The safety net for some of the most vulnerable people in society is at risk of unravelling because government funding for councils is inadequate, according to senior councillors.
The Labour leader of Brighton and Hove City Council, Bella Sankey, criticised the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement at a Strategy, Finance and City Regeneration Committee meeting yesterday (Thursday 7 December).
Deputy leader Jacob Taylor warned colleagues about the government’s decision to scrap the “household support fund” in March. The money covers the cost of free school meal vouchers in the summer holidays and helps fund food banks.
He said: “I call on the government to reconsider cutting that fund because it will have a massive impact on the people who most need that support.
“It will have a knock-on impact on this council and its services because when people in our city who most need help can no longer get that help, they will come to other services that the council provides so it will put further pressure on us.”
Councillor Taylor, who is working on the budget that is due to go before councillors in February, said that savings made so far this year were down to the council’s frontline workers.
A recruitment freeze and other spending controls have reduced the in-year budget forecast from an overspend of nearly £15 million to £2.8 million in the red.
The revised forecast comes as almost a fifth of councils in England said that they were currently considering issuing a “section 114 notice”, meaning that they cannot balance their books.
Brighton and Hove City Council has avoided the worst mistakes that have afflicted some of the worst-hit councils – despite the costly challenges posed by the i360’s troubled finances.
Councillor Taylor said that the council could not afford another overspend this year because cash reserves were now at their “lowest point” and next year’s budget would be “extremely difficult”.
He said: “We wait to get the final settlement but it looks like there will be no further general funding.
“And that’s despite a continued inflationary environment generally in the economy but also further demand pressure on local authorities in areas like adults, children (social care) and temporary accommodation.
“The government has chosen not to provide any further funding. Presumably, you would hope in awareness of the position that local government is in, if the government could listen to their Conservative colleagues running county councils all over the country, hopefully they will hear of the dire position of local government finance.”
Councillor Taylor said that the council had not published its draft budget yet because it was still awaiting details of the financial settlement from the government.
Councillor Sankey said that there was “no wriggle room” after the council used £3 million from reserves to cover last year’s overspend, leaving the council in a “precarious position with minimal reserves”.
On the autumn statement the Labour leader said: “I must today put on record our profound anger and disbelief at an autumn statement from a zombie government so out of touch with the ordinary people of this country that they are prepared to send local government over a financial cliff edge.
“To them, it’s to hell with those who rely on adult social care, homelessness support and the social safety net of services we provide here at Brighton and Hove City Council.”
Just do some serious cutting to the Parking and Transport department – vastly overpopulated and serving no useful function. Only interested in screwing money from motorists
Have you tried not parking your car on double yellows? Usually avoids a ticket.
‘Partnerships’ have milked the council finances for years. So do subcontractors
Get rid of both. They are not accountable and farming off responsibilities out of house is therefore non democratic.
Also I wonder if anyone in the council offices has ever heard of project management. A single time -and-motion Clark would be a start. Someone to follow the umbers of council vans for instance. They will soon see the waste. Maintenance vans revisiting an address because they have to do a job and each job has to be ordered separately.
No point blaming councillors. They are tucked away in committees they serve. Not the wards. This is why we gave had and a having to have campaigns that they can get behind if we are lucky.
Nobody seems to be in a position to see the bigger picture.
Transport, parking and travel are insanely overstaffed. And the more of them there are the worse the city functions. Sack the lot of them, restore the hundreds of lost paid parking spaces also losing our city money and start again.
Nothing about what you just said was accurate. Honestly Barry, these opinions of yours get more fantastical by the day.
Benjy Boy!
I think by now most people have twigged you are a BHCC apologist.
It is a fact that the Council have removed hundreds of parking spaces, and it should be obvious to even the meanest of intellects, that this has reduced its revenue.
Cue banal response….
Bit off topic mate, we were talking about staffing numbers.
No – he talked about lost parking spaces, mate.
…as an afterthought to his main issue, overstaffing. Because that’s how sentences work…sigh.
Can’t live off other peoples money forever
Agreed… The magic money tree is stripped bare..
I can well appreciate how difficult council finances are. Also, how this and other matters might lead to stress related illness which is problematic at the moment and inevitably increasing. People within sheltered housing work temendously hard; yet consistently safe staffing levels are not existent; the answer, as has been suggested, is get rid of scheme managers and let the tenants do it all.There are many reasons to question this. Many tenants, myself included have significant health issues,-I have read elsewhere that the safety of tenants is a high priority for the council. While I’ll repeat I am aware of how hard some councill folk etc work I have little credibly reason to believe this ‘safety’ concern. Other tenants here coped really well immediately prior to and after my recent hospitalisation. They were great. Yet this does not alter my main point that expecting people in old people’s establishments to cope with serious health concerns is just plain wrong.
