Showing posts with label voluntary sector. Show all posts
Showing posts with label voluntary sector. Show all posts

Thursday 2 February 2017

Brent voluntary organisations face crisis as NHS Estate's Market Rent policy is implemented

The NHS Estates programme is scheduled to be completed by June 2017, according to their website which will mean 6 or 7 Brent voluntary organisations providing back-up health services will be faced with paying market rents from April 2017.

Many will not be able to afford them and will be faced with finding new bases despite the Sustainability and Transformation Plan being based on collaboration enhanced by location in the same premises.

At a previous Scrutiny Meeting, it was reported that The Willesden Centre for Health and Care (with its PFI legacy) was "presenting a particular challenge" but the Brent CCG also reported "that plans were in place" to sort it out.  The CCG agreed to "detail in its commissioning intentions how it will use the Estates strategy to support and enable the voluntary sector" (Agenda item 5, NHS  Estate in Brent, 23/11/16.)

Brent Advocacy Concerns, one of the voluntary organisations affected, has approached Brent Healthwatch and Brent CVS for assistance, so far without success. 

Assurances had been given when I raised the issue previously that assistance would be given to voluntary organisation to enable them to be part of contracted services. access grants to enable them to be able to pay market rents, improve their financial viability or to share sessional space at centres.  So far none of these options have resulted in concrete proposals.

Brent Advocacy Concern meet tomorrow lunchtime with the shadow of closure hanging over them with little information on which to plan their future.

Friday 13 February 2015

Brent Council: those who survived the axe (for now) and the victims

The cuts recommended to the Cabinet have now been published LINK. As expected the gap between the cuts of £54m required over two years and the £60m actually tabled during the consultation enables the Council to claim to have saved some services.

Despite recent moves by some backbench councillors to propose a rise in Council Tax of 1.99% to save some services, Council Tax is frozen for the 6th year. The councillors' move may have been too late to meet statutory deadlines.


The Budget Report itself does not refer to the petition from Stonebridge Adventure Playground in detail or, as far as I can see on first perusal, does not mention the number of signatories, and instead the future of its funding is dealt with in a separate report which ties the funding into the issue of the expansion of Stonebridge Primary School, which serves to complicate the matter.

It refers to alternative provision with a complete lack  od evidence or detail and it is hard to see how they could make up for what the playground provides (from their report):

The SAP enables children and young people to take part in a range of outdoor and indoor play experiences. Outdoor activities at the SAP include: outdoor adventure play, go-karting, gardening, and sports.


Indoor activities at the SAP include: games, arts and crafts, a ball pond, Wii games, and cooking. Other linked activities include trips, access and use of a narrow boat.
The scheduled opening hours are:

• Monday – Friday term-time, 2-7pm;

• Saturdays, 11am-4pm;

School holidays (summer, Christmas, Easter, and during the three School half-term breaks), 7am-6pm.
Some of the services which appear in the above list as 'not agreed' have other actions which will still impact on services.  Despite concersn about the capacity of the voluntart sector to take over Council functions this is a strategy adopted by the Council.

For example both CYP16 (Closing 10 children's centres) and CYP17 (Closing youth services) have agreed options (CYP1 and CYP3) that will out-source them to the voluntary sector and have the potential to reduce provision by the back door.

The proposal to transfer the management of the library services to a trust (ENS18) is to go ahead.

Energy Solutions will be expected to become self-financing but will receive a cushioning grant of £50,000 for 2015-16  during the transition,

It is worth looking at the rather contradictory statements in the Cabinet report on supporting people, that appear to doubt the capacity of the voluntary sector to provide the service but nonetheless recommend the cuts:
Proposal R&G27a would reduce the supporting people budget by £1m in 2016/17. This would be in addition to proposal R&G27, which would reduce the budget by £1.8m over two years. The current budget is £7.1m.
6.75    This additional saving would mean a significant reduction or selective cessation of services to provide supported housing and floating support of vulnerable individuals and families to assist them to maximise their independence and prevent homelessness. The service provides support to individuals with mental health needs, homeless families, ex-offenders, victims of domestic violence, young people at risk and isolated older people.
6.76    However, these services are not statutory requirements. There may be potential for VCS organisations to take on a greater burden of support for these client groups but it is very doubtful that there is capacity to do so to the extent implied by this saving in addition o the significant savings identified elsewhere in this area.
6.77    Supporting People services is a catch-all term for a variety of housing support services aimed at people who do not meet the council’s eligibility threshold for social care services. The services provided are intended to prevent clients developing greater caneeds by addressing housing issues. No significant comment has been received from the general public on this proposal, although  this may be because the term ‘supporting people’ is not well understood
6.78    Taking all of this into account leading Members have requested that officers prepare the budget on the basis that proposals R&G27 and R&G27a are agreed
The bulky waste original proposal has been modified to one free collection a year and  £25 for each additional collection.

Despite petitions opposing the cutting of school crossing patrols (ENS21) the Cabinet are recommended to approve it with schools expected to pay for the patrols themselves if they wish to retain the service. The fact that school budgets have not been reduced is cited to justify this.

