Interviewed by Peter Ruffles (PAR) Frances Green (FGG)
Date: 08/11/2022
Transcribed by Freda Joshua (using Otter.Ai for initial transcript)
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording No: O2022.4
Interviewee: Bob Deering (BD)
Date: 08 November 2022
Interviewers: Peter Ruffles (PAR) Frances Green (FGG)
Transcriber: Freda Joshua (using Otter.Ai for initial transcript)
Typed by: Freda Joshua
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
PAR: So, it's the eighth of November 2022, and Frances Green and I are in the company of Councillor Bob Deering. And by a coal fire, because it's a November day, but actually, it's not really cold enough for a fire, the sun's shining after a few days of heavy rain. It's special for us because Bob is a particularly busy councillor, heavy load, local schedule being what it is. In the trade, it's called triple tracking, but we'll have to describe what that is a little bit later in the interview. So, triple tracking is quite a rarity in local government, and later, I'm sure we'll describe what that may be. Or shall we do it now? It means, it means being a member of authorities at the three different levels of local authority working in this particular town, and not all towns will have three levels, some only have two, we have three and Bob's on all three, and it's the Hertford Town Council, the East Hertfordshire District Council, and the Hertfordshire County Council.
So that's our structure currently, and we will be interested in Bob's assessment of how it may be in, let's say, 50 years time for this town. He may or may not want to say much about that. And you, therefore, Bob represent the town centre, or nine tenths of it, and a very diverse community outside that, from the well-heeled in various parts of your division, to those who are facing particular hardship and challenge financially, and all that follows from that in this current time.
So Bob, we are in conversation, but are prompted with a few questions and curtailed because we need to move on fairly quickly because we have a rough time limit, which is about an hour we think, don't we, which is about as much as our listeners may want to take. We can always to come back and start again. So speaking of local government in our town, we’re speaking to representatives of the three, four parties, which are currently elected, although we spoke to one representative of a party and he wasn't currently an elected member, and you're number three. We didn't come to you first of all, despite your lofty position. Bob is the cabinet member for resources at the County Council, is that right? Which is a description that no one will understand, and I did test it in the Working Men's at Bengeo at the weekend, on a very wet Saturday afternoon: ‘What do you think this job is? This is typical of local government’, and the poor people who’d come in to watch their football team on the big screen, after a bit of debate, decided that you were a football scout, because resources meant going around to other places and locating things and bringing them back and reporting them. Nottinghamshire’s got a very good idea about tram lines and things like that. So that was their assessment. So, so much unintelligible stuff in local government and your title may well be one of those.
So, Bob, some background, you're a Cheshunt boy.
BD: Okay. So yes, so I grew up in Cheshunt, and I was born at Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield. But I think, I think my - I'm an only child - so I think my mother and father moved to Cheshunt when I was about six months old. I'm as certain as I can be that the house that they moved into, had been a very small pub, maybe a McMullens pub, and my father bought the house. I'm guessing that he might have bought it at an auction. But anyway, it was, it was a very small house, it was, effectively, it was two up, two down with this sort of shop thing stuck on the front. Yeah, so that's where I grew up.
And we lived in that house until I was about 15, and then we moved around the corner, literally around the corner, to a nicer house, a semi-detached house. And that was - so I grew up on a street called Crossbrook Street, which is the kind of main secondary artillery into London. We moved around the corner and lived in a road called Albury Walk, which sounds a little posher, doesn't it, overlooking the cricket club and stuff like that. Yeah, so yeah, absolutely. And, for what it’s worth, I feel that I, personally, have gone on a voyage through my life, and there's no question that where I started is the beginning of my voyage. So in that particular house, the back garden was smaller than a double bed. I've now got a garden that's bigger than a double bed, you know, so, yeah.
And I went to Holy Trinity Primary School at Waltham Cross. So I came out the front door and turned right, and, because I'm so old, the grammar school systems still existed, so I went to Cheshunt Grammar School, came out of the door and turned left for Cheshunt Grammar School, and I did okay at school. My parents were quite interesting. My father left school, I think, when he was 14, or 15, with no qualifications at all, went to work in a factory. But he came from a family that had always been in work, so he had some money. And you know, I know he had a car from a quite a young age. And I think, you know, he got a job in a factory because his dad got him the job in the factory, okay. On the other hand, my mother who came from Scotland, and actually grew up in a strip village in Scotland, south of Gretna Green, took some doing, she came from very poor beginning. She was one of four, her father was a railway ganger, he was killed in a railway accident. To this day, I have not been able to get my maths under control to work out whether she was already alive or not yet born when he was killed, and my mother's mother took in other people's shopping and kept a pig in the back garden, and unquestionably lived in what many of us today would regard as a slum, corrugated iron roof, coal bunker just inside the back door, no indoor toilet, toilet outside.
