Showing posts with label Brighton and Hove Council. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brighton and Hove Council. Show all posts

Friday 28 November 2014

Brighton and Hove Council grapples with 'immoral' impact of Coalition cuts on the city

It is becoming clear that the continuing cuts in local government funding means that many councils will be unable to maintain basic services in the years ahead and some may face severe financial problems if not bankruptcy. Cuts in funding for adult social care to be announced by central government make the situation worse.

Against that background Brighton and Hove Council, a minority Green administration, released the statement below today. It is sure to spark a debate within the Green Party and the wider left about what a council should do in such circumstances:

Laying out the background to the budget, Councillor Ollie Sykes, Green lead member for finance, said: "The bulk of the council's general fund money each year comes from central government and over the past four years the coalition government has cut its funding to us by a frightening 32% in cash terms. After taking into account inflation and increasing demand, this means we have £70m less this year, for services, than when we came into office.

"And with council tax held down below inflation - which means it has fallen by 12% in real terms - the rest of the council's income cannot even begin to make up the shortfall.

"Other councils have also been cut, though historically Brighton & Hove has been cut hardest in the south east. And other councils are not coping: many have closed essential services, from libraries to welfare services, and the National Audit Office last week reported that more than half of councils in England are at of risk financial failure within the next five years. This week, Newcastle has warned of 'impossible cuts leading to social unrest'."

Councillor Sykes continued:

"Until now, Brighton & Hove has escaped what other cities are suffering. This Green administration has ensured that only a very small fraction of those cuts have so far been passed on to the front line of council services.

"We've done it by getting the basics right, managing resources, rooting out inefficiency, greening the council's building stock, and with great support and hard work from council staff. We've kept all libraries and children's centres open, imposed no compulsory redundancies on council employees, continued a fair proportion of financial support for the third sector and even increased spending for the city's most vulnerable. We've also brought in unprecedented external funding to for city improvements, such as The Level and Seven Dials.

"This year is different. The government cuts are so huge and there's nothing left to squeeze. It means that business will no longer be as usual. Unlike the past, some council services will have to shrink or go. There will be redundancies and there will be protests against those redundancies.

This is what coalition government cuts are now about to do to our city."

Turning to the Greens' response, Councillor Sykes says:

"This is not a budget we're proud to see before us. But we can't print money or ask officers to spend what we don't have. Despite everything, though, we are doing what we can as a minority administration.

"Over the coming weeks, we will be calling on the government to reinstate our full grant and examining all possible ways to put the pressure on. We hope our Labour and Conservative colleagues will join us, for the sake of the city. What the coalition is doing to our most vulnerable residents and our communities is frankly immoral.

"We are asking the city to approve our proposals for a general 5.9% rise in council tax. This will not solve the problem but it will raise more than £4m to help maintain crucial services and avoid the imposition of a much sharper tax rise for the most hard-up people in the city.

"And we are making a series of pledges to keep open such core council services as libraries, children's centres and public toilets, to protect the city's most vulnerable from the worst of the cuts and not to introduce anything that will contribute to the further transfer of wealth from the least well off to the wealthiest in this country."

Caroline Lucas MP for Brighton Pavilion has tabled an Early Day Motion on the cuts to try and initiate a debate in the House of Commons in December:
  • This House believes, under the guise of austerity, central government is slowly but surely putting an end to local government as we know it;
  • Notes that from 2010/11 to 2015/16, core central government funding to local authorities has been slashed by 40%, whilst local government responsibilities increase; further notes demand for council services is growing and people are suffering under Government policies harming the poorest and most disadvantaged such as the bedroom tax, cuts to tax credits and benefits and the increase in VAT;
  • Further notes the National Audit Office report criticising the Government for failing to properly assess the effects of further cuts to funding of councils by central government and the cross-party Local Government Association warning over plans to stop funding Local Welfare Assistance Schemes that “If the government pulls the plug on funding, many local authorities will be unable to afford to make up the difference at a time when we are tackling the biggest cuts to council funding in living memory” which will cause three-quarters of councils to scale back or scrap their schemes;
  • Therefore calls for the cuts to local Government funding to be reversed and for local government to be protected from further cuts to enable local authorities to provide cherished community services as well as vital social services such as support for looked-after children, care-leavers, users of adult social care, older people, homeless people, low-income families in crisis, disabled people, those with special educational needs and emergency help to survivors of domestic violence. 
Notes
Brighton and Hove singled-out for cuts: LINK
Laying out the background to the budget, Councillor Ollie Sykes, Green lead member for finance, said: "The bulk of the council's general fund money each year comes from central government and over the past four years the coalition government has cut its funding to us by a frightening 32% in cash terms. After taking into account inflation and increasing demand, this means we have £70m less this year, for services, than when we came into office.

