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No Work At All
Cambridgeshire is at the back of the educational queue when it comes to government per-pupil funding. Coupled to this, Wisbech state secondary education has been below par for decades. To cap it all, governmental reorganisation in 2006 closed most of the Town's excellent Isle College of Further Education & Horticulture, transferring all its top-quality vocational courses in building construction and design, social care and secretarial studies, farming & animal management, music, art & drama and Sixth Form studies to the college in King's Lynn and to Milton near Cambridge. This perverse decision more or less guaranteed rising levels of youth unemployment in Fenland.....almost 45% by early 2013.37
Cambridgeshire is at the back of the educational queue when it comes to government per-pupil funding. Coupled to this, Wisbech state secondary education has been below par for decades. To cap it all, governmental reorganisation in 2006 closed most of the Town's excellent Isle College of Further Education & Horticulture, transferring all its top-quality vocational courses in building construction and design, social care and secretarial studies, farming & animal management, music, art & drama and Sixth Form studies to the college in King's Lynn and to Milton near Cambridge. This perverse decision more or less guaranteed rising levels of youth unemployment in Fenland.....almost 45% by early 2013.37
Licenced To Swill
By 2012 there were more Off Licenses in
Wisbech than in any other town in the area: a total of 54 in all.......20 Pubs, 27 corner shops, five supermarkets and two
fast-food take-aways, all selling
booze as though the end of the world was nigh.39 Three of the pubs,
and all of the smaller premises, had foreign-born licensees, with one take-away
open for liquor sales 85 hours a week.
That year the Police dealt with 100
reports of street drinking, 393 rowdy incidents linked to alcohol, and had made
64 arrests. They had also ordered 54 groups of people to leave the DPPO area,
issued 19 fixed penalty fines of £50, and confiscated 183 cans and bottles of
alcohol.
By the year's end the police finally
persuaded the Council to adopt a Cumulative Impact Policy (CIP)
to restrict the licensing of any more premises within the liquor-saturated
Town. Even so, in January 2015 the Council's liberal-minded Licensing Committee
chose to ignore the CIP and police protestations, and granted a Town club a
licence to sell liquor up to 3am....seven days a week.
But bad cultural habits don't die out,
they merely shift their ground. Thus the Baltic culture of outdoor drinking has
since migrated to Wisbech's parks, playing fields and roadside verges, which
are daily littered with drink cans, bottles, broken glass and food rubbish.
Occasionally the police can be seen making early morning foot patrols, peering
into bushes in search of drunk and rough-sleeping migrants. Nowadays the Town's
alleyways are also being filled with human excrement from these night drinkers.
In 2013/14 the Department for Communities & Local Government funded a
Fenland Crime Reduction Initiative
('Eastern European Nationals Homelessness
Project') whereby migrant 'outreach workers' provided rough-sleepers with
information on housing and employment, and how to claim benefits. The cost to
the taxpayer for this Initiative: £144,755.41
16.
High
crime.....Low policing
The influx of thousands of
foreign migrants into Fenland was logically bound to send crime figures up.
Apart from East European street drinking and gang fights, there's also their
propensity for drunk-driving, uninsured driving, having road accidents and then
running off, and for carrying knives everywhere.42 Then there's the daily hazard of dodging all
their pavement cyclists who make civil life in Wisbech just that little bit
more uncivilized.
Foot-patrolling
policemen, even PCSOs, are a rarity in Wisbech, hence the risible attempt to
deter potential miscreants by leaving cardboard cut-outs of a 1970's copper,
replete with tall helmet, standing in shop doorways.
The Fenland Community Safety Partnership's report for 2013 recorded 392
anti-social/violent incidents in Chatteris, 692 in March, 428 in
Whittlesey......and 1,554 in Wisbech.
2007-13......... Fenland
crimes occurring in Wisbech increased from 46%
to 58%
2012-13......... 86.6% of the district's 329 foreign
offenders came from Wisbech.
2012-13......... 26.5%
of crimes detected in Wisbech were by foreign nationals.43
Unlawfully killed
Thirty years ago, heinous murder was rare in Fenland. Sadly those
more benign days are long gone. 'Homicide and injuries inflicted by another
person with intent to injure or kill by any means' is now more frequent in
Fenland than anywhere else in Cambridgeshire, and half of them are in Wisbech.
