Brent Council spending |
Former Labour councillor, and Brent Executive member, James Powney discusses this on his blog today. LINK
In Green Party circles the idea of a 'progressive' Council Tax has engaged people in debate LINK
Meanwhile here in Brent full reports have been published for each potential area for cuts or revenue raising possibilities. In some cases there are soft and hard options given. The latter being ceasing service delivery. The report to the cabinet makes clear that no decisions are required of the Cabinet at this stage except to go out for consultation on the proposals.
These are the links to the various reports:
- Chief Finance Officer's report budget-report, item 4. PDF 214 KB
- Appendix 1 Savings budget-app1, item 4. HTM 1 KB
- Adult Social Care 1-asc, item 4. PDF 299 KB
- Children and Young People 2-cyp, item 4. PDF 266 KB
- Environment 3-env, item 4. PDF 399 KB
- Regeneration and Growth 4-rg, item 4. PDF 462 KB
- Assistant Chief Executive 5-ace, item 4. PDF 238 KB
- Public Health 6-ph, item 4. PDF 118 KB
- Finance and IT 7-fin-it, item 4. PDF 124 KB
- Human Resources 8-hr, item 4. PDF 120 KB
- Budget Savings by theme budget-app1-pdf-format, item 4. PDF 214 KB
There is a risk that the collective savings will have a significant impact on those vulnerable people who are the greatest users of council services.
Overall, the groups most at risk of being impacted are older people, disabled people, children and people from black ethnic backgrounds.
There would also be a low impact on women, people who do not speak English and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. There is a risk that disabled people could be severely affected by experiencing a raft of changes from different service areas, even if each proposal may appear to have a limited impact in isolation.Many proposals will have an impact on staff, especially in corporate services where the majority of the budgets are made up of staffing costs.
Cllr Sam Stopp's commentary on the Full Council meeting should perhaps be read with the above comments in mind LINKGiven the scale of staffing reductions, there is potential for these proposals to have a significant impact on all levels of the workforce. The majority of the workforce is BAME and it is important that changes are not disproportionate in terms of their impact. Brent’s Managing Change Policy and Procedure provides a framework to be followed during times of organisational change to minimise the risk of a negative impact on any equality groups. The Managing Change Policy requires that staffing changes undergo equality analysis to ensure that the restructure process is conducted in a fair, transparent and non-discriminatory manner. The Equality Team will review the cumulative impact of restructures on the workforce diversity profile.