Budget statement - 20 February 2008
Councillor Peter Redstone, Deputy Leader and Executive Member for Resource and Performance
Thank you Mr. Mayor, I am delighted to place before Council tonight, the Conservative budget for 2008/9. As you will know this is our first opportunity for more than 20 years to set the budget and the Council Tax on behalf of the residents of our borough and we intend to honour our promises and take a sustainable and prudent approach to this responsibility.
Mr. Mayor the new Conservative-led Council has been forced to live this year with the dogs breakfast of a budget put together by the Labour Group. I did explain to the Members opposite at the time the many reasons why the budget was unsustainable but of course this was met with the usual derision and he haws.
What is clear to see is that Bury Labour Party was simply stacking up the debts of political failure for future generations to pay. They failed miserably to provide anything at all for the enormous issue of Job Evaluation, they left us with huge holes in the budget for Adult Services, they left us with a loss making Direct Labour Organisation and they left us with millions of pounds of uncollected debts.
And what of Labour nationally? Well the beloved Labour Member of Parliament for Bury North recently ran to the press after the Leader has privately asked him for help claiming that the Government grant was now higher than at any time in the Tory years. So what? If things are so rosy then why have the Bury Labour Party imposed on this Council cuts of £25m in the past five years whilst increasing the Council Tax by a whopping 33%? Why is Bury’s grant rise lagging behind everyone else’s yet again? Why does the Government consistently fail to give the people of Bury their fair share of grant?
Even Cllr Connolly agrees that we get a raw deal from his Government. In this very Chamber, setting his last budget, he said… and I quote ‘Bury has never been in a favorable position following budget settlements, and this year is no different’.
Mr. Chaytor also urged the Council to borrow millions of pounds, to stop dragging our feet and to spend it on settling equal pay claims… all this despite the fact that it hasn’t yet been established whether we are liable for these claims. If protecting public money and making sure it is spent wisely is called dragging your feet then heaven help us all.
I for one will take no lessons on how to run this Borough's finances from an MP who's own Government loses the child benefit records of seven million families or ends up bailing out the first bank run in more than 100 years.
But Mr. Mayor, Council will be pleased to know that the slash and burn years (yes spelt B U R N) of the Labour administration are over. The past is now history and tonight I intend to focus on the future which as we all know is what really matters. Last year, we did not make any promises we could not keep and I give you the same commitment tonight; we can't solve every problem left to us by the Group opposite but what I can promise is that we will try our very best.
So what will make the Conservatives so different from Labour? Well Mr. Mayor, this Conservative Council will not retreat from difficult decisions. My budget tonight will tackle head on the real issues that face us such as Job Evaluation, such as demands on the budgets for services for vulnerable people, and such as the burden that the Council Tax places on our residents.
We also intend to start to tackle the last 20 years of 'boom and bust' in Bury's finances.
As promised we are conducting a root and branch investigation into how best to manage and deliver the services that we as a Council provide to our residents. This cannot be done overnight and it is anticipated that the results will start to become apparent as we move into the autumn.
This means that I do not intend at this point to include any of these efficiency savings into the coming year budget because this work is still on-going and unlike some of the Members opposite I will not, repeat will not, recommend a budget on a wing and a prayer.
However Members can be assured that when the time is right the results of this work will be brought before them.
There is a core belief that the people are big and the borough is small so Mr. Mayor to that extent we believe that the money that our residents work hard for is theirs and that they know better than us how to spend their own money.
Conservatives have promised through their manifesto to continue weekly general refuse collections. Although this Labour Government wants to gouge out even more cash from taxpayers in the form of a bin tax which, if implemented, is expected to cost each household an extra £50 a year, Mr. Mayor a Conservative controlled Council and only a Conservative controlled Council will vigorously resist this additional financial burden on our residents.
