Brent Council set to increase Council Tax by 3.99%, make cuts and increase charges

Brent Council issued the following press release yesterday on its budget proposals. I drew attention recently to Camden's revision of its Council Tax Support Scheme in the light of Council Tax increases. There are, as far as I can see, no proposals for a review of Brent's scheme. LINK

BRENT COUNCIL PRESS RELEASE

Plan to protect local services by raising income set to be discussed

14 October 2016

 

Protecting local services is the top priority for Brent, the council leader has said, as a plan to get residents' views on a draft set of budget proposals for the next two years is set to be discussed.

Brent Council's Cabinet will meet on Monday 24 October to consider a paper which includes a proposal to protect local services by increasing council tax by 3.99 per cent - or 85p a week for an average Band D household.

The report sets out how councils are still in an era of austerity and are facing further cuts in Government funding despite growing demand for local services from an increasing and ageing population. The paper also includes some savings proposals although these are relatively small compared to recent council budgets.

Last year was the first year council tax had risen in Brent for six years after successive freezes despite Government funding being slashed by £117million since 2010.

Cllr Muhammed Butt, Leader of Brent Council, said:

"Imagine your household bills went up every year, but your salary kept being cut. You would have to make some tough choices and find new ways to make your money go further.

"That's what this council has been doing in finding new, more efficient ways to maintain and improve the services that we all need, but it has also meant making some very difficult decisions.

"We know how important our local services are to the people of Brent which is why, rather than cutting back on those vital services, the option of raising income through a small council tax increase to protect these services is being considered.

"The choice we face in Brent is this: will we pay a bit extra each month to keep our services available to those who need them, or will we let the Government's cuts to our budget further limit the services we can provide?"

In addition to the proposal on council tax, the paper includes proposals to:

·       Help residents with low-level nursing care needs to live independently, which will improve their quality of life and save £300,000

·       Negotiate a £500,000 reduction in spending on contracts with mental health service providers

·       Outsourcing the management of two day care centres in the borough to save £300,000

·       Negotiate a £900,000 saving in the public realm contract with Veolia

·       Charging for a next-day and 'pick your day' bulky waste collection service, generating £250,000 each year

·       Consult on saving £100,000 in the Regulatory Services team through a reorganisation

·       Participation in the London wide sexual health transformation programme to achieve better services while saving £600,000 over the next two years

·       Consultation on plans for differential parking charges to help manage pressure for spaces in high demand areas - £1million

·       Dim street lights where appropriate which would save £100,000 and benefit the environment

Cllr Butt added:

"As a Cabinet, we will discuss the draft proposals set out in the report at our next meeting and, if approved, will then put them to residents to have their say in a detailed budget consultation."

The budget consultation is set to run from November to December with a series of public meetings arranged for January. A final decision on the budget will be taken by Full Council in February 2017.

View the full Cabinet report here.

There is little information on any debate within the Labour Group or the Brent Labour Party as whole over these proposals although Cllr Michael Pavey in his letter resigning from the Cabinet LINK said, 

'I think it is clear that the Leader and myself have developed differing views regarding how Brent Council can best serve its residents at a time of brutal Tory cuts.'

Pavey may have fought against cuts in his own brief, Stronger Communities, or perhaps he had an alternative strategy which was defeated. 

As usual the devil will be in the detail and one has to look beyond the phraseology of the bullet points to see what they really mean. Some appear to be deliberately vague.

Taking the first proposal on helping people with 'low-level nursing care need to live independently' , the report  acknowledges that this 'help' may not be welcome - but it delivers 'savings' through what will be a reduced service:

Proposal to move lowest need (c.20%) of clients currently in nursing care to Supported Living which would deliver a £0.3m saving. This is based on an analysis of nursing home placements, which suggest there are a number of placements at the simpler end. 

How would this affect users of this service? 

Clients would need to agree to the move and some may find moving traumatic. Families and carers may also be averse to disrupting stable placements. Some users may prefer a less institutional environment and regain independence and skills lost through being in nursing care.

Brent's poor provision of mental health services came under sharp criticism at the recent 'Extremism' debate so the £0.5m cut in spending on contracts will need close scrutiny:

£0.5m ('savings') achieved through: 

 enabling a more effective recovery pathway – better access to housing and

employment will accelerate step down to general needs housing 

Supported by ongoing negotiations with providers to manage costs and focus

on the right support. 