CAMBRIDGESHIRE MURDERS:
2001-2012 45
(1) Cambridge: 21 (2) Huntingdon :15 (3)
South Cambridge :13 (4) East Cambridge :13
(5)
Fenland : 22 [11 murdered in Wisbech........four
of them were East Europeans]
17.
Comes the Reckoning
In December 2009, when London
estate agents Strutt & Parker were urging Fenland Council to grant the
Co-op permission for 108 mobile homes in which to cram 430 migrant workers, the
agent's were in reality pushing against an open door, their raison d'etre being sheer music to the
Council's ears: "The use of foreign labour is cost effective, puts minimum strain
on local services, and provides a source of revenue into the local
economy." 46
Even though the Co-op's grand plan
subsequently failed to materialise, the agent's arguments stand as a perfect
exemplar of how large multinational companies have contrived with the Council
to create and maintain an ultra
low-wage economy in the Fens. But after the feast comes the reckoning. As every
year passes it must be apparent to our Public Authorities that the stratagem of
utilising masses of cheap foreign labour, not so as to augment the local
workforce but to replace it, has been
both grievously unjust to the Fenland populace, and economically flawed to
boot. For whilst undoubtedly benefiting big business and their migrant
workforce, it's costing everyone else an arm and a leg.
Costing the Country
Nobody knows how much the
thousands of migrants in Fenland have cost the public purse so far, as no
recipient of 'in-work' state benefits is asked about their nationality, which
is plain daft, but it's bound to be a tidy sum. For a start there's the free NHS Medical and Maternity Care and the
free School Education and Child Benefits that EU migrants
automatically receive, plus the state Pensions
for elderly migrants. There's also the Unemployment
Benefits for non-working migrants, as well as the extra cost to the Police and the Courts & Prison Service of migrant offenders.
Concomitantly, there is the
additional cost of having so many more
Fenland people unemployed or on rock-bottom/part time wages and therefore
needing a whole raft of Welfare Benefits
& Allowances. Add to that the
personal and social cost of family breakdown and chronic physical and mental
health, brought about by years of economic inactivity and poor living
standards.
Being jobless or low waged is
assuredly less painful in Britain that in Lithuania, Latvia or Poland, where
unemployment benefit is only granted after a qualifying period of 12-18 months,
and housing benefit is non-existent. What sensible EU migrant, therefore, when
their seasonal job in Fenland comes to an end, wouldn't want to collect £71.70
a week Jobseekers Allowance? Or if
lodged in a cramped and over-priced Wisbech multi-let, what badly paid migrant
would pass up their entitlement to £89.74 a week in Housing Benefit? It's an
obvious no-brainer.
TAXATION,
REPAYMENTS & TAX CREDITS
In 2013/14 all but 5% of national Income Tax was derived from PAYE
receipts.
Since 2002/03 these receipts have risen
by 35%, from £99.7 billion to £134.7 billion per year.
However, although UK's tax-paying
migrants have undoubtedly contributed towards this increase, their annual wages
in areas like Fenland are commonly below the PAYE Income Tax threshold (£10,000),
hence the permanent posters at local recruitment agencies urging workers to
"Claim your TAX back here".
HMRC offices even deal with gangmasters claiming tax back on behalf of their
entire foreign workforce. Between 2001-2007 Income Tax Repayments averaged £1.9
billion per year. In the six years since then the average has risen by
almost 48% to £2.8 billion.
In 2003 the introduction of Working Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit cost £3.9 billion. Five years later, policy
changes increased the number of families entitled to tax credits, pushing the
bill for 2008 to £5.6 billion. Since
2010 however, various post-recession policies, including a reduction in the
upper income level and the removal of the second income threshold, have caused
the annual costs of these Credits to fall by over 40%.47
18.
