Council tax and budget - Green vision blocked
23 February
Council taxpayers in Brighton and Hove will see a 4.9% increase in annual bills from April.
The Labour administration’s budget voted through on Thursday (22 February) with the help of the Lib Dems sought to plug the gaping £11m hole left between the real cost of delivering council services and the grant from central government.
The 4.9% increase in bills from April brings the total rise in the last ten years to 100%. Inflation is running at 2.7%.
The Labour-led administration has "deleted" 120 council jobs, with more on the way if informed predictions for zero-increase future government grants are correct, says Green Convenor Councillor Keith Taylor (pictured).
“Labour says 120 lost jobs won’t affect services. How can that be true? And if it is, why did we have them in the first place?”
"This above-inflation increase will hit people on low and fixed incomes hardest – and is only necessary because the government is starving the city of cash”
“Greens didn’t support this budget – we won’t do Chancellor Gordon Brown's dirty work.”
The Lib Dems voted to support the reduction to a part time post that of Children’s Equalities & Anti Bullying officer, as well as saving £503,000 by reducing the number of looked after children, and slashing the social homecare budget by £200,000.
This move may baffle Lib Dem voters, say Greens, especially as their former leader Cllr Paul Elgood has only recently stepped down as Chair of the council’s Equalities Forum.
Positive change at heart of Green budget vision
Meanwhile Brighton & Hove’s Green councillors last night set out a positive vision for city centre residents' parking.
The proposed scheme – which was rejected by Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative councillors – would have enabled residents with very low emission vehicles to park for free.
The scheme is modelled on one that was recently approved in Richmond (a LibDem council in Greater London).
The proposal would have seen discounts and supplements applied according to the vehicle’s emissions.
By increasing the basic permit price to £90 (current price £80, set 10 years ago) the proposal would yield £500,000 in a full year.
“Our proposal is constructed to encourage behaviour change, reduce pollution and to enable residents to save money into the bargain,” said Keith.
“It’s using taxation to bring about positive change. The money raised would be split between giving it back to neighbourhood forums for residents to spend on environmental or community enhancements as they see fit.
"It would also pay for swifter parking zone implementation across the city, where residents tell us they want them”
Other Green budget measures included increased funding to Community and Voluntary Sector groups, money for a congestion charge study and cancelling the Councillor’s perk of free car park passes.
Conservative Nirvana?
"Similarly baffling was the Tory budget amendment, which was limited to new signals at a traffic junction," added Keith.
“For a party who keep telling us they’re capable of running the city this was a joke.
"While improvements at the crossing by BHASVIC sixth form school on Dyke Road will be welcomed, I hardly think delivering this Conservative nirvana at the junction of Dyke Road and Old Shoreham Road will be a passport to power”.
“The Tories have proved themselves to be out of touch, and frankly are not up to the job of running this city.”
Notes to editors:
For more information please contact Geoffrey Bowden Green Party Press Officer on 07958 682 683.Full text of Cllr Keith Taylor’s Budget Speech below:
Green Budget Speech – February 22 2007
As part of my work on the Budget Review group over the last year, I’ve watched this minority labour budget emerge, and I have to say the finished article looks as if it’s been written by a party who don’t expect to have to deliver it, because they won’t be the administration after May.
To say it relies on a wing and a prayer to fill the £11m hole that is the gap between what the government gives us and what we need is an understatement.
The grant formula is supposed to offer additional grant where costs of providing services is perceived to be higher. It does this primarily by measuring the average level of B&H salaries and wages. But this works against us because the city’s wages are low and costs are high.
So as part of the formula there is a built-in uplift, which is supposed to help councils pay to deliver services based on local costs.
But in B&H this uplift is only 1%, whereas in Crawley its 12% or Surrey it’s 14% or in Kensington & Chelsea it’s a staggering 27%
But, for the fourth year running, BHCC gets a floor level increase – which, together with a £3m overspend in our shared healthcare budgets - has seen the loss of 120 jobs.
Now, dress it up however you want Cllr Burgess these 120 lost jobs WILL have an impacts on service delivery – how can they not? – the front-line workers need back-office support.
If you seriously expect the public to believe there’s not a significant impact through deleting these posts then the question the public will rightly ask is “well if their loss makes no difference, why did we have them in the first place?”
But as we know it’s not all fault of the B&H Labour Party – no, it’s the Labour govt who have sustained their hostilities against Brighton & Hove with a triple whammy on the city.
Not content with giving us ‘below inflation grant increases’ – in other words cuts - it now looks as if this years Spending Review and the Lyons Report will result in zero increases for B&H for three years, 2008-9 to 2010-11. Not surprisingly they won’t announce these results until after the local elections.
That means that while salaries go up with inflation, while services get more expensive and the population grows, and while the new local govt act puts more responsibilities on us, we will not get an extra penny to help.
And the final part of the New Labour triple whammy is that as part of the local govt white paper they are insisting we totally change our democratic processes.
Whichever way you look at it, Labour are showing every sign of giving up on B&H.
And when we look at some of the cuts being imposed by this budget I really do wonder (Special Responsibility Allowances aside) why the Lib Dems are so quick to support Labour.
Can they really be proud of:
• Reducing the Children’s Equalities and Anti Bullying officer reduced to a part time job, or
• Slashing the homecare budget by £200k
• Or saving £535k by reducing the number of looked after children?
