Put the food bank out of business

Let’s make some suggestions.

The best thing he could do would be to put the food bank out of business.

He needs to badger the government – his party – to reverse the cuts in benefit cap, the bedroom tax, so that people aren’t reduced to such poverty.

He needs to pressure the Department of Work and Pensions to relax their use of sanctions where by women can lose all benefit for a week because, for example, a crisis with children at home made them five minutes late for an appointment at the DWP.

He needs to get the rules changed back so that fewer people, like the Cross Hills mother mentioned in the articles, are suddenly left with a gap in benefits. Over 400 times last year, households in Skipton were desperate enough that they had to ask for parcels.

Some food banks are providing ‘kettle packs’, packs of pot noodles and instant soup for families unable to pay for cooking the food.

Julian Smith is a member of the party in government and should be able to influence it on our behalf.

He needs to be making sure that no-one in his constituency, or anywhere in the UK, is facing the dismal choices that take people to a food bank.

In the meantime, the rest of us need to be supporting the bank with contributions – but also voting for a return to a welfare state where no-one ever need fall below the bread line.

Annie Neligan, Green Party member, Bentham

Support Settle pool

Sir – Here in the northern section of Craven, we await the decision from Craven District Council regarding any future support for Settle Area Swimming Pool, so last week’s Herald made interesting reading.

It was pleasing to note that Aireville Pool no longer needed its £300,000 subsidy and that £49,000 is earmarked to replace software at the pool.

Of course, the pool also has a gym recently equipped at a cost believed to be circa £175,000.

Whilst on a sporting theme, the Tour de France is due to visit Skipton and the Town Hall is getting a £70,000 makeover, the building will then benefit from a next phase (more to come?) of improvements costing £220,000 plus £125,000 for a new boiler.

But it is pleasing to note that CDC is now a “leaner more efficient authority” having made unprecedented cuts, although it’s worrying that more cuts are to come.

Unfortunately, the source of our support from CDC is Core Grant Funding and this has already been identified for cutting. Indeed, in two years, we are told it will cease altogether.

Settle Pool is a vital facility, delivering services for the health and well being of our community, and we have the strongest endorsement from our doctors at Townhead Surgery and Airedale NHS Foundation Trust.

Our local primary schools use the pool as do Age UK, and last year (excluding schools) we taught around 400 kids to swim.

But the vast majority of our users cannot access benefits available at Skipton.

Our pool is essential. We have asked CDC for £20,000 – the expenditure detailed above is approaching £1 million !

Trevor Graveson, Chairman, Settle Area Swimming Pool Committee

Fixing a hole

Sir – It does not surprise me about the fatal accident in the Settle bypass (Craven Herald, March 6) as it seems North Yorkshire Highways do not seem to take any pothole report seriously.

I reported a small hole that had appeared in the pavement outside my house months ago but I did not hear from them. So I rang them up a couple of weeks ago to try to find out what’s being done about it.

A day or two later I saw a small highways van next to the hole so I went out to find out if they were filling it in.

I was told because the hole was caused by BT when they put in a new box sometime ago, the highways were passing the matter on to them. Instead they put a large cone over the hole.

Last week I went to the local builder’s merchants and bought a 25kg bag of cold tarmac.

I got my angle grinder, lump hammer and cold chisel and did the job myself.

Why the highways people can’t carry a bag or two in their vans so they can do a temporary repair is beyond me.

Alan Munnerley, Skipton

A saver writes

Sir – As a lifelong saver with it, I was interested to read of Skipton Building Society’s 50 per cent spurt in membership and nearly trebling of pre-tax profits. The new members were perhaps attracted by the interest rates being offered on savings.

The glorious news followed a letter from its chief operating officer telling me the interest rate on my Loyalty Saver account was plummeting from 1.75 per cent to 1.5 per cent.

The letter tells me it still compares favourably with “other products” and helpfully includes a comparison.

However, most people with an average income can get 3 per cent at Santander Bank up to £20,000.

So, if I as a saver am not benefiting from SBS’s good fortune, who is?

Frederic Manby, Gargrave

Congratulations on freezing council rates

Sir – I was delighted to read in the Craven Herald that once again (the fourth year running), Craven District Council have frozen our council tax.

