Author: Phil

Ealing’s Conservative administration announced today a freeze in Council Tax for the 2009/10 financial year. Cabinet Member for Finance and Performance, Cllr David Scott explained:

We recognise that the economic downturn is affecting the money in people’s pockets and residents are looking to make savings in their own budgets. It is only right that the Council does the same thing and does not add to the pressures households are facing.

I am pleased we have been able to deliver a zero increase this year. We face major hurdles with falling Government grants – below average settlements for the fourth year running – and increased demand from residents who are facing difficulties and are in need of our services.

Yet we have still achieved the zero increase by finding nearly £9M in efficiency savings which will protect front line services and deliver better value for money.

When elected in 2006, the Conservative administration promised to keep any Council tax increases to below inflation. After two successive years of below inflation increases, the real level of Council tax has actually fallen since 2006 and gone down from 23rd to 18th lowest out of London’s 33 Boroughs. In the four years to 2006, the previous Labour administration increased Council Tax by 48% – the second highest increase in London. Over their twelve year period leading Ealing Council (1994-2006) Labour increased Council Tax by more than all but one of London’s 33 Councils. Labour’s huge increases in Council Tax came despite the fact that prior to 2006 Ealing enjoyed above average increases in Government grant, a trend that has since reversed.

Next Tuesday the Cabinet will decide on some 20 issues. One of the most important for residents will be the amount of money we spend next year on road and pavement renewal, see report here. This was an area that was sorely neglected through 12 years of Labour administration. The graph below shows how this capital budget has changed over the ten years to-date plus next year’s proposed budget.

We did not set the 2006/7 capital budget but we managed to boost the paltry £1 million committed by Labour in its last budget by 50%. In our first three capital budgets we will have committed £3.5 million, £8.5 million and £6.5 million respectively. In three years we will have spent more on our roads than Labour did in three four year terms. Note that Labour spent no Ealing money on the roads in 1999/2000. Maybe Labour thought the world would end with the Millennium?

Whatever your views on climate change and transport, roads are a basic bit of infrastructure that we all rely on. Taking a 12 year holiday on this kind of basic housekeeping is pretty rubbish government.

I have been meaning to take these photos for a while. They show two adjacent roads in neighbouring Walpole ward. Both photos have been taken at the same time with the same camera settings. The first shows what the lighting level is like looking south down Waldemar Avenue. It is rather gloomy although the jaundiced look of the old sodium lamps does not really come across. The second photo is Lyncroft Gardens looking west. It is striking how well the road is lit with our new for old lamp colums. The Heritage Quarter is going to look really stunning when it is finished. The second picture is slightly blury because I did not rest my camera on something.

Waldemar Avenue

Lyncroft Gardens

Hope you have someone to curl up with tonight. Must go!

The LibDems have been busy little bees with their shouty orange leaflets again this weekend.

The leaflet I saw quoted LibDem leader Harvey Rose as saying:

Last year the council made a number of cuts. This resulted in a worsening Parking Services department and a record level of official ‘Ombudsman’ complaints.

The LibDems always confuse inputs with outputs so when we try to to do more for less they always cry “cuts”. That is why LibDem run Richmond and Kingston have the highest council taxes in London. The average Band D council tax in London is about £1,000. It costs you about £250 a year more to live in Richmond or Kingston, see the figures here.

I run parking so I can tell you we inherited a service that is not good enough which is taking a long time to get right. It is a big job. Harvey and I will just have to disagree on the direction of travel.

His last claim is where you get to test his objectivity. On complaints to the Local Government Ombudsman Rose is quite simply talking crap. You can see the Ombudsman’s report or letter as it is called for the last year here.

The figures are quite clear. The year before the Conservatives came to power, 2005/6, the Ombudsman received 254 complaints about Ealing. The next year, most of which we were in power, the number went down to 222. In 2007/8 it was 206. So Rose says black is white.

These number do sound quite high but of the 230 complaints against Ealing that were dealt with last year they found 51 were premature, ie the complainant had gone straight to the Ombudsman and not raised the complaint with Ealing, no maladministration was found in 43 complaints, they exercised discretion to close a further 30 without requiring action by the Council and they found 46 were outside their jurisdiction. This meant that only 60 complaints were substantial. Still too many. Worryingly of these 60 three were what they call “formal reports”. These are the worst offences and three is an unacceptably high number. You might want to know when these happened: April 2001, September 2003 and February 2006. Rose might want the Tory group to atone for these historical offences but really he should have a go at the Labour group.

The LibDems are notorious for printing porkies in the expectation that people will take what they say at face value. Harvey’s not the youngest LibDem. I would have thought that some of the younger ones might have pointed out that the internet kind of means it is harder to lie nowadays. You’ve been found out mate.

I noticed on Friday that the Gazette had picked up the previous week’s “research” paper from the TaxPayers’ Alliance that looks at people earning more than £50K in local government.

Would it be too much for the Gazette to do a bit of elementary fact checking before they just swallow the TPA’s press release wholesale? 154 of these “fat cats” are in the Borough’s schools. Now some people might say that paying £50K-plus to 154 heads, deputy heads and other senior staff in our 65 primary schools, 12 secondary schools and 6 special schools is a misallocation of resources. Please do say if you think so.

Now we have reduced the number of council fat cats from 326 to 172 perhaps we can heave a sigh of relief? If we take the TPA’s figures at face value, which would be a mistake, Ealing is ranked 21 out of 33 London authorities (ie 21st lowest) in terms of spending on highly paid staff per head of population. So we are probably not horribly out of order.

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the TaxPayers’ Alliance. I was involved with them in their very early days. I helped them with their initial fund raising and organising but I got disillusioned because their first publication, The Bumper Book of Government Waste, mixed up capital and revenue and different years and wasn’t really a serious analysis of waste – at least not one that was any use to anyone.

The headline of their press release was:

COUNCIL SPENDING UNCOVERED: COUNCILS EMPLOY 22% MORE MIDDLE MANAGERS THAN LAST YEAR

This is utter nonsense. They make no effort whatsoever to put any of this in any context or to compare like for like. I had a look at their figures for London boroughs. They had the Brent population figure wrong (71,600 instead of 270,000). They haven’t tried to work out whether or not teachers are included. Most boroughs include them and are roughly comparable. At least six don’t include them so look better than they otherwise would – Ealing is probably better than 21st. The City of London is an exception as it has a tiny population but loads of businesses to deal with.

The TPA could be really useful if they upped their game somewhat. Much of what they do though is to pull out facts and figures from published sources without understanding them. Ealing’s own figures for people paid over £50K are published on page 23 of our Statement of Accounts and anyone can pull them off our website here. All public bodies publish these tables. At least when I do this stuff to my friends at Transport for London I explain my workings!