Brent Connects 6pm tomorrow. Council Draft Budget and Let's Talk Climate conversation

 From Brent Council

Brent Connects takes place tomorrow on Tuesday 25 January 2021, 6-8pm and will focus on the Council's draft budget and the Let's Talk Climate conversation.

Voices of the community and generating new ideas are key to making Brent a better place to live, work and visit, so book your place today by visiting: Brent Connects Tickets, Tue 25 Jan 2022 at 18:00 | Eventbrite.

The meeting will be held virtually via Zoom, but do not worry if you’ve never used Zoom before as we’ll be sending detailed instructions to all attendees beforehand.

If you have any questions, please email brent.connects@brent.gov.uk

Brent Connects - Agenda - 25 Jan 2022.docx.pdf

Draft budget

Join us to share your views on the proposals for the 2022/23 budget. We want to know what services are the most important to local people so we can make the best decisions about where to make savings.

The new proposals for 2022/23 are designed to limit, as far as possible, service reductions and the impact on front line services, particularly during these challenging times.

Let's Talk Climate

The second part of the session will focus on how we can work together to make local neighbourhoods greener and more sustainable.

Your feedback will influence the contracts for three important council services that are up for renewal next year and could change how your waste and recycling is managed, how we keep streets clean and how green spaces are maintained.

We want to hear your ideas for how we can deliver these services in ways that meet your and your neighbourhood’s needs while encouraging people to take more responsibility for keeping their areas clean.

Tanks at Brent Town Hall on Monday?

 

It is likely to be a busy and rather tense weekend in Brent Labour circles as final figures are totted up to see whether a potential plan to topple Muhammed Butt has enough support.

Action now would enable a new leader to take over before the final decisions are made on the 2013-14 budget with controversies remaining over the level of Council Tax, the London Living Wage and departmental budgets.

As I write it seems that the threat to Butt's has diminished slightly over the last few days but the arithmetic is very tight. He defeated Ann John by only one vote last May so in theory it only requires one vote to switch.

Rather than a left/right division it appears that this is almost a generation split with reports that the move has been spearheaded by a senior councillor and ex-member of the Executive who had a reputation as a left-winger in the 1980s.

During his period in office Muhammed Butt has promoted younger councillors such as Krupesh Hirani and Michael Pavey and built up a team of younger supporters whilst at the same time retaining the support of some Labour heavyweights.

As Brent Town Hall witnesses the last of its dramas (or will it all fizzle out?) the new Civic Centre awaits the triumphant entrance of the Leader.

Watch this space...

Meanwhile the battle for the Labour nomination for parliamentary candidate for Brent Central is hotting up with up to six names in the hat according to reliable sources.  Cllrs Val Kalwala, Choudry and Mashari have all been mentioned. The latter would benefit if Labour decides on an all-woman short-list and she would be pitted against Dawn Butler.

A plethora of Brent budget discussions the week after next - but will they make any difference?

The dates for the Brent Budget 'Discussions' (note NOT 'Consultations') have now been sent out in an invitation letter  (see below). The Labour Group is discussing the budget on the evening of Monday February 4th and the Finance and Budget Overview and Scrutiny Committee will be discussing it at 7.30pm on Tuesday February 5th.  It is not clear where that leaves the February 7th meeting in terms of influencing the budget but presumably more details should be available by then following the earlier meetings

Budget Discussion – Invitation to a Public Meeting

Cllr Muhammed Butt, Leader of Brent Council would like to invite you to one of two public meetings about Brent Council’s budget proposals for the forthcoming year.

Both meetings will take place in Brent Town Hall.

Date	Time	Venue	Chair
Mon 4th Feb	2.30 to 4.30pm	Committee Rooms 1, 2 and 3.	Cllr Aslam Choudry
Thur 7th Feb	7.00 to 9.00pm	Paul Daisley Hall.	Cllr James Denselow

Everyone is welcome to attend. These meetings will give you an opportunity to question and raise issues of concern with Cllr Butt and members of the Council’s executive.

