Community Infrastructure Levy

The use of Planning Obligations (S106 agreements) were legal agreements between the council and developers negotiated through the planning application system.  The purpose was to mitigate the negative impact of developments to provide new infrastructure such as new roads or new schools. Brent standardised much of the S106 system so that what a developer paid related to the number of homes developed.  With the new Community Infrastructure Levy, (CIL) the government requires councils to go further with this idea and to levy a straight per square metre charge on all development over a given size.  Also, with CIL, there will have to be a more local determination as to how the funds are allocated and will involve ward councillors and residents in decisions.

Local government finance

A BBC survey of planned expenditure by 76% of England's local authorities published on 12 May, shows that, in 2011/12, planned adult social care expenditure is expected to fall by an estimated 4.7% in the North and rise by 2.7% in the South; and cultural spending (including libraries) is expected to drop by about 10.2%, education spending by about 11.4% and environmental spending by 3.7% ("Council Spending: Making It Clear").  

Budget "reserves"

The Communities Minister, Eric Pickles, and Housing Minister, Grant Shapps, continue to berate some councils for having large budget reserves while drastically cutting services.  Reserves are needed so that we can manage risks during the year, so if it snows for weeks in winter we can top up our gritting salt, or if there is an unexpected demand for social services for children or the elderly, we can dip into reserves to avoid an overspend. Brent reserves have rarely been above £10 million, which means the borough has the lowest percentage of reserves at 4.4% of any London council and is tiny when compared to Conservative Kensington and Chelsea's 54.7%.  The opposition groups in Brent want to use reserves to avoid hard decisions about cuts. But the Finance Director advises that such proposals would expose us to "unacceptable risks”.

Sarah Teather MP - a different view on libraries

According to Sarah Teather MP in 2005, London libraries could be consigned to history books in less than two decades. She revealed new figures in 2005 that showed the number of books being borrowed from libraries in the capital have dropped by more than 28% since 1997, leading to fears that in less than two decades time libraries will be consigned to the history books. The figures, taken from Parliamentary answers show that in 1997/98, there were 55.2million books borrowed from libraries in the capital. By 2003/04, this had plummeted to 39.7million - a drop of 28%. If current trends continue no books would be borrowed by the year 2022. Teather said:

"There is a real danger that in the not too distant future, London's libraries could be consigned to the history books. While there are many people now buying their books from the High Street rather than going to their local library, it is deeply worrying that the decline in borrowing could lead to the closure of London's libraries. The decline in borrowed books will lead to increased pressures to force libraries in London to close their doors."

Libraries: a brief view of the national picutre

Up to 523 libraries are due to close as part of cuts of 30-40% to councils' £1bn library budgets over the next four years. Almost a third of councils plan cuts of 20% or more to leisure facilities.

Redundancies: 4,000-6,000 library staff
Figures from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy show a drop of almost 1,000 in paid library staff in 2009-10. So far, 50 jobs will go at Wirral council, 40 in Harrow, 12 in Hounslow, 17 in Wiltshire.

Services
According to Cipfa, 45% of councils plan cuts of more than 10% to libraries and arts, museum and heritage services, and 28% plan similar cuts to leisure services. Twenty libraries could go in North Yorkshire, 20 in Leeds and 10 in Gloucestershire.

There are other, less spectacular, cuts. Library opening hours are being slashed to as little as three hours a week as councils look for ways to save money while avoiding unpopular closures. Almost five 500 libraries are currently threatened with the axe, with Hampstead Garden Suburb library in Barnet, north London, the latest confirmed casualty. But experts claim there is also a hidden cuts programme at work in many authorities, which will gut the service from the inside.
Total cuts in spend on libraries given as £350m

The Pontificating of Eric Pickles MP

The Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, is continually interfering and criticising local decisions. Most of his criticisms have been reserved for Labour councils, stating for example that they don't need to make cuts to frontline services if only they would cut a few more senior staff.  No one outside his Whitehall department still believes this. Even his own party's councillors are telling him that cuts to frontline services are essential due to his funding decisions.  Most London councils have worked hard to find back office cuts, but still had to make painful cuts to frontline services. There may come a time when back office services have been cut so drastically that there is no one left to run anything.  


In a break from his usual script of claiming councils are responsible for the banking crisis, Eric Pickles recently made another astonishing claim - that Labour councils across the UK were deliberately making bigger and more damaging cuts to front-line services in order to make the Tory government look bad. 


Brent council leader, Cllr Ann John, has hit back at the minister, who she accused of hiding behind a smokescreen of empty talk. She said: “These times are extraordinary also for the behaviour of local government ministers. Ministers who have spent more time attacking councils than helping us deal with the enormous cuts they want to impose. Government ministers who want to hide their programme behind a smokescreen of empty talk about waste, while the Prime Minister acknowledges that councils are the most efficient part of the public sector. In Mr Pickles we have the first Secretary of State ever against local government."

In his own backyard ....

Prime Minister David Cameron represents an Oxfordshire constituency. Oxfordshire County Council is planning to cut 20 of its 43 public libraries. Brent is one of hundreds of councils proposing to close libraries to meet huge cuts imposed by central government.  Nearly 400 libraries nationwide are threatened with closure.

Unlock democracy?

Councillors get all sorts of letters promoting schemes or point of view. Just received one from a organisation called "Unlock Democracy" aiming to get support for a "yes" vote for the Alternative Vote (AV) system in the referendum on May 5th 2011. The letter is supposedly from the comedian Eddie Izzard, who also asks for funds for the campaign. I won't be supporting AV as I don't find Izzard's arguments plausible. I don't find him very funny either.

Burying bad news?

All governments are sometimes accused of "burying" bad news when the media is taken over by one dominant or interesting issue.  This was certainly true of the time Prince William announced his engagement. Among bad news stories from the coalition government were:

- Children's centres in deprived areas no longer be obliged to offer full daycare or to hire staff with both Qualified Teacher and Early Years Professional status (Announced by our MP, Children’s Minister Sarah Teather at the Daycare Trust conference.) 

- "Aim Higher", the programme to get working-class youngsters into universities, is set to be axed by the government – at the same time as fees for university students are trebled.

- 3000 jobs are set to be cut from the Greater Manchester Police Force, representing a 23% cut in the workforce over the next four years – contrary to promises to protect frontline services.

Thanks to the media obsession with the royal family and some media management and convenient scheduling of announcements, these cuts will be overlooked, when they should be significant news stories.