On finances I’ve often wondered who decides on spending priorities and how?
I’ll end here wishing compliments of the season to one and all
Yet one Senior Councillor authorised another £1m spent on cycle hangars in the full knowledge that BHCC was going to announce bankruptsy in the near future in order to get the order through before the announcement. Ditto the disastrous £13.4 Beryl bike scheme. Let us remind all Councillors and Officers that financial misconduct in public office is an imprisonable offence.
Give the users of i360 notice to quit in one month if repayments fail to restart within that month.If a payment is made (very unlikely) then make the eviction rolling month to month. They’re getting away with avoiding paying millions at our expense. Council would very quickly jump on us ratepayers if we stopped paying, so what is the council waiting for?
Let’s stop i360 users taking the P
The Council has mismanaged the budget. These senior councillors need to accept responsibility and stop trying to play the blame game.
I assume you haven’t looked through the budget in detail then? There is only so much give and take available while still providing the basic services. The irony is that the council spends VAST amounts of money meeting statutory standards and requirements set by a central government which is simultaneously reducing funding. If you’ve never tried to balance budgets with service and statutory requirements I suggest you stay out of criticising those that do.
George,
I should make clear that I will say what I choose,in response to whoever I choose. I am very aware of how difficult things are and how hard people work. However, results and the way they are obtained are often not what all clear thinking people might wish. People making hard decisions need to be sensitive and aware listeners. George(if that is your name) you will oblige me by keeping your ill considered suggestions to yourself
Sure decisions are difficult and you won’t please everyone but for goodness sake stop trying to put the reasons for your own short comings onto others. Stop telling us what you can’t do and tell us what you will do. You wanted the job, you take the pay, now take the responsibility. But for heavens sake stop wasting our money and simply do the basics well.
Cut councillor numbers and their allowances and perks.
Sack full time trade union bosses whose wages are paid by the council not union members.
You’d limit the kind of people who could become councillors to only those who are already very well off or retired, and that’s a negative thing for representation. The allowances aren’t much; for most councillors, this would not be enough to even live off basically, especially if one is spending a lot of time working on the role – admittingly mileage may vary depending on the effort put in.
If you mean encouraging those who have the time, experience and public spirit to become council then yes let’s have middle aged, retired, experience people who have no axe to grind or see the council as a political stepping stone.
We need apolitical people of local experience not blow-ins from elsewhere.
Hi,
Used to be a councillor about 15 years ago in another authority.
My concern is that councillors spend too much time trying to micromanage senior officers.
They aren’t “paid” as such to do council work, they are “paid” to provide the council with a strategy which the officers, paid millions between them, implement.
To that extent I am not necessarily worried about the basic allowance of £10,000, though £8000 more than was likely in 2005, but the fact that the leader get £35,000 more and the cabinet members a similar allowance.
Now, whilst you can argue that no one should be stopped from being a Councillor, if they are spending £45,000 of time on council business, that pretty much stops employed people from being councillors.
One of the reasons why there no money in so many councils ,is because so many students that live in city pay no council taxes .,but all use the facilities
What facilities do students use, but don’t pay for?
Street lights, refuse collections, roads & pavements, police, parks, playing fields, bus subsidy etc etc etc. Everything that’s paid for via the Council Tax.
Do you think they don’t pay for them? Maybe not directly, but that explains to me your perspective, thanks.
Oh, and a follow-up, do you think students will never pay Council Tax? And proportionally, the alternative is if we paid for what we personally use, what do you think the amount you paid out would be, more or less?
The same facilities that most of us taxpayers are using, except we are paying for them.
See replies below……is that clear enough for you.
Above, but thanks for stopping by Tom. Jumping on the band wagon without adding anything of substance, as usual in a desperate attempt to vicariously get one over me, because it seems like otherwise, we might be waiting a long time with your current success rate, not to mention the pointlessness of this ongoing struggle.
If you want us to only pay for services we use, a lot of people don’t have children or use social services.
I’d also suggest that what we pay in compared to what we get out probably looks a lot different.
This sounds like a great idea on the surface…not saying it isn’t – but perhaps someone knows the reason why we don’t do so?
Meant to be a reply to enforcing the i360 debt.
It’d actually end up costing the council a lot more if it did that. That debt doesn’t simply go away – BHCC owe it to someone else, so it’s better to get at least some payment out of the i360.
