First speech by SKDC’s new leader

Newly elected leader of South Kesteven District Council Ashley Baxter, made his inaugral acceptance speech before the full council yesterday (Thursday)

He said:

Thank you, colleagues for choosing me to lead the Council from this point hence.

Compare and contrast to this time last year, and ask yourself was there ever a more clear-cut case of a poacher becoming a gamekeeper? And a Lincolnshire poacher at that. As any regular listener to the Archers will be aware, it is often former poachers who are the most qualified to be gamekeepers.

The work begins immediately. And as soon as this meeting is over, I am sure Cllr Cleaver will want to meet with me to hand over the nuclear codes.

I will then seek an urgent meeting with Cllr Rhys Baker to see if he will recommend me a good tailor!

I would like to express my thanks to Cllr Richard Cleaver for the honourable way that he has stuck to the agreement we made, with the ‘29’, many months ago. I am, of course, grateful and relieved that everyone else has also stuck to the script. This change of Leadership is not the result of any crisis or instability, and I don’t intend that it should be the cause of any instability.

Some might try to suggest that 8 months is not long in a Leadership position but Richard , it’s been a busy old time over the last 8 months, I would remind such people that since the last General Election, the average tenure of a Cabinet Member is only 7 months.

I want to thank Richard, also, for the time and commitment that he has put into the role of Leader since last May. All the meetings, phone calls, WhatsApps, e-mails and other messages that he has handled. Some fire-fighting, some fire-lighting, some handling difficult questions from reasonable people. Some handling reasonable questions from difficult people, and various other combinations of the above.

Richard has launched the Corporate Plan, navigated us through the Depot proposals, shone a light on the St Martin’s Park situation, steered us through the LeisureSK situation, and helped us to arrive at a decision on the Deepings Leisure Centre. As Leader, Richard has helped us to turn over various stones, lifted up the carpet and opened the metaphorical curtains to allow in the sunlight.

Talking of which, the people who disparagingly refer to our administration as the ‘rainbow alliance’ have clearly forgotten that rainbows are the result of sunlight entering a storm.

Back in May, some people looked cynically at this motley bunch which they described as former Greens, actual greens, former Labour members, actual Labour members, former Conservatives, actual far-right fanatics, loony-lefties, conspiracy theorists, eco-mentalists, climate deniers and last but not least Liberal Democrats… but we have more to unite us than to divide us. We all have single-minded focus on improving services for residents and, ironically, it is the SK Coalition of Conservatives and neo-Conservatives which seems to be struggling, and failing, to hold themselves together.

So, to attend to the Terms and Conditions, I can announce that apart from the positions of Leader and Deputy Leader, and as far as it is up-to-me, the membership of the Cabinet, and broadly our designated responsibilities, will remain unchanged until the Annual Meeting of the Council. For avoidance of doubt, I am appointing Cllr Richard Cleaver as my Deputy Leader.

I look forward to working with Karen Bradford and all the Officers of the Council. I expect robust debate and, I daresay, the occasional disagreement as is healthy in any organization. But I recognize the that Senior Officers of the SMT have hundreds of years of experience in local government … collectively between them… and we all of us need to respect, appreciate and celebrate these resources.

I’ve said many times before that this Council Chamber is a much happier place than it was a year ago. When I first elected in 2015, the then new Leader, the Late Cllr Bob Adams, welcomed me as an opposition member and told me that he fully expected that there would be theatricals in the Council chamber, but if I actually wanted to communicate about anything important then I would be welcome to approach him directly. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable way to operate and one I would like to emulate.

There are 70,000 households that are relying on us to deliver efficient, effective, value for money services. We can only do that if we all play our part and work together, cross party, cross chamber, members and officers alike. Of course we need constructive abrasion but we all need to remember that ultimately, we’re all on the same team. Thanks for appointing me as Team Captain.