Costing the County
Impoverishing Wisbech
Imagine a flourishing English market town, most of its stable
working population earning decent wages in regular full-time employment,
spending locally and paying the tax man his full dues. Wisbech, alas, is no
such happy valley. Its new foreign workforce is transitory, their poorly paid
jobs intermittent, and their earnings and state benefits divided between here
and abroad, while any amount of tax is claimed back annually. A Town where
off-licenses and multinational industries thrive, yet its people remain
impoverished. Fenland Council recently summed it up thus: 'Relative to other towns in Fenland, Wisbech suffers higher levels of
deprivation, lower levels of disposable income, and higher levels of residents
on benefits, and is characterised by comparatively low skills levels, poor
educational attainment and worklessness' 56
Cynical officialdom might
sneer and say "it was ever thus" in Wisbech, the inference being that
local people were the architects of their own misfortune. This couldn't be more
untrue or unjust. Their impoverishment has come about, not because of what
Wisbechians have failed to do for themselves, but because of the indifference,
neglect and crass misjudgements of their Public Authorities, most critically in
regard to their education, social environment and employment.
Only consider how Wisbech has
been fleeced by these Public Authorities in recent decades, stripped bit-by-bit
of so much that had formerly underpinned its urban status, cohesion and growth.
It began in the early 1980s when the Authorities shrunk the Town's Hospital and
closed the Maternity Unit. Then political ideology curtailed the Assisted
Places Scheme which had enabled hundreds of less affluent Wisbech children to
attend the Town's well-renowned independent Grammar School, so that nowadays
only 4 local children enter the School each year, and none of their families is
needy. Meanwhile the Town's failing Secondary School has been rebuilt twice, renamed
three times, and placed in 'special measures' more than once during its recent
multilingual past; which is quite probably why more than half its potential
intake now prefer to be schooled elsewhere. Then in 2006, just when local
youngsters needed it most, the Authorities shrunk their College of Further
Education to almost nothing, only to rebuild it for £7.2m eight years later.
This has, of course, nothing whatever to do with the huge £5.6m office block
the Cambridge Authorities have built for themselves on part of the site, to
house their myriad technocrats and local Social Services staff.
Hollowing out urban centres
being de rigueur in the 1990s, the
local Authority pedestrianised the Town Centre, while simultaneously
sanctioning a mile-out-of-town Retail Park for a huge Tesco superstore and
other multinationals. With its commercial heart thus by-passed, footfall in
Wisbech reduced by half, leading to more shop closures and dereliction, and
even fewer shoppers. Howbeit, a shiny new pawnbrokers has recently set up shop
in the Market Square....bless. The same Authority has since overseen an even
bigger and further-out-of-town Retail Park for a truly massive Tesco replete
with fitness centre, several more big-name retailers, a giant multi-screen cinema
and nearby housing estates: a satellite town in fact. Local Authorities also
dismantled the Town's busy working Port, replacing it with a static marina and
their own grandiose 'Boathouse Conference Centre', while downsizing their
public Council Offices to a 'One Stop Shop'. Latterly the Main Post Office has
been transferred to the back of a nearby gift shop, and both local Newspapers
have decamped to other towns. Public Authorities have taken the Driving Test
Centre away, as also the Magistrates Court & Custody Suite, leaving the
adjoining Police Station, its opening hours already greatly reduced, in limbo
after selling the entire premises to a property developer.
Having trashed their
education and social infrastructure, the Authorities had no objection to the
Townspeople's employment opportunities being wrecked as well, the overriding
concern being to ensure the economic well-being of the business and farming
fraternity, even if this meant transforming Wisbech into little more than a
dormitory for thousands of indigent foreign workers.
If Wisbechians sense that the
Town in which their forbears have lived for generations has lost its identity
and doesn't belong to them any more, and that nobody in Authority gives a damn
what they think or feel about it.......are they wrong?
********************************************************************
'Trebuchet'
1 Office of
National Statistics, (ONS)Censuses 1981-2001
2 Office of Population, Censuses and Surveys, Population
Estimates,1985 and Population Trends 1990
3
'Young People and the Labour
Market, A Challenge of the 1990s' National
Economic Development Office and
Training
Commission (11.7.1988)
4 Oxford Migration
Observatory Unit, reported in The Sunday
Telegraph (11 May 2014)
5 ONS 2011 Census, Country of Birth, Table QS203EW
6 ONS (NOMIS) 2011
Census, Country of birth by ethnic
group, Table LC2205EW
7 Fenland District Council (F.D.C.) Fenland Migrant Population Strategy
2007-2010, Sept 2007
8 F.D.C.
(Oct. 2013) Fenland Diverse Communities Forum, Community Cohesion, Strategy
Statement
9 Migration
Impacts Fund, Department for
Communities and Local Government (F.O.I.
