Phil Taylor

In 25 days, at the start of April, the rubber will hit the road for our new Labour council when their new budget comes into force. Although they will have been in power for almost a year it is not until the whole budget setting cycle is complete that their priorities and decisions really get to be seen by the public. As I have said before: To govern is to choose.

Many of the decisions in Labour’s first budget, see documents here, would have been made in much the same way by a Conservative council. It is quite clear that central government’s 28% cut in revenue support grant across the board would have forced many of the same unpleasant choices on a Tory administration too. But, there are alternatives which I hope to illustrate over the next 25 days.

One item the Conservative opposition approves of is that Labour is continuing the policy of freezing council tax for a third year. As the opposition leader, Jason Stacey, said in his remarks after the budget setting council:

We do however, welcome the Government grant of £3.1 million to enable the Council Tax to be frozen for the third year, following the two year freeze under the previous Conservative administration, which will help hard pressed families in the borough during this challenging economic time.

Labour’s manifesto promised:

Keeping your council tax low with a freeze in the first year.

After two years of 1.9% from the Tories followed by zero for two years and a further zero from Labour it will be hard to see how council tax can go up by more than the odd percent and still be described as “low”. We hope that we have changed Ealing Labour’s approach to council tax for good.

I noticed a new Ealing blog from Labour supporter Neil Reynolds yesterday, see here. He was commenting on the council budget and thought that it was fair overall.

Neil approvingly pulled out some key points. Rather than simply report on yesterday’s budget setting council or rehash the speech I had prepared on my blog I thought I might respond to Neil instead.

Neil,

Welcome to blogging in Ealing. I would like to comment on the points you raise:

■£66,000,000 cut in funding from central government over the next 10 years.

Apparently £7.3 million of this number is the growth items in Labour’s own budget. In four budgets we put in £40 million of growth. You did not hear us describing this as £40 million of Labour government cuts. The £66 million figure is just nonsense. The actual, real cuts are a fraction of this and tiny compared to the council’s £1 billion plus spending every year (look it up, happy to explain it). For instance, adding £1.5 million to parking charges is no kind of cut.

■A council tax freeze as promised in Labour manifesto.

This freeze is paid for by £3.1 million per annum for four years provided by central government – otherwise council tax would have to go up by 2.5%. This is the 18th year that Ealing has set a council tax (it was the community charge before that!). Labour has set the council tax 13 times in that time. We welcome the first ever freeze from Labour. We froze for two years and kept rises down to 1.9% for two years before that. Practically every London council froze last year and this year. No big deal!

■Allocation of £45,000,000 in the capital budget to provide extra primary school places.

This of course carries on the existing programme which sought to provide the extra places required with high quality classrooms. The council has no choice about providing these places but we are happy that the new administration is extending this programme in the same way that we did. We are concerned that the programme may still not be big enough. The population curve keeps tilting upwards and numbers may well need to be revised again. Watch this space. We shouldn’t be thinking about £5.5 million for a car park in Southall until this question has been bottomed out.

■Money to recruit more social workers to tackle the shortage of front line staff in that area.

You are quite right. £232K added in this area. To put this in context the previous administration put in £4.8 million of growth into childrens services over four years.

■Plans to share services with other London boroughs to improve efficiency.

The only shared services proposal specifically mentioned in the budget is a future, undeveloped proposal in the area of HR. People have been talking about this for years so this is very disappointing. Under the previous Tory administration a joint procurement exercise in adults through the West London Alliance yielded about £1 million in savings. A larger, similar project in the area of childrens seems to have been kicked into the long grass. All the senior Labour team would have been aware over two years ago that there was going to have to be a radical re-structuring of the council. There is no excuse for moving so slowly on this.

■Investment in the council’s computer systems and plans to reduce office space to increase efficiency and provide value for money.

You are talking about £4.6 million of capital spending on these items plus £8.7 million (net, ie not the whole bill) on new offices. So £13.3 million of capital spending on the council machine. This shows somewhat distorted priorities and makes the opposition wonder if this is not a budget for the council officers rather than Ealing residents. Maybe the Labour cabinet are just not bright enough to spot producer interests at work?

■A reduction in the number of senior staff to reduce costs

You may not be aware but answers to questions 40-42 at the October council meeting showed that the council has 98 senior staff who cost £9.7 million a year. At the OSC meeting on 2nd December the chief executive of the council confirmed to me that the current budget proposals involved losing 7 out of 77 of the service head tier of management and none from the other tiers. So a 9% cut in middle management headcount compared to the 50% cuts in frontline services such as envirocrime officers and rangers. Again we see the producer interests at work. The officer class protected.

Council leader Julian Bell really lets himself down with this nonsense. Labour are touting this £66 million cuts number. Included in this number are a whole range of measures including price rises and shuffling things off onto the NHS and schools. The real cuts are much smaller.