- I think it’s very brave of LibDems to be supporting those cuts, especially as Cllr Elgood not so long ago was the Chair of the Equalities Forum. Whether they are right to champion these harsh cuts is for others to judge.
Of course there are measures in the allocation of Local Authority Business Incentive (LABGI) Strategi Investment Fund (SIF) and Strategic Priority Fund (SPF). We would not wish to obstruct spending on Brighton Housing Trust or the Safe as Houses Women’s Refuge, nor the Social Enterprise grants or the climate change funding.
We do have a problem however with the transfer of LABGI money into the general fund to reduce the council tax increase. This is not it’s purpose, and last year the administration did the same. It should be used for regeneration initiatives, and this is addressed in our Amendment 4.
The Greens will not be supporting the administration’s budget, because we are not prepared to sell our city short by doing the government’s dirty work for them.
Further, the underlying assumptions on which the budget’s based are very risky – it’s calculated, amongst other things on;
• Below inflation pay rates for staff at 2.2%
• General inflation going down from present levels
• And forecasting a raft of unrealistic and unfounded projected savings – for instance there’s a £200k projected saving on home to school transport – but as we speak that budget is already £300k overspent, - largely as a result of the flawed decision by both Labour and the Tories of closing Comart
Further the budget relies on restricted growth in demand for social care services and no adverse changes in the local health economy.
This is no answer to the city’s problems.
The real answer to our crisis lies where it has been for the last five years – with central government. And if the predictions about zero grant increases prove accurate, this group will be looking to form alliances with other floor level councils across the country to make the case more forcefully for reappraisal of the grant formulas.
The lobbying this council has done for more grant money and the efforts of the Labour MPs has been useless. It’s time for more forceful direct action, anything less is letting down the people we represent.
So turning briefly to the Tory proposal. I say briefly because, for all the bluster of Cllr Oxley in the Argus letters pages about having the answer to keeping council tax low, this great alternative vision his party thinks will sweep him to power on May 3 is manifested by an alteration to a road junction improvement.
But delivering this conservative nirvana at the junction of Dyke Road and Old Shoreham Road will not in our view be a passport to power.
How can we take seriously a party who keeps telling us it has the answers, yet misses the perfect opportunity to tell the world? The truth is they do not have any solutions other than further cuts than have been tabled today – yet they don’t have the courage to be open and honest.
And while I’m on the subject of the next council I’ll take this opportunity to say that the new Green Group will simply not collude in any way with the excesses we can expect from the Tories of more privatisation and slashing of services.
Any impression that the conservative’s turn to run the city unopposed has arrived is totally false.
And so we now come to our own package of amendments.
It would be good to see them adopted here and now, rather than, as usual, being told they were impossible by Labour and then seeing them introduced by Labour within a few months. Just look at the last couple of years – Renewable Energy Fund last year and parity in parking charges between B&H the year before. Both apparently impossible in the February, but miraculously declared viable by the summer.
So our main amendment is to introduce a scheme to offer supplements and discounts on resident’s parking permits, similar to that already approved in Richmond. Under the proposal the basic permit will increase to £90 – it’s been £80 for ten years
The chart in your papers shows how residents can get free parking permits by having a Band A car and that 75% of cars will pay between £80-100 per annum.
This proposal is about using taxation to encourage behaviour change – it recognises the pollution problems caused by high emission vehicles and seeks to change it.
It differs substantially from the Labour/LD proposal which only seeks to penalise high emission vehicles, and misses the opportunity to encourage people into less polluting vehicles because they offer no discounts.
If our 1st amendment is passed then we propose to use the money, which will be .5m in a full year and spend it on;
• Roughly half the money raised on community budgeting for the wards which play host to resident parking zones, helping set up area forums which will spend their allocation on environmental improvements or community purposes as the community sees fit
• The other half will be invested in speeding up new parking zone implementation across the city
Our Amendment 3 will also draw £15,000 from the new resident’s permit scheme, to progress proposals investigating congestion charging. for B&H.
Members will have doubtless seen the recent press reports which show that there’s been a 7m increase in the number of private cars on our roads in the last 10 years. We’ve four Air Quality Management Areas in the city, and poor air quality is being blamed for the increase in respiratory disease, - with 34,000 premature UK deaths last year alone.
We have to find a solution to this. Government is predicting a 20% rise in traffic in the next decade – we have to investigate all the options and congestion charging is one method of demand management that’s been proven to work.
Amendment 4 is a long standing commitment of ours to increase the Discretionary Grants Budget, which helps Community and Voluntary Service (CVS) groups. Otherwise those funds are not increased - even in line with inflation.
There are 1500 CVS organisations in the city, and they helping local people with nearly a million problems every year. The sector is worth £29m to the city, and CVS groups delivering services instead of the council saves the tax payer millions every year.
We are taking £65k from LABGI instead of Lab/LDem proposal just to shove it into the general fund to slightly offset their overall increase.
And finally, we believe it is up to cllrs to set good examples to residents. And what can be a better example in this rapidly greening city, this Cycling Demonstration town than for cllrs to forsake their perk of free parking. We’re telling residents there’s no such thing as a free parking space – well Greens believe that until the town hall decision makers actually use sustainable transport methods they’ll less likely to really improve.
So we are giving you the opportunity, now to live up to all your party’s green rhetoric and leave your cars at home. Brighton has got a really good bus service if you don’t want to walk or cycle.
Here is your chance to prove the Labour Tory and LD party are really green, and not just chasing our headlines.
Councillors, please support our budget amendments.
[ENDS]
