As Staffordshire cuts costs, unelected Police Authority ‘bods’ choose bureaucracy over front line services…

Just amazing, particularly because under Government plans in 18 months time Staffordshire Police Authority will be scrapped completely.

And so the thick end of £100k annual salary for a brand new Police Authority Chief Exec seems extraordinary just as they are looking to cut front line services by disbanding the motorcycle police unit.

Non-elected independents & Liberal Democrats outvote Conservatives

This despite protests from Conservatives on the Police Authority. And the fact the CXO will only be around until the demise of Staffordshire Police Authority means they’ll likely be a second decent severance payout in due course.

Until a couple of years ago the Police Authority was administered, on a relative shoestring, by the County and the CXO then was the County’s Chief Officer on a very part time basis. Not so now, as recently the Police Authority has grown in admin and massively in costs.

The County even offered to have Staffordshire’s Chief Officer cover the interim for the Police Authority as in the past but no. This was debated by the County today and every Party but the Liberal Democrats were utterly appalled at the likely scrapping of the police motor cycles in favour of a new and expensive bureaucrat.

To be clear, this is public money being wasted by unelected Police Authority appointees despite Staffordshire as a whole being run by Conservatives. Nonsense.

Financial crisis… what crisis?

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It wasn’t until I sat down with a group from MENCAP that the things most take for granted really hit home…

And when I had that hour ’roundtable’ recently with a dozen or so individuals with severe disabilities and listened, with the help of their carers, to what they had to say about their lives, the basis of this post became very clear.

So when MENCAP Staffordshire asked me to actively back their campaign for specialist toilet facilities in each main town in the county I was very happy to do so. 

Most of us take completely for granted our flexibility when it comes to needing the loo but people with severe disabilities and mental health issues often do not have that flexibility.

And on top of that, normal public toilets are unsuitable for those with the greatest disabilities. Practically, they do need much more elaborate toilet changing facilities so their carers are able to help them with what we take for granted.

Changing Places facilities offer those extra features, space and special equipment to allow people with the greatest needs to have a little bit more of a normal life when it comes to going out and about with their carers.

The County development currently being built in Stafford town will have Changing Places facilities open for public use and I recently wrote to every district council in Staffordshire encouraging them to consider requiring new builds to include the specialist changing and toilet facilities under planning rules.

They are only marginally more expensive than decent normal disability toilets and so the extra bit of expense, even in these difficult times, is well worth it when you account for the real difference it will make to lives.

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