How would this affect users of this service? 

This would support the delivery of the current objectives of the service, supporting people to move towards independence, and further efficiencies would be achieved through negotiations, which would not mean a change in service. 

The key here is 'negotiation with providers' which often means reducing the payment to providers affecting the pay and working conditions of those working for them and perhaps contradicting the Council's commitment to the London living wage.

Despite Jeremy Corbyn's remarks on Council 'in-sourcing' LINK,  Brent may decide to  outsource the management of the John Billam and New Millennium day care centres. There is little detail in the proposals but they expect to generate income by opening up the use of the buildings to outside groups.

The report notes:

Key consultations

Extensive consultation required with users and carers in both day centres would be required however the service developed, and with Unions, staff and with potential providers 

Key risks and mitigations 

Risk that users and carers will oppose the changes to the service – mitigated through extensive and ongoing communication and engagement

If the first risk becomes an issue, significant risk of adverse publicity and public protest – mitigated through extensive and ongoing communication and engagement Risk that the council cannot generate the additional income and efficiencies – mitigated through financial modelling and change management

Risk that we will need to consider outsourcing as the way to drive the change.

The almost £1m efficiency savings over two years on the Public Realm contract with Veolia which covers street cleaning, waste collection, waste recycling, parks maintenance and much more are in a proposal so vague as to be virtually meaningless:

This proposal generates £900k from operational efficiencies within the Public Realm Contract. These will rationalise operational arrangements so they better manage and properly resolve hot spots and other persistent problems. 

How would this affect users of this service? 

Service users may see revised working practices and operational schedules.

This is coupled with a proposal to raise £0.25m by charging for bulky waste collections.  Whether to charfe  for bulky waste collections has been an ongoing debate between Labour and the Lib Dems. The introduction of a charge for next day or pick your day collections follows widespread complaints about the length of time it takes Veolia to pick up bulky waste under the present free system LINK.  It is unlikely that residents expected charges to be introduced as a result of their complaints and a two tier system may well result in longer delays for the free service and increased fly-tipping.

Participation in the London wide sexual health programme and consequent savings of £0.6m are based on moving away from face-to-face consultations with health professionals to a web-based service:

Analysis of activity in current sexual health services and a waiting room survey indicates that not all current attendances at GUM clinics need that specialist service. Brent is participating in a London wide procurement of a new ‘front door’ to sexual health services. The front door into services will be web based, a single platform providing patients with information about sexual health, on line triage, signposting to the most appropriate service for their needs and the ability to order self-sampling tests.

 Tellingly one of the risk factors identified for this saving is:

• a failure to change patient and / or clinician behaviour and so not achieve the diversion of activity on which savings are based 

Given the nature of the Opposition on Brent Council the proposal on parking charges is likely to be the most controversial, but again it is pretty vague:

This is an exercise to account for the parking pressures that are expected to arise from an increase in the borough’s population. Regeneration and increased development may result in additional cars and increased parking pressures. This creates the need to provide parking restrictions that meet current and future demand, with the revenue paying for the service and any additional revenue being reinvested in the service. This exercise will consider residential parking permits and some car parking tariffs but will not include a review of visitor parking charges.

With the exception of some fairly minor proposals on Regeneration which is Cllr Mashari's remit, all the above proposals either come under Cllr Hirani (Adult Social Care) or Cllr Southwood (Environment). There are none under Cllr Pavey's Stronger Communities remit. Perhaps he was not so keen to see services reduced.

Now that Cllr Butt has taken over that brief, pending a 'review' LINK, is there a possibilty that further proposals will be tabled?

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Brent Council and the Cara Davani “pay-off” – questions that still need to be answered

I commented on Martin’s 11 July blog about “Labour abstentions on Tory Davani motion”  LINK , that I might need to write a guest blog for what I would like to say, as a “comment” did not allow enough space. This is that guest blog:-

I was not at the Council meeting on 11 July, but I have watched the debate on the “Webcast” page of the Council’s website. The first thing it clarifies is that Brent Council was misleading us when it stated in June 2015 that Cara Davani was leaving ‘to take a career break.’ From the statements made in the debate by Cllr. McLennan, and particularly by Cllr. Colwill, it now appears that Ms Davani was made redundant, and that, it is claimed, the £157k she received was Brent’s “normal” redundancy pay-off of one year’s salary plus a further three months in lieu of notice.