And from that beginning, and, of course, Scotland's always been very proud of its education system, my mother got a scholarship to Dumfries Academy, and won prizes for things like Latin and botany. So you know, it’s slightly esoteric, and became a pharmacist. She came down to London, and then, I don't know, but they must have met, my mother and father must have met in London. And then just to round this off, for the purposes of a historical document, my mother and father had a difficult marriage, so I was in the middle of it. And I’m not going to say for me, it was easy, but it shaped my character. My mother died in very difficult circumstances when she was 59, so I would have been 22, and that's shaped my character as well. That's made me realise that, that life is actually instantaneous, it's three seconds, so you should try and fill it up. So I do, I do kind of live a full life and partly because of this. So that's that. Oh, yes, that's right: the reason I got into my parents was because, all my mother and father ever said to me was, ‘Robert, all we expect of you is you do your best’. And, because I'm a simple chap, I did.
So I did okay, at school, and I got to Cambridge, and I was one of not very many people in Cheshunt who got to Cambridge. And so I went to Pembroke College, Cambridge. I read law, I read law, because I couldn't really think of anything else that I was capable of doing. Never intended to be a solicitor, never intended to work in the law, just to keep my options open. Unlike the world today, I didn't do anything about getting a job at all until, I think, you know, I've got to the last term of the third year, and then, I won't bore you with this, but through a degree of serendipity, I did a student holiday session for a solicitors firm in the city, which was really my first experience of a solicitors firm. And it wasn't like I thought a solicitor’s firm would be. It wasn't stuffy, it wasn't slow, you could feel the energy in the corridor. So I went back the next year, did another student session, by which time I was at Cambridge. And I've now worked out that it was a firm that did a lot of work with ships. And by this time, I did a whole load of student jobs when I was a student. One of the jobs I did as a student was a petrol pump man. And I realised as a petrol pump man, that if you do something where money crosses your hands, some of it will stick, some of it sticks. And the foreman, the forecourt foreman, didn't do very much at all. But he always came out and received the tankers that were bringing the petrol into the petrol station. And that's because, in some manner or another, something was sticking. So by the time I'd worked at this solicitors office [is one two chips, I thought like that got ** to be worth a lot of money], so they must stick.
So, so at the end of my, my second year of doing a vacation job, they pulled me in and they offered me a position as a, what was then called an articled clerk to start on Monday, and I'm at Cambridge, and I'm thinking, you're nuts. You think I'm gonna leave, particularly being a grammar school boy, big thing, you know, I’m gonna leave Cambridge to come work for you, you guys. And of course, because it was back in the day, none of the partners in the firm had degrees. So I said, like, that's very nice. Anyway, the upshot is that they said, Well, if you get a 2(i), you know, come back. So I did. And that is basically all the job interview I ever had. And I got lucky, I got very, very lucky because the nature of the work they did, suited my personality. It was litigation, but litigation like you're playing chess, not like you're punching somebody's nose out, but you're playing chess. And it was a very, very good time. And I realised, once I got my feet under the table, that the reason that they seriously thought that I would leave Cambridge to join them on a Monday is because they knew they were very good firm. Anyway, so, so that's it. So I stayed in that solicitors firm for a very long time and maybe by modern standards, an embarrassingly long time, 37/38 years.
PAR: So how did you come into local government?
BD: Well, I'll get there. So when I joined the firm, I think there were 12 partners. When I became a partner, I was partner number 27. When I finished, I was the full senior partner, and we had 150 partners in 10 offices who were running well. But, and for an awfully long part of that time, the firm that was in, was the Manchester United of its type - shipping, shipping specialist. But just like ManU having stayed at the top, my firm fell into decline, so it became a difficult place. Peter knows that in 2006, I went to Dubai to open an office for the firm, and I lived in the Middle East in Dubai for five-and-a-half years. I wouldn't have done that if the firm had still been the great firm it was, I would really expect to be getting out. I came back every couple years back in London, the firm was transformed, so I left and hordes of partners left.