Council leader Chris Knowles-Fitton should be congratulated for leading his robust finance committee in raising productivity by a whopping 36 per cent over the last five years, cutting out £3.5 million of expenditure. Craven ratepayers will surely agree with me that this commendable performance should not only be recognised in some way, but also used as a national example to other Local Authorities in the UK.

Hence I make the following proposal. Could our Member of Parliament, Julian Smith, approach our Secretary of State, Eric Pickles, and suggest that he creates an annual award to be given to the best performing council in the UK in terms of productivity performance?

This would send a very clear message to councillors that cutting expenditure is a vote winner.

The award itself should be of such a magnitude that with a fair wind, councillors throughout the UK will start asking difficult questions within their own bloated local authorities. The prize? How about a year’s expenditure? In Craven’s case, this would be £6.5 million.

Just think of all that capital expenditure being spent in our community. A great reward for a great performance.

How sad, therefore, to read in the same edition a letter from councillor Robert Heseltine who continues to carry that large chip on his shoulder by sniping at Craven District Council’s leader.

I doubt that Councillor Heseltine even understands the meaning of the word “productivity”. After all, he has a long history of spending other people’s money.

It is time for councillor Heseltine to remove himself from the theatrical stage on which he loves to perform.

I suspect that most people have had quite enough of his ramblings (and his poetry!).

If this councillor won’t quit before the next local elections, would someone please stand against him for all three local authorities?

We need someone who (quietly) gets on with the job of getting good value for rate payers.

Peter Rigby, Beamsley

Nothing silly about tax

Sir – Councillor Heseltine shows his true colours when he refers to “silly percentages”.

If your boss offered you the choice of a two percent rise or a four percent rise, would you reply that it didn’t matter, because percentages were silly?

As councillors, we need to be constantly aware that the money we spend is not ours, but comes from the people of Skipton. We have a responsibility to spend it carefully.

By all means, let us have some facts.

Last year’s six per cent increase was intended as a one-off, to protect the precept base of the town.

At the time, we thought there might be no government grant at all this year, and the rise was not meant to set a precedent.

As it turns out, there is a grant, so we are better off than we feared would be the case.

We were convinced that even if there were a grant 2014/15, there would not be one for 2015/16, so this possibility was not news.

It did not need revised figures dumping on the council during the meeting!

Given that there will be a general election in 2015, perhaps we are still too pessimistic.

Secondly, the town council has been wrestling with the state of Coach Street toilets for a couple of years now, and had decided to re-furbish them.

This was already in the budget, so that wasn’t news either.

The grass issue was new, but hardly world-shattering! The increase that he championed would certainly cut a lot of grass!

We are even more puzzled as to what Long Preston has to do with Skipton.

He should rest his case, it looks very tired (with or without bad poetry).

Town councillors Wendy Clark, John Dawson, Chris Harbron, Pam Heseltine, David Walsh, Paul Whitaker

Protecting the wealthy

Sir – Councillor Robert Heseltine made some interesting points in his letter.

However, like most of our local politicians in Craven, he is still a bit of a right-winger.

I have no political allegiance – indeed I have voted for all three of the main parties in the past (I don’t count UKIP just yet, but if the likes of Godfrey Bloom are anything to go by, they’d certainly never get my vote anyway).

Keeping council tax low makes for a good headline. But in reality, the figures, if broken down to weekly or monthly, make little impact to most people’s budgets (bar those on very tight incomes who are disproportionately affected – perhaps a matter for another debate).

But such small numbers for individual ratepayers add up to large figures for local authorities. And the vicious cuts being made to our public services is a national scandal.

The nonsense being spouted about austerity and boosting the economy don’t add up.

Making people poorer does not help the economy. Cutting the public sector so drastically impacts heavily on the private sector as many firms rely on local authority contracts.

No, keeping rates so low actually translates as cuts to councils in real terms.

I was certainly in favour of greater efficiencies in 2010 and voted Conservative. However, I didn’t expect such swingeing and careless cuts as those we got (and there are more to come).

I should be a classic middle income, middle class Tory voter, but I am extremely concerned that we’ll be left with such a barren and ineffective public sector that our towns and cities will become depressing, unkempt places to live. Just look at how bad Skipton has become for dog fouling for example – clearly CDC are penny pinching or they’d take some action on it, there are enough angry letters in the Herald about it.