30.10.13)
10 Rogue
Landlords Fund, Department for
Communities and Local Government (Jan.
2014)
11 Cambridgeshire County Council (30.8.13) Migrant Impact Fund
12 Fenland District Council
(Sept 2007) Fenland
Migration Population Strategy 2007-2010
13 ONS Censuses 1961-91
15 Cambridgeshire County Council (Oct. 2013) Cambridgeshire Population and Dwelling Stock Estimates: mid-2012
16 F.D.C
Fenland Index of Multiple Deprivation 2010
17 Wisbech Standard (21.10.05) 'A
quarter of Wisbech is made up of foreign
migrant workers'
18 Mott MacDonald, March 2014
'Wider Economic benefits of a Rail
Service between March and Wisbech'
14 ONS (NOMIS) 2011 Census, Country
of birth by ethnic group, Table
LC2205EW
19 Queen Elizabeth Hospital, King's Lynn. Maternities and Terminations 2006-11
20 NHS General Practitioner Registration
data for Wisbech, July 2013
21 Cambridgeshire County Council, Fenland Schools 2006-14
22 F.D.C. Fenland Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD)
2010
23 Cambridgeshire County Council
Primary & Infant Schools in
Wisbech (10 July 2014)
24 Cambridgeshire County Council
Review of Secondary Education in
Fenland (Feb 2014)
25 Wikipedia Healthcare in
Europe 29 May 2013
26 F.D.C. Fenland Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD)
2010
27 Practice Managers (May/July 2012) : Trinty Surgery, North
Brink Surgery, Clarkson Surgery
28 NHS Cambridgeshire Community Services: North
Cambs Hospital Staffing and Admissions, April 2010-Oct 2012
29 F.D.C. (24 July 2013)
30 Police Insp. Robin Sissons quoted in the Wisbech Standard 7 June 2013
30 Wisbech Stanard report:
'Operation Pheasant wins national award'
20 March 2015
31 F.D.C. (21 May 2012, 10 July 2013,
17 Feb 2015)
F.D.C. Cabinet Review of the
Council's Letting Policy, (20 December 2012)
41 Department for Communities & Local Government (27 Nov. 2014)
32 F.D.C. Fenland Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD)
2010
33 Worker's pay slip from HL
Foods, Sutton (8.8.1998)
34 Worker's pay slip from Pinguin Foods UK Ltd, Wisbech (20.5.2008)
35 Wisbech Standard 4 Dec '09 : 'Co-op
plans major fresh fruit farm'
36 Research institute, Centre
for Cities, reported in The Times
(Job News) (16 March 2009)
37 ONS Annual Population
Survey (Unemployment level/rate among 16 -24s, in Fenland local authority,
2006-2013)
38 F.D.C. (19.12 2012) Wisbech
Cumulative Impact Zone
39 F.D.C. Licensing
Officer (8.1.13)
41 Department for Communities & Local Government (27 Nov. 2014)
42 F. D.C. Migrant Population Strategy 2007-2010 , (Sept
2007)
43 Cambridgeshire Constabulary.
(15 July 2013)
44 Ibid
45 Cambridgeshire Constabulary,
(21 August 2013)
ONS:
(Table 1 Deaths by assault,
Cambridgeshire) (4 February 2014)
46 Wisbech Standard, 4 Dec '09 : 'Co-op
plans major fresh fruit farm' (Neil Culkin, Head of Planning, Strutt &
Parker)
47 HM Revenue & Customs, National Statistics (19.12.2014)
48 Cambridgeshire County Council, Children & Young People's
Services: 'Education Provision in
Wisbech' 17.4.13
49 Cambridgeshire County Council (6.6.14 / 10.7.14)
50 Cambridgeshire County Council
(21.5.2012)
52 FDC 6 January 2015
51 Cambridgeshire County Council : Written Answer 14 Oct 2014
53 Cambridgeshire Constabulary
(21 August 2013)
54 Ministry of Justice (27
March 2014)
55 F.D.C. (16 October 2013)
56 F.D.C. Neighbourhood Planning Vision (2011), and Core Strategy (2012)