So that then gets you into my experience in local government, because I finished with my firm in 2015. And I gave fifteen months’ notice, just thinking about things. And you know, like a lot of things in life, I now know that I was staggeringly ignorant, but I did just let it be known that I would be interested in becoming a councillor. And at the time, I didn't know for example, Peter at the time, but we did know a little bit, Linda Haysey, who has been the, I now know, the leader of East Herts, a long standing member of East Herts. So I just sort of …anyway, that's when it came. So in May 2015, I went through a process, of course, I got picked up on the process, ahead of the May 2015 elections. But May 2015, is when I was first up for election and I got elected for the District Council for Castle Ward, which is the centre of the town. And I got elected for the Town Council for Sele, which is a residential area. It's part of Hertford, but it's slightly removed. And it's an interesting area because it's got a mixture of quite affluent housing, but it's also got the old council estate. And there are legacy issues that go along with the council estate. So it was a, it was a very interesting ward to get elected by.
And if I'm honest, I didn't really, I didn't really know too much about the workings of Hertford, let alone the distinction between Castle Ward and Sele. But from a very early stage, I just became very fond of Sele. And to this day, it annoys me that Sele is still tagged with this legacy, and, in particular, the school. Even I could name the names of people that live within a stone's throw of the school that will not send their children to Sele school, because it's tagged with a legacy. And it's a small school and it does have issues, there's no doubt. But the headmaster currently is a fantastic guy full of energy. So, I'm kind of proud that I represent Sele. And I'm just coming back to the Castle … or maybe, so my county division, the county have a division, and my county division is the combination of two wards, one is Sele, and other one is Castle. And it's a very interesting division because Castle includes the town centre and all the things that go along with the town centre, to high street issues, high street parking issues, all that sort of stuff. It's got the three secondary schools. The other division, a county division, it doesn't have a secondary school. So it's a very interesting county division.
FGG: I just wanted to pick up one thing that's very fascinating, listening to that. I mean, you spoke about your interest in the law firm as being one of kind of chess playing rather than [pumping]. So that conveys a sense of a strategist at work. Is that what attracted you to local politics? I'm trying to think what it is…
BD: I'm afraid it's a lot more corny than that, because it's true. [Like just because I'm my last move forward. I'm very knowledgeable]. I wanted to try and give something back, I still do. And Peter has heard me say this before, because I think I said as part of my mayor-making speech, but I'm very, very conscious that some of my teachers were extremely good for me. And my physics teacher, Mr. Beagle, my RE teacher, but really my rugby coach, Mr Champion, my maths teacher, who really did drama, Mr Neal, they were really good for me. And I'm absolutely sure that one of them, if not all, three of them wrote a good reference that got me into Cambridge. So, yeah, and it's not entirely, Peter’s a hugely experienced councillor, it’s appropriate for me to say, but it's not actually entirely easy to give back in the role of a councillor, because there's quite a lot of flack that comes, you do spend quite a lot of time dealing with complaints, or heading them off at the pass.
But with my County hat on, and it sounds almost ridiculous, but when you're able to respond to requests from residents and get some yellow lines down, so that people don't park on their streets, and obscure sight lines for traffic, it feels good. It's crazy.
PAR: You gotta laugh at yourself. Why is this such a massive delight for me as an individual? Bob's got it encapsulated. And Bob does, um, you're a Conservative, I don't know whether we actually said that at any point earlier in the interview, we may have done, but that's quite important and sometimes people think that Hertford is a Conservative town. And that's forgivable, because quite often, the Conservatives have been in control of councils. But it's not absolutely true. Your seat was a Labour seat for 28 years in modern times, as it were through the Blair thing. So I wonder whether we can talk about party politics and changes. I mean, is there anything in Hertford that you would say was a safe seat for a political party, currently or generally?
BD: I think it's a very good question, but I discovered that you are right, I’m Conservative. But if I can use this expression, I hope I'm most definitely not an old-fashioned blue rinse, Tory. That sort of Toryism I dislike quite a lot. I'm a Conservative, and I wasn't a member of the party until I stood for election in 2015. So it's not, it's not as though I've been a passionate activist Conservative. But why am I a Conservative, and I've had cause to think about this. And, essentially, the two reasons I'm Conservative: first is that growing up, my father, I now realise, of very humble origins, but had some really interesting wisdom. I can remember my father saying to me that one of the good things about the house-buying economy is that if someone buys a house, they've then got to go out and buy the wallpaper, and that's good for the economy, and I got that. And then, I haven’t mentioned, just in passing, my wife is American. So I know the East Coast of the States pretty well. And I know that Americans tick differently from us. Americans are more free than we are. Now that can be a very, very bad thing, because, you know, this is one of the reasons why you get these high school shootings, nobody can tell me I can't go into a school with a machine gun and do terrible, terrible things, I'm a free person. So Americans are more free than us. And that's affected my sort of assessment of the things a bit and they're swinging that back to the UK, you know, you think of some, of some of the socialist policies and all that sort of thing. But really the biggest reason why I'm a Conservative is not just because through America, I can see free markets and what they do, and I believe in free markets, I personally think that Conservative values take - go to freedom, whereas socialist values go the other way. And, funnily enough, I find that if I've got time, I was up in Sele a couple of weeks ago, walking around Sele with a group of other people, some of whom are councilors, and Sele, the Sele estate, is built in the 50s, isn't it? And we're not going to see that type of development again. There are quite big areas of green, the houses are quite big, actually, by modern standards. So it's all right, it’s nice.