"And with council tax held down below inflation - which means it has fallen by 12% in real terms - the rest of the council's income cannot even begin to make up the shortfall.

"Other councils have also been cut, though historically Brighton & Hove has been cut hardest in the south east. And other councils are not coping: many have closed essential services, from libraries to welfare services, and the National Audit Office last week reported that more than half of councils in England are at of risk financial failure within the next five years. This week, Newcastle has warned of 'impossible cuts leading to social unrest'."

Councillor Sykes continued:
"Until now, Brighton & Hove has escaped what other cities are suffering. This Green administration has ensured that only a very small fraction of those cuts have so far been passed on to the front line of council services.

"We've done it by getting the basics right, managing resources, rooting out inefficiency, greening the council's building stock, and with great support and hard work from council staff. We've kept all libraries and children's centres open, imposed no compulsory redundancies on council employees, continued a fair proportion of financial support for the third sector and even increased spending for the city's most vulnerable. We've also brought in unprecedented external funding to for city improvements, such as The Level and Seven Dials.

"This year is different. The government cuts are so huge and there's nothing left to squeeze. It means that business will no longer be as usual. Unlike the past, some council services will have to shrink or go. There will be redundancies and there will be protests against those redundancies.

This is what coalition government cuts are now about to do to our city."

Turning to the Greens' response, Councillor Sykes says:

"This is not a budget we're proud to see before us. But we can't print money or ask officers to spend what we don't have. Despite everything, though, we are doing what we can as a minority administration.

"Over the coming weeks, we will be calling on the government to reinstate our full grant and examining all possible ways to put the pressure on. We hope our Labour and Conservative colleagues will join us, for the sake of the city. What the coalition is doing to our most vulnerable residents and our communities is frankly immoral.

"We are asking the city to approve our proposals for a general 5.9% rise in council tax. This will not solve the problem but it will raise more than £4m to help maintain crucial services and avoid the imposition of a much sharper tax rise for the most hard-up people in the city.

"And we are making a series of pledges to keep open such core council services as libraries, children's centres and public toilets, to protect the city's most vulnerable from the worst of the cuts and not to introduce anything that will contribute to the further transfer of wealth from the least well off to the wealthiest in this country."

Caroline Lucas MP for Brighton Pavilion has tabled an Early Day Motion on the cuts to try and initiate a debate in the House of Commons in December:
  • This House believes, under the guise of austerity, central government is slowly but surely putting an end to local government as we know it;
  • Notes that from 2010/11 to 2015/16, core central government funding to local authorities has been slashed by 40%, whilst local government responsibilities increase; further notes demand for council services is growing and people are suffering under Government policies harming the poorest and most disadvantaged such as the bedroom tax, cuts to tax credits and benefits and the increase in VAT;
  • Further notes the National Audit Office report criticising the Government for failing to properly assess the effects of further cuts to funding of councils by central government and the cross-party Local Government Association warning over plans to stop funding Local Welfare Assistance Schemes that “If the government pulls the plug on funding, many local authorities will be unable to afford to make up the difference at a time when we are tackling the biggest cuts to council funding in living memory” which will cause three-quarters of councils to scale back or scrap their schemes;
  • Therefore calls for the cuts to local Government funding to be reversed and for local government to be protected from further cuts to enable local authorities to provide cherished community services as well as vital social services such as support for looked-after children, care-leavers, users of adult social care, older people, homeless people, low-income families in crisis, disabled people, those with special educational needs and emergency help to survivors of domestic violence. 
Notes
Brighton and Hove singled-out for cuts: LINK
Leader of Newcastle council decries impossible cuts and warns of social unrest: LINK

Thursday 20 June 2013

GMB strike action in Brighton suspended

Strike action by CityClean GMB  in Brighton members has been suspended for 28 days from  Monday to allow a ballot of members on a Council offer to take place. The offer is preliminary until the formal consultation period is completed. The offer will be discussed with Unison tomorrow and other areas will  need to be negotiated with both unions.

I understand that the work-to-rule is also suspended and there will be an extensive clean up and catch-up work programmed in now for the next fortnight.

Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, tweeted tonight:
Thanks to @gmbcityclean for returning to work while ballot members on council offer - importance of their work appreciated more than ever

Friday 14 June 2013

Green activists declare support for Brighton Cityclean workers

The GMB Cityclean picket line this morning
The Green Party has rightly been subject to close scrutiny over the performance of its first Green led (though minority) council in Brighton and Hove. The party has been hampered by an unholy alliance opposition of Labour and Conservative councillors but nonetheless has been able to implement some progressive policies. Its decision to stay in office and implement Coalition cuts has been controversial to say the least and one that I do not support, but some problems have been of its own making, through inexperience or poor decision making.