The report outlines the devastating impact of the cuts on particularly groups but also argues that some have no equality implications as they affect all equally:
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The proposals for budgetary savings are extensive and will affect everyone living and working in Brent. The Council h as already made extensive efficiencies and is now at a point where it is not possible to achieve the level of savings required without impacting on service delivery. It is inevitable that there will be a significant impact on those vulnerable people who are the greatest users of council services, particularly older people, disabled people and children. Many of the proposals would also have some negative differentia l impacts in relation to ethnicity or gender; one or two proposals would have a severe impact on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and in relation to pregnancy and maternity. The collective set of proposals will only have minimal impacts in relation to religion o r belief.

 Some of the proposals will have a negative impact on large numbers of people, regardless of their equality characteristics. Although these proposals will be unwelcome and are likely to attract significant public reaction, they are not considered to be problematic from an equalities perspective as they will not unfairly impact on any equality group
This is necessarily only a summary of a complex document but I hope that readers will feel moved to attend the 'Brent Fight Backs' meeting on Tuesday February 17th 7pm, at Tavistock Hall, off Harlesden High Street where people affected by the cuts will have a chance to speak out.

Lastly it is worth noting the very low number of individual written responses which totalled 37 but because some covered several topics have been counted altogether as 54. Day Centres and Adult Social Care (12), School Crossing Patrols (6) and Council Tax (5) were the highest.








Wednesday 7 January 2015

Brent Council public consultation on 'Brutal' cuts on January 13th

Brent Council's Borough Plan puts much emphasis on working with the voluntary sector to deliver services in an era of cut backs.

At Scrutiny Committee last night Cllr Mary Daly asked if any figures had been put on what was expected from the sector.

Deputy Brent Council leader Michael Pavey responding said:
To be perfectly honest I don't know how much the voluntary sector can absorb. Cuts of £54 million will be brutal. We will just have to do what we can. We are working hand in glove with the voluntary sector to ameliorate the impact of cuts.
Pavey welcomed the Budget Scrutiny Task Group's report and its emphasis on equality but said:
 But I have to be candid. There will be a disproportionate impact on the less well off. That is the reality.
He felt the Task Group had been harsh to question the limited choice in the budget options. The Group had said:
The range and extent of public consultation, both with regard to the draft Borough Plan and the council budget options was welcomed by the scrutiny task group. However, given the severity of the financial reductions the group was concerned that the degree of ;choice; between various options was still limited and this needed to be clearly set out during the consultation events planned for January 2015.
Cllr Eleanor Southwold remarked that residents who had put much effort into responding to the consultation on the Borough Plan had been disappointed with the draft Plan and felt that it did not reflect what they had said.  Cllr Dan Filson said that although the suggested cuts of £54m was exceeded by the budget proposals which totalled £60m, giving some leeway in terms of the final decision, £35m still had to be cut in the first year.  He said that efficiency savings were much easier to find in a 'steady state' authority than one facing such drastic changes.

Cllr James Allie was keen to find out more about improving returns on Brent investments. He was concerned about always having to look at cuts and wanted to look at income:
If it is just about cuts I have to ask myself, what is the point of being elected?
Cllr Pavey replied that reserves were lower and investing for a higher return would be a risk and Brent Council already had experience of that (a reference to the Icelandic banks).

Michael Bowden, Operational Director of Finance, said that the budget proposals contained no assumptions about the level of  Council Tax or changes in the Council Tax Support scheme. Responding to Cllr Cowill he said that the Council Tax base had increased by 4% as the result of new build which was about £3.8m. The return on investments was average for comparable London boroughs. Any long term borrowing by the Council would currently be at an interest rate of 4.5%.

The Council will be holding two consultation events on the budget on Tuesday January 13th and these will be followed by consultations at the Brent Connects meetings. The paper on savings/cuts that went to Cabinet on December 15th can be found here LINK

The Council is expecting a high attendance at the January 13th meetings with media in attendance. It is likely that much discussion will centre around what services can be 'saved' given the £6m that can be clawed back from the £60m worth of cuts proposed. This could lead to a sort of bidding process between proponents of different services and leave the whole issue of whether the council should be implementing Coalition cuts to one side.

This is what appears on the Brent Council website:

Budget consultation event

13 January 2015, 2pm to 4pm, Brent Civic Centre
13 January 2015, 7pm to 9pm, Brent Civic Centre

We have to make £54 million worth of savings over the next two years and we want to hear your views about this.
Over the last few years we have already made a number of savings but, with around a 50 per cent reduction in central government funding between now and 2018 coming we have to do more.
Our budget plans so far include the further streamlining of our senior management, renegotiating contracts with suppliers to get a better deal and focusing the biggest cuts on back office services such as IT, Finance and HR.
Despite these steps, significant and wide-ranging cuts to frontline services are 'inevitable' the Leader of the Council has warned.
Come along to have your say as we look to make further cuts to our budget.
Former Executive member Cllr James Powney makes some interesting comments on the complexity of budget consultation and whether some of the proposed cuts are realistic, or indeed legal, on his blog: LINK