Anyway, we’d just walked across this little bit of green and a resident emerged from his house and said, were we councilors, so those of us that were said we were, and essentially he said that people were allowing their dogs to foul on that bit of green, and could we do something about it? And that just occurred to me, that individual is articulate, he had a degree of self wherewithall taken away from him somewhere. He needs someone else to deal with dog poo. D’you see what I mean? So when you extrapolate that to a slightly different level, and I have it in my mind that there is, or was, a very big tax office up in the Northeast, and for a long time, the Northeast has been a depressed area. So how does that work? A government puts a big tax, big government office up in the northeast, lots and lots of people go and work for it, they're immediately beholden to the government. Because if the government takes the office away, where's their work? So these are, these are freedom issues. And I think people really believe in freedom, which is one of the reasons I'm kind of prepared to take on or more or less any question, you chuck at me right!
PAR: So back to the safe seat?
BD: Yeah. Okay. So I'm not sure, you would definitely have a more nuanced understanding than I do, Peter, but I'm not sure, and I think councillors of your experience, I think would say that, you know, over the last 10,15, 20 years, a lot of flats have been built in Hertford. And of course, they are likely to have younger occupants, who may or may not be as wedded to some of the historical aspects of Hertford, etcetera, etcetera. So they may not necessarily be natural [?]. That's not to say they won't be. And I think, in my own patch, I'm quite struck, that the, if I may say, that the Liberal and Labour Party, clearly regard Sele as its possession. And there's been one or two things that have crossed my radar recently, given that I’m a County Councillor, that brought that home. So for example, last night, there was the first meeting of the Sele Neighbourhood Community group. It's a great thing, and as a Town Councillor 4,5,6,7 years ago, I was in on the beginnings of that, but they didn't invite me. And I've got no doubt that there will have been Labour politicians or local politicians that didn't invite me. 3,4,5,6 months ago, somebody asked me if I would direct a little bit of grant funding from the County Council to buy a defibrillator to be fixed up at Sele, very happy to do it, just did it. But if you read the publicity that the Labour Party is generating on that, that was the result of a campaign, and they forced the County Council and no credit to me at all. And it's, it's completely distorted.
FGG; How did you deal with that personally?
BD: I think that defibrillator thing has been the first time when I've really felt that someone's been a bit, a bit not very nice. But what do you do?
FGG: Thinking about your agenda, you know, actually helping people making a difference, and …
BD: I was up there last week, because, in a different context, I'm helping people make a difference. I mean, I'm very, very glad I found the funding to pay for the defibrillator, I've got no problem with that at all. But this is in response to Peter’s question and, of course, in the last, what, four or five years, the Greens up in Bengeo have emerged, they're very active. Superficially, their persona is nice. For example, I know a lot of my wife's friends, who are very middle class ladies, you know, they'll say,’ Oh, I think I might vote Green’. But of course, actually, if you, if you read their policy documents, the Green Party is the most left wing party of any of our local parties.
They would have us come out of NATO and they'd have workers on the boards of companies. And if I may, Peter, just bouncing it around, one of the things is that I really …. I'm glad I'm, I'm glad I'm a councilor of all three councils, and I enjoy that councils are very different. The County Council is a very big institution, the Town Council is quite small. So, so the way you make a contribution is quite different. But at the County Council, we have, you may know, that there is a proper chamber, proper debating chamber, and when there's full council it’s a little bit like a mini-Westminster, it really is, and the parties are blocked together. So you look across the chamber and you see the Labour Party, the Lib Dems. Old Labour are decent people that believe in something. Now, I, I might think that their economic policies are not going particularly to improve the working life of the ordinary working man, it doesn't matter, they believe, they're genuine.