However, if this was a redundancy, it was not a “normal” one. It was not the result of a staff restructuring, where her post had been done away with, like the two senior management reorganisations she brought in during her time in charge of Brent’s HR (with large redundancy pay-offs to the Assistant Chief Executive and Legal Director, among others, at the end of 2014, and to a whole raft of senior officers in March 2013). So (1) what was the reason for Cara Davani being made redundant, who decided that she should be made redundant, and why then, in June 2015?
  
 Had she become too much of an embarrassment to Brent Council, or was it part of an “exit strategy” she had worked out herself with her close associate and then interim Chief Executive, Christine Gilbert, before the newly appointed Chief Executive, Carolyn Downs, took over?

Cllr. McLennan, in response to Cllr. Warren’s motion, argued that Brent had to make this pay-off on the basis of external legal advice, and that if it had not done so, Cara Davani could have claimed against the Council for constructive dismissal. I welcome the news that Cllr. Warren has apparently made an FoI request for this legal advice to be made public LINK . If that legal advice was only sought around June 2015, it might have been correct, but only because Brent had failed to take timely disciplinary action against Ms Davani, in September 2014, for her misconduct in the Rosemarie Clarke case.

I have written a great deal about that case, and this article would be far too long if I went into the details again now, but I will refer to some earlier blogs, and provide links to them for anyone who wishes to follow up the points I will make. On 21 September 2014 I wrote jointly to Christine Gilbert and Fiona Ledden (then Brent’s Legal Director), referring to the Tribunal’s judgement, and to comments made by “Wembley Matters” readers on blogs about it LINK, before saying:

‘… I believe that the most important matter, before you consider your own futures, is that you must insist on the immediate resignation of Cara Davani (if she has not already left Brent's employment permanently). Any thoughts of wasting further money (including my own Council Tax payments) on an appeal in this matter should be dropped, as the Tribunal has made the findings of fact which make this such a damning judgement of Brent's actions against this employee, and no legal arguments can undo those findings.’

On the same day I wrote a similar email to Cllr. Muhammed Butt, with copy to my Fryent Ward councillors, saying: 

‘What should you do, on Monday morning if it has not already been done before? If Ms Davani has not already resigned or been suspended, you should ensure that the Chief Executive, or the person deputising for her if she is not available, speaks to Ms Davani and insists on her immediate resignation, in the light of the findings of the Tribunal about her actions. While this would treat her misconduct more leniently than she has treated that alleged of others, it would allow her to go immediately, but with payment from Brent for her period of notice, and at least show that the Council is taking the judgement seriously. If Ms Davani refuses to resign, formal misconduct proceedings (including her suspension) would be required, with care being taken that the correct procedures are properly carried out (unlike in Ms Clarke's case).’

As we now know, no disciplinary action was taken then, and I believe there would have been no grounds on which Ms Davani could have claimed “constructive dismissal” if it had been. So (2) why was no disciplinary action taken against Cara Davani in September 2014, when there was clear evidence and findings of fact in the Employment Tribunal judgement to show gross misconduct by her, and who decided that no such action should be taken?

In opposing the motion at Full Council, Cllr. McLennan used Cllr. Pavey’s HR Review and press statements made by the Council that it would not tolerate the sort of behaviour shown by the Rosemarie Clarke case to support her views. Between November 2014 and September 2015 I made a number of attempts to get issues arising from this Employment Tribunal case “on the agenda” at meetings of Scrutiny Committee and Full Council, so that councillors could discuss them openly.

One example was a deputation that I had asked to present to Scrutiny Committee in April 2015, when it was considering the report on Cllr Pavey’s Review, and the draft action plan arising from it. What I hoped to say, so that committee members could question the interim Chief Executive and HR Director (who were present to speak on the report) about it if they wished to, included the following:

·      that the Review was set up to ensure that lessons were learned from the Rosemarie Clarke case;

·      that Cllr. Pavey could not consider that case, as his terms of reference would not allow him to; and,

·      as a result, the Review ignored an important lesson which should have been learned:

‘that even the best HR policies and practices are of little use if they are ignored by the officers who are supposed to follow them.’ 

