And in what might be seen as oblique praise for his former masters, Mr Harbord adds that “the building blocks are all in place,” but that “there is still a mountain to climb to move from adequate to best of the breed, and that is what our current improvement plan and performance monitoring is all about.
“Compared to many districts we are in a good financial position but there are further major cuts in funding to come and we will need to change considerably to meet those challenges.
“I remain however, quietly confident that Boston is in good heart and ready to move
forward to meet the new challenges.”
We hope so, we really hope so.


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