This is the case with the Cityclean dispute and I support the position put below in an Open Letter by a group of Green councillors and activists in the city:

As concerned Green Party activists, Councillors and trade unionists we feel we have no option other than to write this letter. This is our response to the news that the Council’s Cityclean workforce intend to take industrial action following the collapse of negotiations relating to proposed changes to their pay and allowances.

We are appalled that the situation has escalated to the point where Council employees are forced to take strike action in order to be heard. We are concerned that as activists from a party which has spent years arguing for workers’ rights that on this occasion the argument is wrong.

We continue to oppose the imposition of pay cuts as per the decision of our Emergency General Meeting in May. Further we will show solidarity with the workers affected by this decision.

We are Green Party members because we believe in its core value of social justice. Imposing a reduction to the take home pay of some of our lowest paid workers runs completely contrary to this.

We fully support the difficult process of trying to equalise the Council’s very complex allowance system so that all staff are treated fairly. That said we deplore the fact that previous Labour and Conservative-led councils failed to fix the problem when they had the opportunity.

However, we cannot accept a situation which attempts to impose a settlement on staff without the agreement of all Unions involved. Negotiations should not pit worker against worker.

We remain concerned that as yet there appears to be no satisfactory negotiated resolution which means that balloting has happened and industrial action will occur from 6am this morning for a week.

We ask all sides to urgently find a successful resolution to avert industrial action which we believe could cause all workers, the council and the City considerable pain.

Wednesday 8 May 2013

Caroline Lucas to join striking Brighton Council workers' picket line following proposed pay cut

The minority Green Council in Brighton recently handed over negotiations for the 'modernisation' of pay and allowances to officers of the council.

As a result about 10% of council staff  have received a settlement offer which means that while some gain, others will lose pay. City Clean workers are to strike against the pay cut and today Caroline Lucas, MP promised to join them on the picket line. The Brighton and Hove Green Party have voted to condemn the offer and expressed dismay at the decision to hand negotiations to officers.

This is Caroline's statement:
Yesterday around 10% of Brighton and Hove council staff received a settlement offer as part of a process designed to ‘modernise’ pay and allowances.

Since the negotiations began, I have made my opposition to any cuts in take home pay very clear.
I am therefore disappointed that, whilst some will gain from this process, a number will face a reduction in the money they have to live off each week.

This is unacceptable. I know from the many constituents who have written to me about this issue that they agree.

So too does the Brighton and Hove Green Party, whose members voted at a meeting last night to  condemn the offer and also expressed dismay that responsibility for the pay negotiations was handed to council officers.

With the support of the local Green Party, I have pledged to campaign against the offer made to workers, in accordance with the local and national party's democratically agreed anti-cuts and anti- austerity policies.
I plan to join striking City Clean workers and continue to stand up for workplace rights – as I promised to do when I was elected and have consistently prioritised in Parliament.
Greens should never be in the position of reducing workers' pay and to do so at a time of austerity with rising food and energy costs and benefit cuts is totally indefensible. The Green group on the council must act quickly to right this wrong.

There may well be a case to modernise pay structures which are often out-dated in local government. In one of the schools I worked in the schoolkeeper was still getting an allowance for humping scales of coal in the boiler house when the boilers were gas fired!  More seriously there are often gender inequalities involved and disparities between different groups of workers which need to be smoothed out. Modernisation may involve a narrowing in  historical differentials but in such cases there is usually short-term protection and a longer term tapering of increases so that no one ends up with less cash in their pocket this week than they were earning last week.

I understand that Brighton Council's overall wage bill is actually go up slightly as traditionally low paid workers get increases with the payment of the living wage and additional allowances and the group of workers affected by the pay cut is comparatively small.  It should be possible to sort something out quickly.



Friday 15 March 2013

Green Council says no tenant to be evicted if they can't afford bedroom tax

Source

A council has declared that none of its social tenants will be evicted if they cannot afford to pay the government's forthcoming bedroom tax.Brighton and  Hove City Council has become the first local authority in the country to take such a stance.
 
Councillor Liz Wakefield said: "The so-called 'spare room subsidy' is yet more immoral and harmful legislation from this morality-free coalition government.

"As Greens, we cannot throw people out onto the streets just because they're unable to pay it. I will therefore be bringing proposals that seek to ensure no household will be evicted from a Brighton and Hove City Council owned home as a result of ‘spare room subsidy’ rent arrears accrued solely from that household's inability to pay this unjust bedroom tax."

She added that steps would be taken to ensure that tenants don't take advantage of the proposals, and that officers would have to be satisfied that those pushed into arrears by the bedroom tax were doing everything they could to pay their rent.