Figures show us that 18 million people across England have their rubbish collected once a fortnight, 155 Councils... that is almost half the English Authorities, have abandoned weekly bin collections and it is our firmly held belief that the ruling Labour group last year were secretly planning a similar scheme, but as usual lacked the courage of their convictions, because of fear of electoral backlash.
Mr. Mayor the Conservative Council listens to the voices of Council tax payers and refuses to put cash considerations before government targets and the bribes promised by the Chancellor. In other words, not tonight darling!
Mr. Mayor I am delighted to inform this Council that Bury will maintain weekly collections of general household waste.
Street crime is a scourge in our civilized society, muggings, burglaries, car theft, I know that we are all appalled at the increases in murder in Greater Manchester, many crimes as we know are drug and booze related, so tonight I can inform all Members and residents that the Conservatives have agreed to support an inflation busting 7.5% rise for the Greater Manchester Police Authority this year.
Of course as Members are aware we do not tell this Authority how to run the force but we have supported the provision of this extra cash so that we can have a more visible policing presence on our streets, in other words more bobbies on the beat. This agreement has been reached so as to increase police staff specifically in Bury by one Superintendent and additional front facing staff.
The ongoing fight against terrorism has brought into all of our homes via television, the wonderful job our brave soldiers are doing in some remote and distant parts of our world, therefore as a small gesture of the gratitude of the residents of Bury we are extending an open invitation to all serving forces personnel living in Bury to come and visit our gyms and leisure centres without charge. We calculate that this gesture will have a very small cash cost which can be met from within existing budgets.
So Mr. Mayor, what of the Conservative amendment before you tonight?
I intend to deal with this in two parts. Firstly I will take Members through our proposals for the Capital Programme and then I’ll address the Revenue Budget.
The Programme shown at Appendix B to the Budget report contains plans for investment in our schools, roads, parks and houses of over £98million. It is an exciting Programme that is once again based on the Council’s ambitions and priorities.
We have also made provision, as a contractual commitment, for a total of £31m to fund the new high school in Radcliffe, demonstrating once and for all the Conservative Council’s commitment to this fabulous scheme. Let no one be in any doubt Mr. Mayor… this school will be build.
We also intend to go further than the schemes shown in the Appendix. The amendment before you recommends that an additional provision of £875,000 be made in 2008/09 in order to continue the redevelopment of Pimhole. It recommends that £200,000 be provided for additional adaptations to private houses and that a further £290,000 be spent on Disabled Facilities Grants to help people live comfortably in their own homes.
The proposals before you also include provision for £306,000 of current maintenance to be capitalised to assist with my strategy for balancing the Revenue Budget.
It is recommended that the additional resources required to fund these proposals, totalling £880,000, can be prudently found by making provision for slippage in the overall Programme.
Finally Members are asked to support the inclusion into the Programme of a scheme to regenerate Philips Park as part of a multi million pound lottery bid. No resources will be required in the coming year but this will allow the bid to proceed on a sound footing and demonstrates our commitment to facilities in the south of the Borough.
Turning now to the Revenue Budget Mr. Mayor.
It almost goes without saying... but it should be said... that the proposals submitted to the Executive, and amended tonight, have been prepared in line with the Council’s Financial Strategy, the Golden Rules and the established priority-led approach. They are prudent and robust, they reflect the promises made in our manifesto and, most importantly Mr. Mayor, they reflect the risks and challenges faced by the Council.
The first thing that I am pleased to say is that my recommendations ask the Council to increase the minimum level of balances by £200,000 to £3.6m in line with the risk based assessment that I know we all support.
I am less pleased to report to you that as a result of the position we inherited, and the below average Government Settlement that Bury has received, the standstill budget originally submitted to the Executive showed a shortfall of £5.2m.
In order to bridge that gap I asked officers and portfolio holders to find savings of £5.4m and I am pleased to say that they were successful in doing that and I thank them sincerely for their efforts. In fact Mr. Mayor they went further and identified options totaling £5.513m as shown in Appendix C to the Budget report.