Or perhaps the point is the Conservatives want no public sector at all.

By withdrawing state support for pretty much everything (including the NHS, which appears to be being privatised by the back door), tax rates can keep be cut for the richest as they are now.

At the risk of sounding like a whining left winger, by protecting the value of wealth for the richest, only the most expensive areas will be well looked after, paid for by those with the most cash.

And at the risk of sounding like Nick Clegg, what we really need is a greater sense of fairness. Unlike Clegg and Labour, I genuinely believe in fairness.

Sensible and careful spending yes, but we also need to look after our communities.

Surely there’s a common sense mid-way rather than the ridiculous policies all the main parties seem to come up with.

Mr J Lavocach, Keighley

Rail parking penalties

Sir – I read with interest your report about the possible introduction of parking charges at Steeton and Silsden Railway station.

I travel daily from the station to Leeds where I work, and have done so for nearly eight years.

The time you have to get to the car park to make sure you get a parking space is getting earlier and earlier every year.

I moved to Silsden just over four years ago and sometimes drive to the station, but most of the time travel to the station using public transport, like the Jacksons minibus or a Transdev service in the winter and on foot in summer months, as you take your life in your hands trying to cross the A629 Aire Valley road in the dark.

Commuters are already being penalised by rail firms by being charged nearly double what it costs to travel at a later time of day just because we don’t have a choice but to travel at peak time.

Now they want to charge people to park at their stations. It’s becoming a joke.

It will surely mean it will be cheaper to just drive and not use public transport at all.

I’m lucky that there is a bus that goes past the station, but for anybody in Eastburn, Sutton, Cross Hills or Cowling, there is no direct bus service, so how are they expected to get to the station other than to drive?

Transdev can’t even time a Skipton to Keighley service to meet a Keighley to Ilkley service in Steeton to help people travel to the station or beyond.

Many years ago, a Pride of the Dales minibus used to leave Skipton Railway station to Grassington, five minutes before a train from Leeds arrived at the station!

Why can’t the bus companies work with train companies to link bus times with train times?

However, what really annoys me whenever rail companies or the government talk about the cost of rail travel, they wheel out the same old saying, and you reported Northern Rail using it last week.

“As part of those discussions, we have been asked to provide proposals that would reduce the cost to the taxpayer of running the railway as well as providing better facilities and information for Northern customers.”

How is increasing the cost of tickets and parking fees reducing costs to the taxpayer when it the taxpayer using the railways are then paying the increased fees?

Commuters are taxpayers, unless I missed the memo saying that people that use railways don’t have to pay tax.

Nick Bewes, Silsden

No respect for cyclists

Sir – It is rare that I feel the need to respond to a letter in your newspaper but after last week’s letter by Mr Norman Fairbairn, I feel I must respond. I have been a cyclist, both racing and for leisure, for over 40 years. I cycle approximately 10,000 miles per year in the UK and 5,000 per year in Spain.

Before I retired I drove up to 25,000 miles per year in the UK and throughout Europe so I would consider myself able to give a balanced view. Firstly, Mr Fairbairn seems to be unaware that a group of cyclist has to be treated as one vehicle. He cannot enter a traffic island and plough through a group of cyclists in the mistaken belief he has right of way. It is little wonder the cyclists shook their fists at him.

In Spain traffic actually stops on traffic islands to allow cyclists safe passage but this is the norm throughout Europe as cyclists are given much greater respect. Mr Fairbairn goes on to quote two incidents to justify what idiots cyclists are, one from an accident last year in the south of England and one in New York!

If he wants to read about car drivers breaking the law, he needs only read the Craven Herald every week which has a plentiful supply of drivers in court for speeding, drink driving, careless and dangerous driving etc.

I should imagine every one of your readers witnesses car and truck drivers breaking the law with seeming impunity on a daily basis.

Strangely nobody feels the need to write a letter to your newspaper complaining, it seems to be acceptable behaviour, but if they see a cyclist behaving badly then nothing is more certain than they will put pen to paper. I am afraid that there is a definite cultural difference in how cyclists are treated by other road users in this country as opposed to the rest of Europe, maybe we should adopt the law that applies throughout Europe in that if a motorist is in collision with a cyclist or pedestrian then he is adjudged guilty unless he can prove his innocence.

John Driver, Bronte Wheelers