You can also hear about the difficult choices facing local government in the current economic climate and Council’s proposals to continue to maintain high quality services for our residents.

I do hope you be able to attend one of these meetings? If you need any further information please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kindest regards

Owen Thomson

Community Engagement Team

Customer & Community Engagement

Brent Council

Tel: 020 8937 1055

Brent Council passes second cuts budget

Brent Council tonight approved the 2012-13 cuts budget that had previously been passed by the Executive. In addition they approved an amendment in the name of Ann John that doubled the amount of money in Ward Working to £40,000 per ward. Cllr John justified this on the basis that this was an area where councillors could really make a difference. The move is likely to be controversial beyond the council as it was not included in the budget plans discussed at Area Forums. Cllr Kasagra, leader of the Conservatives. dismissed Ward Working  as a method of councillor self promotion.

In her budget speech Cllr John said that the council was faced with an ongoing and increasingly difficult process in dealing with the funding cuts imposed by the Coalition government. She said that government policies were 'hurting but not working'. In a wide ranging survey of the economic situation she said that the crisis had been caused by greedy bankers but that 'the greed of the minority was being paid for by austerity for the majority'.

John detailed how benefit changes and the housing benefit cap would impact on Brent's poorest families and added that the Localisation of Council Benefits would force the council to decide whose benefits should be cut.  However, she went on to claim that having a Labour Council could make a real difference and expressed pride in the administration and in staff who had experienced pay freezes, increased pension contributions and job losses but who 'knew the Civic Centre made sense and had responded magnificently. In Brent we are really working together'.

Ann John said that the council's new priority, faced with Brent's young people going straight from school or university into long-term unemployment,  would be to tackle the lack of social mobility in the borough.. The council will set up am independently chaired Commission on Social Mobility, set up a new employment agency and refocus the work of BACES to concentrate on employment and employability.

 John listed council 'successes' including freezing the council tax, increased recycling, green charter, fair trade status and protecting parks and open spaces (no mention of privatisation). She said that in future schools would be expected to contribute to the whole community: 'especially news schools with state of the art facilities'.

Cllr John and Cllr Muhammed Butt both continued to claim that the funding was horrendous but at the same time that they were somehow able to protect the vulnerable, despite the cuts they were being forced to make. This contradictory approach was even more apparent when Butt boasted that the council had been able to protect incomes of residents  by freezing the council tax and later condemning the Coalition's grant that enabled the tax to be frozen as a bribe and something that would undermine revenue in the future.

Cllr John's presentation was listened to in respectful near silence by the Opposition but Labour jeered at Paul Lober (Lib Dem leader) and other Opposition councillors when they spoke. When the Conservative leader rose to speak Ann John pointedly got up from her seat and toured the Labour benches, stopping for a chat here and there.

The Lib Dem amendment sought to restore funding for libraries, end cuts in school crossing patrols, merge the Festivals Unit in the Grants Unit, reinstate Green Zones , reinstate the graffiti clean up team restore funding cuts mad ein the Summer University and Duke of Edinburgh Scheme,; and deal  with litter 'hotspots'. £500,000 from the Icelandic bank 'windfall' would be used for essential priorities and another £500,000 for a parking scheme to encourage local shopping. Cllr Lorber said the Lib Dems would invest in local people, local services and the things local people value.

Cllr  Suresh Kansagra, leader of the Conservative group made a confused and confusing speech which also sought to reinstate library closures and opposed the increase in ward working money. The amendment seemed to be predicated on spending some of the council reserves,

Several Executive members read out prepared speeches and the debate descended into knock-about stuff with Cllr Zaffar Van Kalwala, to Opposition cries of 'Brent's Best Banker', making yet another barn-storming speech to fuel his bid to beat Dawn Butler for Labour's Brent Central parliamentary candidate nomination.

