11 February (Part 2) - Budget Scrutiny concluded
There are just a few oddments from the Budget Scrutiny meeting remaining that may be worthy of comment.
Councillor Cheryl Bacon (Conservative, Sidcup) said it was interesting to note
that the budget report said it was in balance but gave no clue as to “how we got
here because at our last meeting we were not near to balance”. She was also
surprised to see that the pursuit of a new refuse contract being labelled “a
possibility when in actual fact it is an actuality”. (Agendas are not what they
used to be.) The Chairman said he too was not happy with Agendas “with no narrative”.
After the Finance Director offered explanations for several minutes, Councillor
Seymour attempted to inject some common sense into the discussion. He said that
“the key to all this is how we actually monitor performance and service
delivery. We get emails from residents and they are the conduit by which we
judge what we do. They criticise our services and it is very easy to be quite
insular in the world of politics. The only people who matter are the residents out there.”
He was critical of the Council’s tendency to “set targets artificially low” so
that it can be claimed that performance is above target. Councillor Seymour (Conservative, Crayford) is
clearly not Cabinet Member material.
Sybil Camsey (Conservative, Crook Log) was another Councillor critical of the lack of details in reports,
she wanted to know how Covid had affected SEN transport. Was the need for it and
the costs reduced, and have drivers gone away to find more lucrative work. She
was told there was “pressure” on transport but “it is cost effective”. Requests
for transport had risen by 8% over the past year. The Councillor requested a
proper answer in writing which means that a public meeting becomes anything but
unless the FOI route is taken.
Councillor Borella had a question on libraries. “Why did the Chairman refuse the
request to bring someone from community managed libraries to this meeting?”
The Chairman said this was a Budget Scrutiny meeting and libraries fall within the
Places Scrutiny Committee’s remit and Councillor Borella had asked the same
question at Public Cabinet. “This is not the forum to discuss the library situation.”
Councillor Borella (Labour, Slade Green) thought “it’s a very strange answer֨ and went on to cast
doubt on the whole concept of Budget Scrutiny if the Committee was not going “to listen to people who are going to be impacted”.
The Chairman continued to say that he “felt it was inappropriate that we
should have outside organisations come in to represent, specifically, the Slade
Green library group that you are talking about…” The sentence tailed off but the meaning was
already clear.
Councillor Cafer Munur (Conservative, Blackfen & Lamorbey) suggested that
Councillor Borella was simply intent on “making political points out of it”.
Councillor Borella responded that he didn֦’t know and nobody knew what the impact
of £90,000 of cuts over two years would have on community libraries. “It is not
in the report.” (£427,000 on libraries overall, this year alone.)
Cabinet Member Craske said the Community Libraries are “content” with the cuts.
Councillor Borella shifted his focus to the £400,000 cut to the highways budget.
It has been hidden in an impact assessment and not shown in budget papers.
Councillor Craske said that the figure came about from swapping expenditure from
Reactive to Capital budgets so nothing much changes. He said it had been in the
papers previously, Councillor Borella said it hasn’t been and went on to complain
that there is no “impact analysis” following staff cuts either. There have been
losses in both highways and parks yet no one knows what those cuts to those
teams will mean. “It begs the question again what is this Committee for if we
don’t look at these things in more detail.”
The Chairman said that the next Budget Scrutiny meeting had been moved to July
so that it can measure “the full impact of the proposals that are going on right now.”
Councillor Ferreira (Labour, Erith) sprung a surprise by suggesting that with five Directors
Bexley only needs five Cabinet Members and maybe fewer Scrutiny Committees “It
would save forty or fifty thousand pounds.”
Councillor Leader Teresa O’Neill thought it was “a proposal worthy of
consideration” and an excuse to brag about the reduction of Councillor numbers from 63 to 45
first mooted in
October 2010 and introduced in 2018. She said that at one
time there were ten Cabinet Members and seven Scrutiny Committees and scored
several political points along the way. (Labour raise allowances, Conservatives freeze them etc.)
A Master Class in not really saying anything. The Chairman said that the idea had been noted.