Therefore it is with a certain amount of regret that I ask Council to accept the options shown in the Appendix. However in doing this I would ask Council to make three exceptions. Firstly, Children’s Services found more than their share of savings and given the importance that we attach to this Department I am recommending that £103,000 of their savings be rejected. By the very fact that these were ‘surplus’ savings there is no adverse effect on the budget from doing this. Secondly, I am recommending that half of the proposed saving from the Book Fund be turned down.
There are many reasons for making this recommendation Mr. Mayor, none more so than the representations that I have received from my colleagues Cllrs. Penketh and Berry who have requested a re instatement of this item and for me to withdraw it from tonight's proposals. We have listened very carefully to them and to the reasons they have put forward.
Interestingly Members opposite have referred to this item at the Resource and Performance Scrutiny Commission and in the press. Even more interesting is the fact that a few years ago the Labour Controlled Bury Council decided to close four of Bury's libraries as part of a budget reduction exercise at a time when Bury was offering less library access to residents than any other Metropolitain Borough in the Country. Could it be that the same members now complaining about a one-off savings were Members who voted in favour of closing these libraries? I think so Mr. Mayor.
By listening so closely to my Radcliffe colleagues and by confirming our commitment to the building of the new Radcliffe school I hope that we have now proved once and for all the Conservative party’s commitment to Radcliffe as well as all other parts of the Borough.
Finally it is suggested that half of the EDS saving relating to minor highways maintenance gangs be rejected. This means that there will be a reduction of only one gang and through true efficiencies in the way the remaining gangs operate we are determined that the balance of the saving will be made with no adverse impact on the quality of the Boroughs highways. The situation will be reviewed in 12 months time and so this requires just a one-off injection of funds.
The £100,000 cost of these two amendments to the savings list will be funded from a one-off contribution from the Transformation Reserve.
On a more positive note Mr. Mayor, the budget provides for a contribution of £1.9m into the Priority Investment Reserve and I am proposing that funding should be allocated to the following key priorities:
- £500,000 to provide for the cost of Job Evaluation;
- £100,000 to increase the base budget for services for people with physical disabilities;
- £700,000 to increase the base budget for services for people with learning difficulties;
- £100,000 for the Environment and Development Services Department to spend on service developments in line with the Council’s ambitions;
- £70,000 to support the delivery of the Bury Employment Plan to reduce worklessness in line with the outcomes of the Warwick event.
If these allocations are supported then there will be a balance remaining in the Reserve and it is our intention to utilize this funding as set out later in my speech and also to leave some monies remaining to be spent during the coming financial year as priorities present themselves.
We also intend to fund the establishment of a Business Development and Engagement Manager within Adult Care Services to drive forward the modernization agenda within that service. The funding will be limited for two years after which the post is expected to be self-funding and in view of this it is felt prudent to provide a total of £120,000 from the Transformation Reserve to fund the post until March 2010.
On a less positive note Mr. Mayor, Mr. Geoffrey Berg has done his worst and I would suggest has led people into signing his petition for an elected Mayor on a false premise, and instead of saving money for our residents it has been necessary, and I believe prudent, to provide in the standstill budget the sum of £150,000 for elections this year which as Members will be aware is almost a fifth of a per cent on Council Tax. This is money which could have been used for a much more deserving cause than the one Mr. Berg has forced on us.
I can see that Members can hardly contain themselves so now I’ll move on to the question of the Council Tax.
Firstly I want to make it clear to the people of Bury that my colleagues and I are well aware of the effect that increased gas prices, electricity prices, the high costs of petrol and diesel fuels, as well as all of Mr. Brown's stealth taxes have on them and on their household budgets. We are particularly aware of the effects that this has on pensioners and whilst for the time being we all have to live with this curse, during consultations on the budget we were made aware of a small way that can help to minimise the pain. Therefore tonight Mr. Mayor I am pleased to announce that we will offer Bury Council tax payers the opportunity to pay next year's Council Tax by twelve monthly instalments instead of ten which is the current norm.
