CONSIDER this fact, revealed this morning in the Comprehensive Area Assessment of Dorset: Women in poorer parts of West Dorset live, on average, six years less than women in better-off parts of the district.
That is six years less to enjoy, for example, the pleasures of being with grandchildren – or having a nice bit of cake and a cup of tea in the WI café in Bridport on Saturday mornings – or playing short-mat bowls.
Is it fair that poor women should miss out on nearly 2,200 days of life compared with their wealthier counterparts?
Or is it just the way things are, the way things always have been and always will be?
People have to make their own minds up.
That’s the point of the Comprehensive Area Assessment of Dorset, published this morning. It’s a new kind of Government inspection that is supposed to tell people not just how an individual council is performing, but what an area is like to live in.
It is also meant to let people know how councils and other governmental bodies (like the police, and the fire and rescue service) are all working together to make a place better.
Local people, when they have digested all this information, are meant to hold local bodies to account and press for improvements. That’s the idea, anyway.
Clicking on this link will take you to the main overview page for Dorset.
A word of warning: CAA reports are written in a simple style that is supposed to make them more accessible. Page after page is written in short sentences. Short sentences that are supposed to be easy to read. But these short sentences are all too alike. So these short sentences get on your nerves.
Nevertheless, there is a wealth of detail packed away in them.
From the organisational assessment of West Dorset District Council:
“House building has slowed down because of the recession. And big building schemes to make local towns attractive to people have not gone to plan. But the Council did well in deciding most people’s planning applications quickly and the quality of its decisions improved.”
Could there be a reference in here to the South West Quadrant scheme proposed for Bridport – or two? Is the SWQ scheme officially supposed to be making Bridport “attractive” to people? Or was turning it down – twice – a sign of improved quality decision- making? Probably not the latter, in the official mind; the main quality indicator is almost certainly the number and outcome of appeals. Though another section does state: “Local councillors are particularly strong at challenging decisions and considering different ways of doing things”.
From the organisational assessment of Dorset County Council:
“The Council worked well with its district council partners and others to help local people and businesses cope in the recession. A fund was set up to help, but this was not needed.”
Who decided it was “not needed”? What has happened to this fund now? West Dorset generally lags 12-18 months behind the rest of the country in recessions. I can’t name them – it wouldn’t be fair – but I can think of several retailers who’ve only recently been hit by bad unpaid debts. So a later assessor’s remark may be truer:
“The Council knows that worse may yet to be come…”
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