Brighton Pavilion MP, Caroline Lucas, is also backing the proposals. She said: "The so-called bedroom tax legislation is not only morally wrong and a cause of great potential hardship, it is also unworkable in a city with a long waiting list for smaller properties.

"The council cannot downsize households on the scale required by the government, nor would we want it to, and we should not be prepared to evict hard-pressed families, the disabled and other vulnerable people purely because they are unable to pay this unjust levy on a home they either cannot or should not have to leave.”

Chair of Brighton and Hove Green Party, Rob Shepherd, said: "This government is willing to see people thrown out onto the streets purely because they can't pay their bedroom tax.

"They can be sentenced to homelessness simply for trying to maintain a normal, liveable family home. The Conservative and LibDem coalition government should be ashamed of itself and, as Greens, we will have no part of it.

"I congratulate the party and councillors who are taking such a principled stand. We call on the other parties to support us in protecting, in this way, some of our most vulnerable residents."

Saturday 18 February 2012

Labour council leaders support Green council on local government finance call

The Labour  leaders of Chesterfield and Darlington councils are supporting calls from the Leader of Brighton & Hove council for the government to come clean on their future proposals for local government finance.
 
Ministers recently made comments at public events and in the House of Commons, suggesting that a future review would undermine councils' management of local finances.
 
Green-led Brighton & Hove began its budget-setting process early, and was the first to declare its intentions at the beginning of December. However 26 councils of all political stripes have since followed after recognising the ‘financial cliff-edge' they face after one year if they accept the one-off grant.
 
Councillor Bill Randall commented:
"The Green administration published our draft budget early to allow for proper consultation with residents. But how can residents get involved in a meaningful conversation about how to protect services from government cuts if the government threatens to move the goalposts so late in the day?
 
"It flies in the face of localism to claim to give councils more power, but then apply penalties if they do something the government disagrees with.
 
"I've asked other council Leaders to join me in demanding that the government come clean on their threats." 
The following councils have decided  increase Council Tax in order to safeguard services:

Brighton & Hove City Council Grn 3.50%
Chesterfield BC Lab 3.50%
Darlington BC Lab 3.50%
Leicester City Council Lab 3.50%
Middlesbrough Council Lab 3.50%
Preston City Council Lab 3.50%
Redcar & Cleveland BC Lab 3.50%
Stockton-on-Tees BC Lab 3.50%
Barrow BC Lab 3.49%
North Dorset DC Con 3.49%
Stoke-on-Trent City Council Lab 3.49%
Gravesham Borough Council Lab 3.48%
Dover DC Con 3.45%
Taunton Deane BC Con 3.45%
Luton BC Lab 3.44%
Gedling BC Lab 3.40%
Nottingham City Council Lab 3.40%
Tunbridge Wells BC Con 3.30%
Scarborough BC Con/Lib/Ind 3.00%
Surrey CC Con 2.99%
Cambridgeshire CC Con 2.95%
East Cambridgeshire DC Con 2.95%
Peterborough City Council Con 2.95%
York City Council Lab 2.90%
South Hams DC Con 2.50%
West Devon BC Con 2.50%
Chelmsford BC Con 2.46%

 

Saturday 11 June 2011

So what would a Green led Council do?

This speech by the new leader of Brighton and Hove Council gives a taste. It will be no easy task in the present conditions but I wish him and his team well.
Brighton & Hove will become the UK’s greenest city, the city council’s new leader Bill Randall has said.
In his first major speech since taking control, Mr Randall set out three key aims for the next four years. Apart from the ambitious eco-drive, they also comprise tackling inequality and involving residents, community and voluntary organisations in the council’s work.
He set out a plan to reduce the city’s eco footprint and set up a ‘biosphere reserve’ with neighbouring authorities – both plans backed by the business community and other public bodies.
Initiatives also include adopting local carbon budgets, which run alongside financial budgets, as well as plans to fit solar panels on schools and other public buildings to take advantage of feed-in tariffs and increase the use of renewable energy.
While admitting that tackling inequality will not be easy because of the public spending cuts, he said the first priority will be to protect services for children, vulnerable adults and those on low incomes.
Other initiatives include introducing a ‘living wage’ and ensuring that the highest paid council officer earns no more than 10 times the lowest paid officer.

Involving communities is a high priority with plans being piloted to introduce neighbourhood councils with their own budgets and working closely with the city’s vibrant third sector and trade unions.
Mr Randall said the administration takes over in hard times but that there is a new spirit in the city.
“We believe we have captured that spirit to offer the city a fresh start through policies fuelled by fairness and driven by a desire to produce the UK's Greenest city and narrow the gap between rich and poor. We look forward to working with residents, public and private sector partners to achieve our aims."