All Parties on the Council have long shared the objective of getting all the Council’s staff based in one location (with the probable exception of ‘depot based’ staff such as refuse collection personnel).
When the Liberal Democrats ran the Council: We moved towards this objective by buying 66 High Street and the former Electricity Showrooms on Exchange Street; bringing all the Council’s staff into the town centre and all customer facing staff into one building so that, whether a person wanted to pay their Council Tax, look at a neighbour’s planning application or get on the housing waiting list, they went to the same building.
This approach not only means that people know which office to go to but also led to more efficient use of customer service staff and the closure of the Council’s two outlying AVDC offices at Bearbrook House and Walton Street.
The Tories: The current Council has turned a sound principle into an expensive obsession. They want to put all the Council’s staff into a single building off the Gatehouse Road. A project that is likely to cost upwards of £20 million and still won’t achieve the policy aim because they are (rightly) committed to leaving some staff who deal with the public in the town centre.
Refurbishing one section of the building to accommodate staff from Exchange Street is necessary because that building is to be demolished. Refurbishing the second section to take staff from the Council’s Great Western St/Friars Square offices also makes sense because those offices are the only ones that the Council does not own and it will save AVDC a good deal of rent each year. However, the Tories grandiose plans for a new Council Chamber and a third, newly built, section to house staff already adequately accommodated in a much more sensible location, will cost a great deal of money without achieving anything worthwhile.
What the Liberal Democrats would do: Whilst we continue to support the principle of bringing all our staff together, we would immediately abandon the third, new build, part of the Gatehouse Road project. We would then talk to the County Council (after all, we are supposed to be involved in “pathfinder joint working”) about their accommodation needs in the Town Centre, about a joint customer service centre and about a joint Council Chamber (they are also without an appropriate meeting place).
We believe that all AVDC’s staff should be in the Town Centre because that is good for the economy of Aylesbury (for instance, they will spend more in their lunch times etc when home based shopping for many of them is outside the Vale) and because it is better for the environment (eg it makes it easier for staff to get to work via public transport and reduces lunch time car travel).
We believe that it is in the public interest for the County and District Councils to operate a single Customer Service Centre. They are doing that at Buckingham, so there is no reason not to in Aylesbury. Not only will this make it easier for their customers, it should also save money through economies of scale and improved inter-working between the two authorities.
The County is already reviewing its own accommodation requirements and, since both authorities operate in the same town and are publicly committed to working together, it makes sense for them to decide their needs collectively. This should mean that AVDC will eventually move out of the Gatehouse side. That is no problem as long as the Tories haven’t been able to go ahead with their monstrously expensive new build there, since the existing buildings need most of the planned refurbishment work anyway before they can be re-let commercially.
We accept that the Councils need an appropriate meeting place but a Council Chamber can be an expensive indulgence or an asset. AVDC spending several millions of pounds on a chamber to be used for is main purpose half a dozen times a year is daft. The County doing so as well would be gross irresponsibility. We believe that the two authorities should work together to find a common solution to their problem, creating a joint chamber that becomes a public asset that can be used effectively and efficiently for other uses too.
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