After referring to guidance issued by Brent’s HR Director, that ‘bullying and harassment will not be tolerated’, and evidence from the Tribunal’s judgement of misconduct by Ms Davani and a total failure by Christine Gilbert to follow Brent’s HR procedures when dismissing a grievance raised by Ms Clarke, my deputation asked:

‘If the Senior Officers responsible for such findings ignore Brent’s HR policies, what example is that setting to the Council’s other staff? The Action Plan is totally undermined, because why should managers bother to put the policies into practice, when those at the top ignore them and get away with it? Even if disciplinary action was taken against more junior staff for policy breaches, they could argue at any hearing that it would be unfair to penalise them, when no action was taken against Brent’s Director of HR for far worse misconduct.’

Scrutiny Committee would not allow me to present that deputation LINK . I think the presence of Cllr. Butt, sitting beside Cara Davani opposite the committee members, may have intimidated them into reaching that decision, but the official reason was advice from the Chief Legal Officer that I should not be allowed to refer to the Rosemarie Clarke case in speaking to the committee, as it ‘had not been fully concluded’.

Although that case was still not fully concluded, Cllr. Muhammed Butt was allowed to issue a statement about it at the end of July 2015. It claimed that he was giving the facts of the Rosemarie Clarke judgement, because of ‘untruths’ that had been written about it, but I responded to him LINK  pointing out that HE was the person trying to misrepresent the Tribunal’s findings. This was another example of him seeking to “protect” Cara Davani, and I invited him to respond to these charges, which he has always tried to ignore LINK . So I ask the Council Leader again (3) why was Cllr. Butt “protecting” Cara Davani and Christine Gilbert when he had known about their misconduct in the Rosemarie Clarke case since at least September 2014?

Although we now know, a year later, that Brent paid Cara Davani £157,610, we still do not know the answer to a second point which I tried to raise when rumours of a pay-off emerged in June 2015 LINK . Cara Davani was a separately named respondent in the Employment Tribunal case, and would have been personally liable to pay some of the compensation, damages and costs which the Tribunal was due to award to Rosemarie Clarke. So my final question, to Brent Council, is (4) whether the out-of-court settlement made to settle Rosemarie Clarke's Employment Tribunal claim in September 2015 included any contribution from Ms Davani, or whether Brent Council paid the full amount including any compensation, damages and costs which the Tribunal could have awarded against Ms Davani personally?

I will send a copy of this guest blog to Cllr. Muhammed Butt, Leader of Brent Council, and the Council’s Chief Executive, Carolyn Downs. I will also copy it to the three councillors who spoke in the debate on the motion at Full Council, the Deputy Leader, Margaret McLennan, and the Leaders of the two Conservative groups, John Warren and Reg Colwill. I hope that they will, together, realise that the questions I have highlighted above do still need to be answered, openly and honestly, so that Brent can finally put the Rosemarie Clarke case behind it, and that they, or one of Cllr. Butt or Ms Downs on the Council’s behalf, will issue a public statement answering those questions.

Philip Grant.

Brent officers propose removal of councillors from Independent Person interview process

The issue of the Independent Person/s who take part in the process of complaints against Council members  has been discussed on this blog  (See LINK including comments) and new appointments were due to be made this week.

However  Mildred Phillips, current Director of Human Resources, has made a recommendation to the General Purposes Committee for a change in the interview procedure:

On 16 December 2015, the Committee, amongst other things, approved the recruitment process for the appointment of new Independent Persons. It was proposed that the role be advertised and thereafter the Director Human Resources, the Leader and the lead Member for HR matters (i.e. the Deputy Leader) short-list applicants, conduct interviews and to recommend appointments to Full Council for approval. 


Subsequently, on 19 February 2016, the vacancies were advertised and the closing  date for applications was 13 March 2016. The next stage therefore is to short-list and interview suitable candidates.   

On reflection, having regard to the dual role of the Independent Person (i.e. to give views in the context of Member code of conduct complaints and the dismissal of certain statutory officers) as well as the fact that the appointments have to be approved by Full Council, it is proposed that the shortlisting and interviews be conducted by officers only. Namely, the Director Human Resources, together with two Strategic Directors.

As this report does not go to the General Purposes Committee until March 31^st the appointment will be delayed.  Councillors Butt and Pavey are members of the General Purposes Committeee along with some other members of the Cabinet and Cllr Kasangra (Conservative).

Meanwhile this afternoon interviews are being held for the post of Director of Human Resources. The Panel consists of Cllrs Butt, Pavey, Hirani, Mashari from the Cabinet and Cllr Kasangra (Conservative).