But when you shift across to the Lib Dems, and I appreciate it's possibly a little bit provocative, when you shift across to the Lib Dems, they are politically opportunistic: they take single points and make as much fuss as they possibly can, because that's what they're trying to do. You get the feeling that they’re always trying to get that piece in their local paper. So what do they do, they’re just interminably complaining about potholes. Well, the County Council, again, as you might know, because you're an informed person, but I'm sure the average man on the street does not know the County Council, and this would be the same for any good sized County Council, does really important work. So while the Lib Dems are incessantly going on about potholes, they never once remind the public that we spend £440 million a year on adult care, £20 million a year children, every child in care in the county, is in the care of the County Council. These are seriously important things, which we do very well and, and in my role as the Cabinet Member for Resource which, which actually means that I'm kind of the Chancellor of the Exchequer for Hertfordshire, that's actually what it is, you see. No end of spending proposals cross my desk, I sign off on things, I'm involved in no end of meetings and discussion. And when… and yesterday, for example, I went to the groundbreaking of a new primary school in Bishops Stortford. That's what it's, that's what it's all about.
PAR: But again, remembering that, 50 years ago, it was different from today, and in 50 years’ time it will be different again - political campaigning locally in Hertford, how do you do it in 2022? How do you
engage, how do you campaign? They’re separate things really, I suppose.
BD: Well, to start with what I personally do, and then I’ll try and tell you what I think other people do.
I appreciate that to get elected, you have to be known by people. So to some degree it’s a populist thing, but I've never been very keen on kind of shouting about my own, you know, how wonderful I am, It just doesn't quite sit well with me. So I'm not personally very keen on knocking on people's doors. I will do it and I have done it, but I’m not very keen on it.
But I do like leafleting. I remember when I was first interviewed as a prospective candidate, this came up, and commercial law firms are quite slick operations, you know, that this idea that they just wear tweed jackets and, you know, they are comfortably off but they didn't really work very hard and that sort of thing is just ridiculous. So, so I arrive in the local government world, and they're still putting leaflets through people's front doors, so I can remember absolutely saying, ‘You've got to be joking, you don't still do that’. Well, I've completely come around on that, I love it. And I love walking my streets. I love walking up people's front paths. I love realising that this house has got a nice clean front door and it was probably replaced three years ago, whereas the house to the right has got the door that it was built with. And then you go two doors along the street and the house has got a front door that’s a bit tatty, which probably means that the people inside don't have so much income. It's really, really good. I really, really like it. As a councilor, never did this before, wouldn't have done it otherwise.
I'm on Twitter, and I do understand that that means I can communicate directly with anybody who chooses to follow me. I'm not an overwhelming Twitterer, but I do Twitter a bit, I did a tweet yesterday. What I personally don't do is Facebook. No one's ever asked me to be their friend on Facebook, but I know, I'm sure Peter does and I know a lot of other people do. But I think where we are in Hertford now is not, not necessarily there. I think, I think the Greens are very active. They’re energising themselves, and they're working on their local locations. I'm not sure that all the other parties are as energised as that.
PAR: Can we quickly change to education, which is a huge part of the County Council's work. I wonder whether again, thinking 50 years back, 50 years ahead now, could you quickly describe the education journey of a three-year-old as it were, living in Hertford? Where they might go, and then could we talk about the differences between schools currently?
BD: Yeah, well, I mean, there's quite a lot of schools in Hertford, so it's not a bad place to start. And I'm also, I'm a governor of a primary school in Hertford, and I'm a member of Sele School, which is a weird thing. It's bit like being a trustee that sits on top of government. And doing that, as both those things have been very good for me, I've learnt an awful lot. So, you know, I know perfectly well that there are a number of good schools in Hertford, there are one or two that aren't so good. Clearly, at the moment, we've got three secondary schools, but clearly quite a narrow …….
PAR: ….. children aged….,
BD: Well, I was going to come onto this, so, but they're different. And in the context of Peter’s question, the biggest difference, of course, is Simon Balle, because Simon Balle is now a through school. So Simon Balle takes children from the age of 4, 4-and-a-half. And in principle, that child can stay there until they're 18. That's a certain type of operation, isn't it? Whereas Richard Hale, which is the very long-standing form of Hertford grammar school, and certainly in the early years, is more boys, that will take kids from 11 through to 18. That's exactly the schooling that I had, but that's a quite a different model, isn't it, from what now is Simon Balle.
Sele is on the same model as Richard Hale, except it's fully co-educational, and it's a smaller school, Richard Hale is quite a big school, actually. And then you've got the primary school. The big thing, the big sort of tectonic plate that's moving in education is a academisation. And Peter, just to set the record, Peter was a County Councillor for many years, and in fact, I'm very honoured that Peter encouraged me to stand for his seat when Peter decided to step down, when Peter was a County Councillor, the Council will have been directly responsible for a lot of secondary schools right across the county. Today, I think it's under 20 because all the rest have gone over into Academies. So essentially, today, the county essentially is much more looking after primary schools than secondary schools.