Cllr Rev David Clues (Lib Dem) brought a chastening tone to the proceedings by saying that the council did best when councillors worked together for the benefit of local people and acknowledged work Ann John had done with him on trafficking and the sex industry. In the context of the libraries he warned the council not to worsen economic poverty by lurching into cultural poverty.

Voting was on strict party lines with no divergence so the Opposition amendments were lost and the budget, with the ward working amendment, passed.

It was noteworthy that with Labour concentrating on government cuts and benefit changes and the Opposition restricting themselves to libraries and parking that there was no one challenging the council cuts that will impact on vulnerable children,  children with special educational needs, people with disabilities and those with mental health needs. With Brent Fightback barred from making representations to the council and the three main parties accepting the limits on spending set by the Coalition, no alternative strategy for council budget setting was put forward. A whole swathe of the population is unrepresented and silenced.

Rage against these cuts

The Budget document going to Brent Executive is a massive and dense tome with pages of technical information and is unlikely to be read in its entirety by any of the councillors or commentators, let alone understood by them. The most you can do is try and glean some kind of overview on the financial plight of the council and some detail (from Appendix D) of where the axe is going to fall but there are major headings with no elaboration. I have covered the latter in previous postings.

Cllr Krupesh Hirani in a letter to the Brent and Kilburn Times this week asked 'Is it fair that Brent has to make cuts in the region of 27 and 28% of our controllable budget whilst other councils are not being hurt as badly as Brent? Brent is losing out on £73 per resident whereas Guildford faces a cut of £10 a person and Richmond £5.39 a person'.

The answer is of course it's not fair but the next question is, 'What is the Labour council doing about that if they recognise a cut of this magnitude is going to seriously damage local people and threaten the Council's ability to provide effective and efficient services?'

That is where the answers so far have been unsatisfactory and often contradictory. Despite Ann John telling people at Area Consultation Forums that the situation is dire,  her consultation, to the frustration of the audiences, did not contain any details of the cuts her administration are going to make - only the global figures. They were available on the council website in time for the Kingsbury and Kenton ACF but I doubt that many had accessed them. At the same time the cuts are dressed up in the misleading guise of 'transformation', 'savings', 'One Council' and 'efficiencies' and do not contain any details of their actual impact on real people. We need to be honest - a cut is a cut and cuts hurt.

If the cuts are as horrendous and as unfair as some Labour people claim then surely we should not 'be going gentle into that good night'. We should be standing up for the people of Brent, combining with other councils in a similar position, and taking on the Coalition. Instead Labour nationally, under the leadership of the two Eds. seems only to be concerned about what happens in 2015 and not the damage that will rip the heart out of many families and ruin the lives of the young, disabled, the mentally ill, the homeless and the elderly before that election takes place. Labour councils are left to find their own way through the maelstrom with no national leadership.

As Dylan Thomas went on 'rage, rage against the dying of the light'. Is Brent Labour so frightened of the shadow of the old 'loony left Brent' stereotype that they cannot see that they must rise up, enraged, at the injustice that is being perpetrated against its citizens?

Okay, after the rage some bare statistics from the Budget Report beyond 2012-13

Savings required 2013-14 £9.3m   (Cumulative £9.3m)
                             2014-15 £11.6m (Cumulative£20.9m)
                             2015-16 £5.3m   (Cumulative£26.2m)

This includes no allowance for price inflation but assumes a Council Tax rise of 3.5% in 2013-14 and 2.5% each  in the following two years. If council tax is frozen then further savings will be required.

How did we get there and what is being cut?

Service area Budgets (reductions in red increases in black)
 

Service Area	2011-12 £’000	2012-13 £’000
Children and Families	57,831	51,402
Environment and Neighbourhood	42,567	34,073
Adult Social Services	92,165	89,552
Regeneration and Major Projects	21,974	33,277
Central Services	12,543	10,074
Finance and Corporate	13,864	22,256