I wasn't able to be at the Mayor and Cabinet meeting last Wednesday when the Mayor set out the budget he is proposing to bring to Council*. However, I did get to a presentation he and the Executive Director for Resources did on Monday and thought you might like a quick overview.
Officers are projecting a small underspend on this year's budget. This is important because it means that we go into next year without having to carry forward overspends which would affect the ability to deliver services.
Steve will be asking for a Council tax increase of 2.5%. He is budgeting for growth of £5m which comes in part from our savings exercise (which delivered £6m this year) and in part from the increase in council tax**.
Steve wants use the £5 million to meet presures that we expect to be in the system next year and for some redirection of money to new areas that he believes will be of increasing importance over the few years.
To give you a sense of the pressures I'll talk a bit about the changes in my area, the environment.
Anyone who lives in the borough will (I hope) know that we've made considerable changes to the recycling services - increasing the number of materials that are picked up, changing the bring sites, and introducing a weekly pick up. Almost all of this was done through specific grant regimes which are now coming to an end. This means that we need to find money to continue some of that work or to stop doing it. Unsurprisingly, we want to continue to develop these services and so Steve is asking for growth of £638,000 which will be spent on recycling services.
The other considerable pressures that we want to cover from my area are the costs of dealing with fly tipping and abandoned cars, and so Steve will be asking for an additional £230k for fly tipping and £114 for picking up abandoned cars. The abandoned cars money is a straight replacement for a grant which has run out.
Other growth includes voluntary sector (£255k) and neighbourhood developments £1.5m (details of what this might mean to be developed in the year).
Of course as Council Tax payers in London we are also subject to the precept that the Mayor of London sets in his budget, and I’m told that once this has been added Lewisham’s council tax will rise by about 4.8%.
*Under the constitution of the Council the Mayor proposes a budget but it is up to the whole Council to accept or reject it. Its much the same system as opperates for the London Mayor and GLA.
** You may be going £6m savings plus 2.5% increase in Council Tax = more than £5m, and you'd be right. But if it were that simple local government finance would be a lot easier to explain. There are a number of other factors such as the level of government grant, the rises in the cost of providing services (which tends to go up faster than the general level of inflation) and amount of Council Tax officers expect to collect, all of which impact on the budget process.
I watched the remarkably sympathetic portrayal of the (mostly) middle class Trots and anarchists who squatted in Lambeth from the mid 1970s through to the middle of the 1980s on BBC4 last night.
Not being a Marxist I'd not come across the phrase "transitional demand" before. The people in the programme described them as demands that appear reasonable but which are impossible to deliver.
I wonder if any of my readers can think of a modern day example?
The New Local Government Network published their pamphlet on the "current and future role of mobile IT in transforming local services and governance arrangements" yesterday.
Nigel Tyrell (Lewisham's Head of Environment) and I had spoken to them about our cam2web work.
I'm told Lewisham got lots of positive mentions and I'm quoted somewhere in the document.
The report gets some coverage in today's Guardian as does the Council's part in bringing this stuff a little further along.
The reason I couldn't get to the launch of the NLGN publication yesterday evening was because I travelling back from Gloucester after talking the trainees on the New Graduate Development Programme* about how to work with councillors.
This is something I did last year and enjoyed so much that I thought I'd try it again.
This year rather than question and answer sessions we got a bit longer with a single group and worked through a senario that a few of the trainees had developed.
Most of the group I worked with hadn't had much (if anything) to do with councillors in their year on the programme and I hope they got a sense of how it might be to work with us. As always I was impressed at how bright they are and how quickly they adapted to the task in hand.
My thanks go to my fellow councillor, Paul, who drove me to Oxford thereby knocking an hour off my journey.
I've had the following outline of Glendale's application for a license for Blackheath:
Wish to be opened showing plays, films, indoor sporting events, recorded music& dancing Monday – Sunday 08:00-22:00,
Any objections need to be based on:
1. Prevention of Crime and Disorder. 2. Protection of Children from Harm 3. Public Safety 4. Prevention of Public Nuisance
Please could you ensure that any representations reach the council by 1st March 2006.
As I understand this application Glendale are not asking for a license to sell alcohol on the heath.
You may also find it reassuring to know that the Blackheath Joint Working Party take an oversight of all applications received by Glendale for events to be held on Blackheath. The working party, which includes the Blackheath ward councillors from Lewisham and Greenwich, has traditionally and consistently taken a cautious approach to events on the heath.
Cllr Andrew Brown