PAR: Yeah. I mean, if I'd asked myself that question about going through, I just think a child living in Hertford has so many opportunities for different flavours as it were, and, as you've said, there’s the co-ed school, there’s the single sex school, and there's the all through school. And of course, there are the private schools as well on hand.
BD: And of course, just to interrupt you slightly, there is Presdales which strictly is in Ware, but clearly a lot of Hertford families send their daughters to Presdales.
PAR: Are there falling roles or rising roles? What's the birth rate?
BD: I think it's, it's either stabilised or it's tipping down now.
PAR: Down again, as it does over the years. Can we just focus, because we're Hertford Oral History Group, on Hertford Town Council, very quickly. Do you, how do you find it? Its work, what does it do? You know what -, where's its place in things and what about its processes? How do you view those things?
BD: The Town Council? Yeah okay. So when I sort of indicated that I'd be interested in becoming a councillor, and not least because I'd spoken to Linda Haysey, who's a District Councillor, I initially got picked out to be a District Councillor, and then somewhere along the line, as the elections approached, I was asked if I would be willing to stand to be a part of Town Council, and I agreed to do that.
And I think I mentioned that, it’s also important to indicate that, Peter will correct me if I’m wrong, but there are not necessarily vast numbers of people who are willing to stand to be a councillor, or to be a councillor. And I think that's quite an important thing to remember. But anyway, I was very happy to do it and I was very happy to be elected. So over the years, given I'm on all three councils, I feel that I've got a very clear sense of the difference between three councils, so come back to Hertford Town Council, like any town or parish council, it doesn't actually have that much authority, power to do things of its own volition. So if you take for example, planning, the District Council is the planning authority, the Town Council is a consultee.
The Town Council takes that responsibility very seriously, not least because of Peter’s involvement over many, many years. But if you swing that out to the residents of Hertford, it's very often the case that the resident of Hertford, unsurprisingly, thinks that the Town Council has got more influence over planning than actually it does. So, so, but one thing that's interesting about the Town Council is, is just quite what it, what it does and what it's authorised to do. So cemeteries, for example, is an authorised function. So what does the Town Council do? Well, I think the Town Council does the best it can, under its present administration and I think there is a small piece on politics and, essentially, of making sure that we all kind of remember that Hertford is an historic town, that as a town, we've been here for a long time, that there is, therefore, a community.
And, you know, I know perfectly well that some people would take a different view, but I think the work that Hertford Town Council does on civic events, the fact that the mayor of Hertford still has a red robe, a chain and a silly hat, and all that sort of stuff, actually, I think that’s quite important. Now, there is some politics, because plainly to just look at it on a completely general level, one would think that a very left wing person wouldn't be very tolerant to this. So, you know, just to be hypothetical, if Hertford Town Council were to be populated by very left wing people, you would kind of wonder whether they would maintain all this civic tradition. Personally, I think it would be very, very sad, and counter-productive, if it was to fade away. So this is definitely one of the things that Hertford Town Council does. And, of course, on a slightly more prosaic level, it organises lots of events. Those events are meant to generate some sense of community. It's meant to bring people into the centre of the town so it's meant to be good for the trade in the town, the shopkeepers in the town.
PAR: I mean, just to take the point you made earlier, when Labour had eight years of control of Hertford Town Council, it decided to keep the robes and to maintain those traditions, and so I think it's quite important to say that, and their time, particularly, in control was when Tony Blair national government, and what we haven't actually said is very much about what happens party politically locally, is dependent on what happens nationally to national government and, and all councillors across the country really are affected by the national government.
BD: That is very, very topical, isn’t it, because speaking as a Conservative, you know, I know perfectly well in the last, as it turned out to be 2 months, 3 months, the Conservative government has been awful, awful. And it's very difficult to think that that won't affect my chances of being re-elected locally as a Conservative, and that is a real shame because I think, so all the three councils have over all Conservative control councils, and I think the Conservatives do a very good job of running these three councils. If I may, just flipping across again to the County, as a cabinet member, you know, the amounts of money are significant. We've got 8000 staff, as I think I've already said, we've got X number of children in care, these are, these are important things that we do, and the financial pressure is permanent. And the County Council has been excellent at keeping it, keeping it moving, always transforming what it does so it can maintain services, and you get more bang for the buck. But, but nevertheless, when we come to the elections in May, the public no doubt will be looking at the national picture. And quite rightly
PAR: It’s their opportunity to say so. Erm, clock Frances.
FGG: I was just going to ask Bob, though, I mean, working simultaneously at these three levels of governance, are you conflicted in any sense? Or in any circumstance?