New New Labour = Old Tories
How interesting that the photo is of Hove Town Hall, which has remained empty since the start of the first lockdown. Remember that? That was quite a long time ago. Well, it would be interesting to know how much this empty building is costing us, while its staff are still being paid to shirk at home. It is high time the council were honest and told us exactly what this is costing us ratepayers, while they are constantly moaning about lack of funding from the government.
A major problem, for Councillors as well as for us taxpayers, is the ongoing ‘constructive refusal’ of Town Hall officers to disclose specific details of the money needed to fund each Statutory Duty (services a Council is required by law to provide); and for each item of Discretionary Spend!
Self evidently this lack of detailed figures means that neither councillors, nor us taxpayers, can arrive at rational conclusions as to where budget cuts will be least harmful.
Thus, and even more self evidently, it is clearly a major task for the current Labour Administration, as well as for all Opposition Councillors, to at last make clear to all officers that they are paid to SERVE our City (according to policies established by Councillors acting as our Elected Representatives), and certainly NOT to rule us in the de facto autocratic and unaccountable manner they’ve been allowed to get away with since1997!
For anyone wishing to get a flavour of a better way of working a visit to a meeting of the Licensing Sub-Cttee or Panel is recommended. There decisions to grant, or to refuse, Applications for alcohol, or sex-shop, licences, generally come to the Cttee with a Council officer’s report presenting the pros and cons of the Application.
Then, and just as one would hope, the three Councillors (usually one from each Party) use their local knowledge to arrive at a decision.
However, and very sadly since the special Application of Uber for a taxi operators licence, the democratic excellence and openness of this Sub-Committee has been marred by the fact of no longer making, and explaining, the decision on an Application at the meeting, in full public session, on the day!
Instead an Application, after the open debate, is taken away to be definitively decided behind closed doors, to then be published some five days later! Which obviously is likely to create suspicions of covert influence by Town Hall officers during those days prior to publication!
So Licensing Councillors, please show some self-respect, as our Elected Representatives, in addition to respect for Democracy in general, and immediately insist upon a return to the previous established practice of determining Applications on the day, and in open public session!
With regard to overall budget issues, and the commonsense aspect of all concerned being able to know the details of our Statutory spend, to then see how much remains to be shared among the many demands for Discretionary spending, it can be helpful to remember an uncomfortable aspect of public service in a democracy.
That aspect is that Statutory provisions are those which Parliament has ordered councils to provide. Mainly these are services to assist the most vulnerable among us, of any age,when in need.
But any reduction of Discretionary services, such as libraries and parks, is met with howls of protest from fit and capable users – whilst many of the vulnerable are practically unable to challenge reductions of Statutory services to them, when money is siphoned-off to fund Discretionary spending instead!
Given that Councilors hear howls of protest from the fit majority, whilst the ‘halt and lame’ among our City’s residents can barely raise even a whimper, seems to mean that ALL Cllrs need to demand that Town Hall officers clearly identify, to all of us, the detailed budget figures split between each Statutory provision, and proposed for each Discretionary provision.
Whilst our City council has to ‘Cut its Cloth’ accordin to its actual financial means, Democracy requires that it does so with total honesty and openness, surely?
And although achieving that, in this current season of developing the Budgets for April 2024 onwards, is clearly a task for all Councillors particularly those of the Labour group need to carefully bear in mind that they carry a great burden of trust to do right, placed upon them by the many voters who gave Labour an overall majority last May!
And, with a General Election looming, one would expect that Labour nationally needs all of its councillors
to work to a ‘Gold Standard’ of excellence, to increase voter confidence in the Parliamentary candidates it puts forward?
Yes, in our City that means Councillors will need to ‘get their hands dirty’ by delving much more deeply into the day-to-day activities of what staff are doing, or not doing!
Traditionally officers have discouraged close monitoring by murmurs of ‘micro-managing’, followed by hints along the lines of: ‘Well Councillor, if you think you can do better here’s my chair – make yourself at home!’.
Which is exactly what, in this digital age, Cllrs need to do – to demand read-only,access to whatever BHCC computer systems they feel a need to view! To be able to ‘see for themselves’!
And with every Cllr registered with the ICO as a ‘Data Controller’ there needn’t be any concerns on GDPR grounds either?
The last Administration to really begin to get to grips with the detail of Council operations was the Conservative one of Alderwoman Mary Mears, whose Group uncovered Kafka-esque situations, such as insurance premiums still being paid on vehicles already sold, and much more needless waste besides!
So Councillors, please do not let yourselves be intimidated by officers murmuring about ‘micro-management’ – please just keep digging for the full truth ‐ which is what most taxpayers elected you to do, surely?