This will be available to people who take the opportunity of paying by the easiest and most economical manner, which is of course Direct Debit.
We estimate that this will cost £15,000 and the cost can be found from part of the balance on the Priority Investment Reserve.
We hope that people will take advantage of this opportunity to ease their cash flow problems. It is yet more proof that we intend to run this Borough for the benefit of the people, not for the benefit of the Council.
Mr. Mayor, when we came to office we pledged to keep the Council tax increases within inflation and tonight I am pleased to be able to say that we have honoured that pledge.
The most appropriate measure of inflation is the one that affects us all on a daily basis when we visit the shops or buy our petrol or pay our mortgage and that is the Retail Price Index.
The latest available measure of the RPI, published on 12 February 2008 was 4.1% and tonight Mr. Mayor I am delighted to inform you that not only are we recommending a rise in the Bury element of the Council Tax that is in line with this figure but in fact one that is 0.7% below the rate of inflation. Yes Mr. Mayor I am recommending that the Council tax should rise by 3.4%. This is 1.6%, or nearly a third less than the rate imposed by the Labour Group in each of the past three years.
It is not our intention to keep increases low for just one year but a Conservative controlled Council will seek year on year to maintain services and keep Council Tax increases as low as prudence dictates.
This will see the Bury element at Band D rise by £38.23 a year to £1,162.75, which is just over 73p per week. Compare this to the £1.02 per week rise imposed by Labour this time last year. The difference in income between a 3.4% rise and the 5% assumed during our consultation is £941,000 and this will be found by taking a further £40,000 from the Priority Investment Reserve, by utilizing the remaining ‘surplus’ savings of £195,000 and by one-off corporate savings of £706,000 as set out in the amendment.
The use of one-off savings is less than ideal but it is in line with the Financial Strategy and the Golden Rules and reflects a reduction of 30% compared to the level of one-off savings imposed on us by the party opposite.
Of course Mr. Mayor, it would have been nice to emulate other local Councils and to have gone further but we can’t for two reasons. Firstly I am not prepared to be irresponsible and imprudent. A lower Council Tax rise would have required a level of savings which would have adversely impacted on our services or would have left us as a hostage to fortune in future years. Secondly, we don’t receive anything like the level of Government support that other Council’s do. If we had received a 6% rise in grant like Oldham then we could have kept the rise to below 1% but we didn’t. If each person in Bury had been given the same level as a person in Bolton then not only would we have no cuts but I could have reduced Council Tax by 17%! I wish, Mr. Mayor.
Mr. Mayor, the plight of our senior citizens is something that concerns all of us, I know that Members opposite believed that the Labour Government has given them a very raw deal over the last ten years, consequently they offered all households with someone over 65 years old a discount on Council Tax bills when they set their last budget. Many pensioners have asked me during the round of L.A.P.s and just around the town if we intend to carry that forward so I am delighted to inform members that tonight I am proposing that not only will we continue to offer a discount but that we will go further than Labour did last year and we intend to offer people who are over 65 on 1st April 2008, and not on benefit, a discount of 3.4%.
This means that for someone who meets the criteria the Bury element of the Tax at Band D will be £1124.52, exactly the same as the amount being paid in the current year by someone under 65.
No doubt members opposite will shortly rise and attempt to ridicule this budget, for the savings that we have been forced to make, not because we wanted too but because they have for twenty one years not known how to budget properly and prudently. In a way one is almost loath to blame them and we hope that the residents of Bury forgive them for they know not what they do.
Mr. Mayor, the Bury Labour Group has often mocked me for being a mere shopkeeper. Tonight, they can see how a shopkeeper lives within his means, provides services at a price that can be paid while looking after those who need those services most.