BD: It's a perfectly fair question. Am I conflicted? I know I’m sort of blowing a bit, because I'm trying to think, If I ever have been, so give you a full answer, I don't, I don't feel at all conflicted. There can be, planning sometimes bumps up. So the planning authority is the District Council, something might come along that the Town Council doesn't like. I'm not, I'm the Chairman of the Planning Committee in the District, but I'm not on the Planning Committee at Hertford Town Council, so avoid that conflict. You could find maybe that the County Council, which is quite a big landowner, might want to do something with a parcel of land, which might not sit so well with other councils. But I think in the main it's …..
PAR: Having done that job. I think the most important thing that you keep in your mind is when in the Town Council, the Town Council's business and interests are paramount to you at that time, and then in another case it’s different, but like, Bob, I don't, I don't recall that making great difficulties, as long as you keep your head on and don't try and dictate it with what you know, maybe a development at county in an authority where it's not actually currently, er, fit for them? We like cross referencing, thinking about this some years into the future. Your colleagues generally, Ben Crystal, Jane Sartin, Andrew Porrer Josh Dean, those names that listeners will come across from time to time. Do you work with them? how do you find them and any other colleague you want to…..
BD: Yes. Okay. So just taking those names, Ben Crystal is a Green, who represents Bengeo and he is, there are two county councillors who represent Hertford, and Ben is the County Councillor for the other section of Hertford. Actually, that geographical allocation tells me that we don't, we don't sort of cross paths that much, actually. But clearly, if, if we do then it certainly will be Ben. We're looking at the best interests of Hertford, so does Ben. Who else did you mention, Andrew Porrer is a Liberal, he's a very nice guy. I'm not quite sure how focused the Lib Dems are locally. If you, if you if you look at St Albans for example, they're much more prominent in St Albans. There is, I think, there are two Lib Dems on the Hertford Town Council. The other one, it has to be said, has barely turned up to a meeting. But Andrew is a nice guy, but as I say, I'm not quite sure kind of where they're coming from or where they're going. The Greens on Hertford Town Council, the three there are a bit, bit motivated, I think. Josh Dean, well, Josh Dean is an interesting guy because Josh, Josh Dean is probably the most prominent local Labour politician by some distance. But unless I'm mistaken, I don't know that he's ever been elected anywhere locally. He ran against me for County last time and I won that election. He's, he's - I don't know him very well, so maybe I shouldn't comment, but he's young, and he strikes me as someone who is aspiring to be a career Labour politician. It's, with all due respect to him, it's not totally clear to me what work he's ever done. It's not totally clear to me, you know, that he's paid very much, if he's not done very much, I think he's a student at the moment, that he's paid very much tax. I mean, I have no idea if he has a mortgage or has ever employed anybody, all that sort of stuff. So I find him a bit difficult to pitch.
PAR: Your colleague, Jane Sartin who's a Town Councillor only, but is very, very central to all Town Council business. How do you view Jane?
BD: She's, she's, erm, you put that in a very good way. She's very, very committed to Hertford. She comes from a local dynasty, a dynasty of local politicians. Her father was what the Leader of East Herts before, and she's, I think the word I might use about Jane is, she’s dogged, I think she's been dogged for Hertford.
PAR: I think the clock is telling us that we've had our hour, but …..
BD: I’m quite happy to go on.
PAR: I don't know whether your listeners will be! I shouldn’t say that, that’s unkind! But I mean, do we like Hertford now? The town centre, the theatre, Hartham, cemeteries and the allotments, are we doing as well as we might do as councillors responsible for Hertford?
BD: I personally think Hertford is, is a very, It sounds corny, I think Hertford is a special place. And you know, not least as a County Councillor, I go around the county a bit and Hertford's a special place. Now, of course, it's not perfect, it never is going to be perfect. So why is Hertford a special place? If you walk through the centre of Hertford, if you just manage to look up a bit, you will realise that there's a great variety of architecture, most of which, the vast majority of which, is interesting. We, you know, we haven't had too many architectural scarring as of the town centre. And I personally think that an oddity of Hertford is Gascoyne Way, although many people complain about Gascoyne Way. Their complaint these days, first and foremost is about the traffic, and then older residents, you know, can never forget the fact that Gascoyne Way was cut through the town and it's made the town's economy in two halves.
