Butt suggests combined West London Authority as 40% central staffing cuts sought in Brent budget

The  Report for the First Reading Debate on the Council Budget LINK was up on the Council website by 23.45 last night. It includes a section on the Borough Plan Consultation which is fast work as the consultation only closed at 5pm yesterday.

Full Council was changed from November 17th to December 8th ostensibly to enable a report on the Borough Plan to be made.

The report states (4.3)

Between 16 September and 28 November the council, with its partners undertook a major consultation exercise to gather information on local people's views of:

• The area where they live
• Their aspirations for the future of the borough
• Their spending priorities, including those services they felt should be protected and areas where they felt we could do less
• What more they, the community group, or others could do to help build strong communities in Brent in the context of shrinking public resources 

On the third area it seems that residents were not keen on being Turkeys voting for Christmas. The report notes:

People recognised the difficult decisions facing the council as it seeks to make savings on the scale required. However, perhaps understandably, people were mostly reluctant to identify specific service areas which they thought should be cut.

I would identify this response as a reluctance, or perhaps a refusal, to go along with the Coalition austerity and cuts agenda. An agenda which a future Labour government seems unlikely to change to any significant degree.

The report goes on:

The maintenance of clean, safe pubic spaces and care for the genuinely vulnerable in our society were consistently identified as priorities.

On the fourth area the report says that:

A significant number of consultees expressed enthusiasm for playing a greater role in service design and delivery, provided that the council, along with the voluntary sector organisations, supported them to play this role, either by working in partnership, or providing by appropriate support at the points services were handed over if they were to be run entirely by the community in future.

It appears that voluntary organisations and volunteers are seen as one of the answers to managing on the sharply reduced budget.

The revised budget gap for 2015/16 is £35.8m and for 2016/17 £18.1m.  The report says that officers are seeking to limit the impact on front-line services by focusing reductions on support services. A new corporate management structure is proposed that will 'drive organisational efficiency'.

However the report admits that the final proposals  will go beyond action to maintain the current level of support and outcomes:

In some cases, services may be reduced to a statutory minimum with a clear focus on those in the most need and in some cases stopped altogether in order to balance the budget.

Particular  departmental areas being considered for 'savings' include:

Children and Young People

• Children's Centres
• Youth service
• Support costs across the department 

Environment and Neighbourhoods

• Review of Brent Transport service
• Parking Enforcement and charges
• Sports development
• Charging for bulky waste collection
• Reduction in school crossing patrols

Regeneration and growth

• Procurement and re-tendering
• Assessment of welfare reform impact on temporary accommodation  budget
• Reduction of revenue budget support for regeneration
• Development of a single Employment and Skills service
• Reconfiguration of customer services
• Use of reserves to fund benefits processing work in advance of the implementation of universal credit

 Central departments

• Savings of 40% are being developed through reductions in staffing levels
• Pursuing opportunities to share services with other councils
• Targeted approach for provision of support services base don assessment of risk
• Greater reliance on self-service

The sharing of services with other boroughs will be a controversial issue in the context of Muhammed Butt's suggestion in a Local Government Chronicle exclusive LINK that discussions are underway on the possibility that the 16 year West London Alliance link between Barnet, Brent, Ealing, Harrow, Hillingdon and Hounslow be formalised into a single combined authority.

Butt, who is the new chair of the WLA, said that this was the only way to fight further budget cuts. He would like the new body to have more powers and responsibilities around strategic planning, transport and infrastructure and employment and skills.

Butt admitted that some people were concerned that such an authority  would add another layer of bureaucracy.