Mr. Mayor, this budget is balanced, sustainable, prudent and responsible. It has addressed serious matters such as Job Evaluation, it has put additional resources into the most hard pressed budgets, it has addressed key priorities, it reflects what the public has told us, it honours our promises, it helps our elderly people and it has done all this with a Council Tax rise that is 30% lower than the rise promised by Labour when they were in power.
That is why this Council can have confidence that the financial future of Bury is heading out of the red and that is why the reds are heading out of Bury.
Thank you Mr. Mayor.
Budget statement - 20 February 2008
Housing Revenue Account
Thank you Mr. Mayor, I am pleased to be able to make a short statement in support of the Housing Revenue Account for 2008/09.
The Conservative party takes its responsibilities to tenants very seriously and I am pleased to see that there are many positive developments taking place:
- Tenant satisfaction remains high at 78% overall with the service. This is some 10% higher since the commencement of the satisfaction surveys.
- We are in our 3rd year of delivering the Decent Homes programme started by our friends across the Chamber and we have now secured 4 constructor partners to help deliver work.
- There is good and positive work underway to fully integrate the Repairs Service into Six Town Housing by transferring DLO across. This should provide a better service to tenant whilst also addressing the losses currently being incurred by the DLO.
- We are working in partnership with the Fire Service to ensure working smoke alarms are fitted in all council properties by 2010
The report itself details the proposed Housing Revenue Account for 2008/09 and recommends an average rent increase for Dwellings and Garages of 5.33%.
Members will know by now that the actual increase in the rent level is very much outside of the Council’s control. Rent levels are now determined by the subsidy allocation that we get from the Government and, more importantly, by the introduction of rent restructuring which means that individual property rents are now set according to their valuation, size and relative local earnings.
However, Members may also recall that last year the Government asked Councils to limit rent increases to 5% irrespective of the rise indicated by the Subsidy formula and they provided compensation to Councils such as Bury who accepted this request.
Well Mr. Mayor, surprise, surprise... they’ve now withdrawn that grant and this will cost our tenants £170,000 in the coming year. Instead they’ve given Council’s freedom to increase rents higher than the guideline to compensate.
This meant that we could have increased the rent by up to 7.39% and other councils will no doubt be increasing to such levels this year.
Mr. Mayor, we are not prepared to do the Government’s dirty work for them and we have no intention of burdening our tenants in this way. I am therefore recommending that the rent increases by 5.33%.
Of course, this will be an average increase and will still result in a range of rent increases/decreases for individual properties throughout the Borough, and these are also detailed in the report.
The report also recommends amended charges for Sheltered Accommodation that reflect the new service model that will be introduced from April 2008.
This model provides a more flexible and cost effective service that gives better value for money, increases capacity by 25% within existing financial resources and meets the recommendations of the Government’s White Paper “Our health, our care, our say” by providing support to older people in their own homes in the community. It is planned that it will increase the number of people we deliver a support service to from 486 to 608 whilst at the same time allowing a more consistent and flexible service to be provided to our existing service users.
Members will no doubt be pleased to see that for the vast majority of existing service users it is recommended that charges in fact reduce. Where they don’t then a scheme of protection has been built in.
Amenities charges will increase by a variety of rates reflecting actual costs and void levels at individual premises.
As far as Heating charges are concerned, I am very aware of the concerns expressed by Members in previous years, and so it is recommended that Heating remain unchanged pending a renegotiation of the existing energy contracts and that a review of charges be undertaken in summer and reported back to Executive.
Finally, Mr. Mayor the management fee payable to Six Town Housing is in the process of being negotiated but I can tell Members that the HRA makes provision for an increase in line with inflation. The fee will also reflect the need to make cashable efficiency savings in line with Gershon targets.
It is to be the intention of this administration that the HRA balances will be protected in the future by working closely with Six Town Housing to reduce Housing Management Costs. We are in the process of finalising an action plan to present to Six Town Housing to help them achieve this goal which is also due to be presented to the Resource and Performance Scrutiny Commission on the 6 March 2008.
Thank You Mr. Mayor.