But what it has done in the sense that it's created almost a moat, around the Castle [wall/hall?], which is the centre of, and it's, therefore, the centre and is kind of protected. Now, could we do better with the centre of Hertford? Yes, we could and I think, I don't think as a town, we've reached a consensus as to what we think about cars in the town centre. I don't think we've reached a consensus in the town about, by extension, parking in the town centre. There are quite strong voices that say there should be more. There are quite strong voices that say there should be less. And actually, if I were to make a little political prediction, I think one of the slight challenges that Hertford faces is that taking Hertford Town Council as just as an example, you know, it's a Conservative majority council, but there's a significant number of Greens in the Council and, broadly speaking, they don't want cars at the town centre, they don't want parking in the town centre and they're quite strongly opinionated about that.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are people who would say, well, we want the High Street to be vibrant, the traders want cars in the town centre. So there's a, there's a group that feels quite strongly. So the point that we're making is that to harmonise views about the town centre, we need a consensus. And I think it's actually I think, in my time, I think the consensus has become harder to achieve than it was formerly. But the theatre, I think, the theatre project is good, I believe in the theatre project. It's costing money, and there may be a question mark as to how that's going to be funded over time. But I think, I think that the theatre brings energy and people into Hertford. So I think that's a very good thing. I think that Hartham, the work done at Hartham and the play area, absolutely excellent. I think the work that's done, being done, to the Leisure Centre, absolutely excellent. So, so overall, I think ….
PAR: And Bircherley Green?
BD: Well, the Bircherley Green, of course, privately owned piece of land. I can't personally fathom why the developers have taken so long to develop that site, I would have thought that they would, you know, having invested the money, they would want to go into there and get it up and get them in and make their return. But it will get there. I mean, it is gradually rising, but it's not helpful. It clearly hasn't helped. But all that said, if I might say, anybody that just takes the trouble to observe, will notice that there is a constant regeneration of the shops in Hertford town, constant. And, off the top of my head, I can only think of two units that are permanently in the doldrums. One is a building on St. Andrew Street.
PAR: 22 and 24.
BD: Kind of opposite the car park. And the other is the one up on Cowbridge, which used to be the motorbike shop. Other than that, I can't think of any shops that remain empty.
FGG: Yes, it’s feels suddenly quite vibrant in the town, doesn’t it?
BD: Yep. And when you look at some of the things, some of the shops, of course, the word isn't all about shops. But you know, we're kind of honest about life. Hamptons, coming into Hertford is quite interesting. And when you look at the things that are happening on Railway Street, which in effect is a tiny little street in more ways than one, it is kind of interesting. There's apparently a shop that's going to become an oyster bar. Well, there might be quite a lot of people to say, well, that’s only rich people going to use as well, I mean, but in a way, you know what I mean? It's just energy. It's just energy. It's interesting.
PAR: We'd better identify what building as people will be wondering which one you're referring to in Railway Street, it’s number seven. I think well - thank you very much.
FGG: Very interesting. Is there anything that you want to add, Bob? I mean …
BD: Well, I think, apropos of Hertford, what I might say is that, I think something that Hertford needs to keep a careful eye on is the bypass issue, which has been out there for years and years and years, I think. So this would be a County Council initiative, highways. And I think they got quite enthusiastic about a bypass a few years ago, you know, maybe three or four years ago, I can't precisely remember but as it were, within recent living memory, and there was, to us an American expression, there was a town hall meeting, but I think they were very surprised at the pushback they got.
And I think the reason that the town needs to be careful about this is because, in my experience and my observation, it is clear as crystal that, if you put a bypass in, eventually, you'll get infill development, look at Bishops Stortford. And that, if that was happening, it would radically change Hertford, radically change Hertford, so we need to be careful. And by extension, we also need to be careful about the [heart, the heart] is this… initiative that's, that's bubbling around at the County, which is a mass transit, rapid mass transit thing that would go from Harlow, out to [a hammer,] all that sort of East West, this is this kind of East West… we must improve the East West links. Well, that's going to work and it's going to be rapid. Where is it going to go? So it could just be a stalking horse.
PAR: That's an important final point.
BD: And, of course, the flip side of that is, is that if you take Hertford, because one of the most interesting things about Hertford, is it's got two train stations. Oddly, neither providing the best train service but nevertheless, it’s got two train stations. So if you're going to run a mass transit system that connects to Hertford, it would be bonkers not to connect it to the two train stations. So that suggests it would have to come through the middle of the town. And then of course, you have to say exactly, well, where was it going to go?
FGG: Crikey, the Hertford tube system?
BD: Well, if you're not so familiar with this, Frances, the current thinking is that it would be, they've got some euphemism, but what it boils down to is it would be a blast. I don't think it's gonna happen but anyway…
FGG: But with the traffic on Gascoyne Way,[rapidity], might take a bit of a hit. ***
PAR: Thank you very much. I enjoyed it, it was very interesting
BD: You're welcome.
FGG: Thank you. I'm going to turn the recording off.
End of recording