How is a council like a condom?

If there's one thing guaranteed to increase Paakwa's nervousness rating, it's when councils start meddling with business. Let's face it, if they couldn't compulsorily increase their rate demands in excess of inflation every year they'd go bankrupt.

So would you trust them to run a business?

Craven District Council (CDC hereon) is an outstanding example of how to spend money in profligate ways.

It's now receiving around £7 million per annum in total from business rates and central government (our money), which together contributed £3.284 million plus a further £3.815 million from us council-tax payers.

Whilst CDC will no doubt be saying it's not enough in its coming annual demand, it amounts to around an 8% increase on the preceding year, a healthy increase by any yardstick.

CDC chooses to spend our money as it sees fit, and where it sees fittest is on staff, whose numbers have increased colossally over the last few years. Staff wages have increased in equal proportion, i.e. colossally.

But let's put a figure on 'colossally'.

In the financial year 2003/4 (council years run from April 1st to March 31st) CDC spent £5.62 million of our money on staff wages. Last year that increased to £7.3 million, an increase of 30% in three short years. That's efficiency CDC style!

It doesn't take a financial genius to notice that the council is paying virtually all its incoming council tax, business rates and government funding in staff wages – and this doesn't include the pension contributions for all those workers.

But while you and I might think that's appalling maths and management in equal measure, it seems that fact is lost on CDC. Perhaps unsurprising given that over the past few years it has shed its financial directors at the rate of around one a year, the last financial director now working for HML, the company which in partnership with CDC itself obtained planning consent for a new office development on supposedly protected greenfield site.

All of which brings us neatly back to the beginning, and CDC's meddling in private sector business matters.

The primary business of councils is not the welfare of business – but to look after the best interests of its electorate. CDC, however, doesn't see it that way.

So CDC's latest wheeze is to use our money to plan massive employment schemes in sensitive areas such as the unique and irreplaceable Hoffman kilns at Langcliffe. This publicly-owned site is rightly classified as an ancient monument and nature reserve, with rare orchids and peregrines. Even this scheme's begetter, CDC director of community services Jonathan Kerr, an officer with a track record of enthusiasm for business developments, admits it is a 'sensitive' location.

So what does Jonathan intend?

He intends the site to ‘move forward’ by allowing Craven College and Leeds Metropolitan University to build education centres there. In addition to this encroachment into a protected area he also proposes a business site, dormitory blocks, and car parks.

Well, what could be more 'sensitive' than that? Well done Jonathan!

And for those of you who fear that your own area might be left alone, unspoiled, and unblessed by all the treats Jonathan has in mind, he told the Craven Herald:

“If we can move this site forward in a positive way, then there is no site that we can’t deal with!"

Just one of the many innovative ways in which CDC can sell off our assets to cover its financial shortfalls. We must be forever grateful for its sensitivity and efficiency!

Oh yes! The answer to the question posed at the beginning, 'How is a council like a condom?'

Simple, they both claim sensitivity whilst stifling it, and their chief effect is to kill creativity.