One of the truly silly wheezes that Labour is employing is to blame the government for “cuts” which are caused by spending increases – if you are in a zero sum gain then spending increases in one area have to be paid for by cuts elsewhere.

If you dig into the details of Labour’s budget some £7.3 million of growth has to be paid for by savings elsewhere. They had originally budgeted for £2 million of growth so have simply added £5 million of “cuts” to their headline number to take it to £66 million and make their sums add up.

Inconveniently for Labour the previous Tory administration quietly and calmly took out some £60 million in savings. In four years there was about £40 million in growth, some for new things we wanted to do such as street cleaning and additional police officers and some for things we had no choice about. We did not moan about cuts and include the £40 million in some hideous Labour government cuts number.

Local government is a bit of a money go round. Old activities get stopped (cuts or savings) and new things get started (growth). There are always new things. If you did not stop doing some things every penny we earned would be spent by the state. This creative cycle is very natural in the private sector but causes endless hand-wringing in the state sector.

The current government cuts are taking total government spending back to 2007 levels in real terms. It is not the end of the world as uncomfortable as it will be for many people.

Cllr Bell needs to up his game somewhat.

I have just seen the shocking news that the roof has been blown off the flats at the end of Carlyle Road, facing out on to South Ealing Road. It seems to have been a gas explosion. Two people were hurt. South Ealing Road closed. Building unsafe. Click on image to read BBC story.

Tim Coates, who has run the Waterstones chain, gave the presentation above on the Isle of Wight at a public meeting on Tuesday and to councillors on Wednesday. Coates really knows about the book trade trade, but also public libraries as it happens. In a very understated way he lays out the kind of thinking that allows an old-fashioned public service to be radically changed, saving a lot of money and actually improving the service.

I was in charge of libraries in Ealing for two years, the last two years of the previous Conservative administration. When I was in charge I was very keen to pursue just the kind of changes that Coates proposes in the video. Indeed a package of changes that took £400K out of the back office and saw the closure of the old hut in Perivale Central Sportsground was put in to place two years ago as a part of the budget setting process. £100K was used to fund redundancy costs (which should be coming free again soon), £185K was re-deployed to the front office, ie more staff and longer opening hours in libraries, and £115K was released as a saving. This was in the context of a massive £3.8 million staff budget, 125 FTE, in 2008/9. At the time 23% of staff costs were in the back office.

In 2008/9 it was clear that there was much further to go in this process and Tim Coates’ presentation underlines that for me.

The future of Ealing’s libraries is currently in question, as is the case all over the country. I attended the protest at Ealing Central Library on 5th March after which the current Labour portfolio holder, Councillor Kamaljit Dhindsa, cabinet member for customer and community services, said:

We are reviewing the library service and no decisions have been made on any closures although we are looking at the option to have fewer but better buildings.

This month we will start to talk to residents about possible changes to the service. No decision will be made until the review and consultation are complete.

This is code for “we are going to close old libraries”. The libraries in the firing line are Hanwell and Perivale. In the Tory manifesto in 2010 we promised to:

Modernise Acton, Hanwell, Perivale and Southall libraries.

The reason we did this is because we were committed to libraries, we had never closed a library in four years, and these were the libraries that had been left unmodernised. Southall is probably safe as it is at the centre of five safe Labour wards. Acton will get rolled up into the whole Acton regeneration programme which the current administration sees as being a must deliver promise. That leaves Hanwell and Perivale. Looking closely at the budget strategy document to be agreed at cabinet on Tuesday it is clear that there is no new capital for libraries over the next four years.

When I spoke at the event on 5th April I told the small group there that there was no excuse for closing libraries. Although there is a hard revenue squeeze there is still fat in the libraries back office and management structure to go for. Add in some devolution of power to local libraries and maybe some volunteering and it could get a lot worse before you had to close libraries.

The capital crunch is arguably less severe than the revenue one. The council plans to spend £13.3 million over the next four years improving its own premises and £5.5 million on a new car park in Southall but there is nothing for libraries. These are Labour’s choices. The fact that Hanwell and Perivale libraries are underinvested will be used as a pretext for closing them, but it is Labour’s decision not to invest that drives their decision to close. Wait until you hear they are rolling up capital receipts from the sites into their property strategy to help fund shiny new offices for council staff and compare and contrast with the improvements delivered by the Tories at Ealing Central and Northolt libraries to name two.

If any libraries close it is because Labour wills it. No other reason.

According to the Ealing Today website this lunchtime:

PC Paul Madden and PCSO Piotr Dolata, the two officers who were stabbed during an attack in Ealing’s centre on the 15th December, have now both returned to work.

Great news! Thank you both for your service.