Council Leader Teresa O’Neill did us the usual favour of reducing her 26 page
report to Full Council to a mere six minutes and 19 seconds but managed to use her favourite word, ‘fantastic’
within the first sentence. It was the unanimous Con/Lab vote on the LGBT+
Motion that won the praise, quickly followed by two more Fs. Councillor Stefano Borella’s
Fiftieth birthday and Councillor June Slaughter’s Fifty years as a Bexley Councillor. “It is a Fun time all round tonight.ְ”
She praised the staff who had turned out during the recent storms and
commiserated over the borough wide road works. She had reminded the Government
that Outer London still has digital black spots and Cabinet Member Caroline
Newton had spent the day with the Education Minister discussing SEND issues.
“The DfE has been very complimentary over the SEND improvement plan.”
The Leader took credit for the SuperLoop extension from Bexleyheath to Abbey
Wood and Thamesmead and she has also asked that the DLR be extended to Belvedere.
Councillor Cheryl Bacon (Conservative, Sidcup) asked the Leader to praise the reduction in missed bin
collections and the newly installed litter bins. Cabinet Member Diment
answered. “It is a tribute to those that go out in all weathers and pick up
around a million bins a month, 99·98% of them without error.”
The first of the new bins have been installed in Blackfen and more will be
installed over the next nine or ten months.
Councillor Peter Reader (Chairman of the Audit Committee) asked a more erudite
question. Could the Leader assess the Government’s proposals to tackle the
backlogs and delays to Local Authority audits by external auditors?
Deputy Leader Leaf was keen to answer. “It is a very important issue and there
is a massive backlog and there is a process in place to draw a line under audits
which have gone back over many many years. Unfortunately Bexley is caught up
despite our accounts being ready in time.” 2022/23 is still outstanding.
Councillor Borella mentioned the Children Services overspend and asked how
confident the Council is that it will not repeat the overspend this year and
how far away is the next Capitalisation Directive? This Government has not given
Bexley a Fair Funding Review despite the Leader seeking help at the Local
Government Association, London Councils and the House of Lords. “What is going on? Nothing!”
“Should she not reflect on her position after 17 years?”
Stefano said he was talking to the Mayor about more Superloops, for Welling
perhaps? The Council should cooperate with their counterparts in Greenwich.
The Leader said she was working very hard on budgetary issues and every penny of
expenditure is being monitored. “The reality is that there are unknowns at the
moment with multi-year settlements.” (A reference to the forthcoming election.)
“Bexley is punching above its weight and I am proud of that.”
Councillor Lisa Moore (Conservative, Longlands) asked what progress is being made with the reorganisation
of Children’s Centres. Cabinet Member Read said the changes went live in
November 2021 “with the aim on focusing on the first 1,0001 days of a child’s
life which is based on the Government’s guidance document. Most registrations
are coming from the more deprived areas of the borough indicating that the
targeted services do correlate with the needs of the community as intended.
1,056 children are attending regularly.”
Councillor Larry Ferguson (Labour, Thamesmead) said that the Leaderְ’s written
report acknowledged that “housing problems are significant but she does not get to
grips with them. She says that it is further exacerbated by Government
Agencies working on designated schemes for asylum seekers and refugees. There
is also the problem of other London boroughs placing their homeless in Bexley.”
“The party opposite is well aware of the problem but does not want to take the
bold step of building or strictly enforcing our own construction targets for
affordable homes. We are in a desperate situation. They could use the unused £3
million allocated to affordable housing through BexleyCo but you either want to
spend the money or you don’t. They could take a hard look at their own planning
system. It won’t do for developers to rock up with proposals and
bold-facedly
come back to say that affordable homes do too much damage to their profit
margins. There must be some developers who can meet our needs to some degree at
least but BexleyCo has put forward yet another plan for Erith with no affordable
housing. Where is BexleyCo providing affordable homes?” [This is a
condensed version of Larry’s lengthy speech.]
Teresa O’Neill responded by saying that Larry should speak to his Labour
Councils who block book accommodation in Bexley hotels which puts the cost of
controlling the anti-social behaviour that occurs in those hotels on Bexley’s taxpayers.
Cabinet Member Cafer Munur said that £3·5 million is an extremely small
amount of money [fewer than 20 houses?] and he wants “a bigger bang from the
buck”. He had to go back several years to Old Farm Place to find a significant
BexleyCo build of affordable homes. It then transpired that it was only twelve homes.
Fortunately for Cafer the Mayor decreed that it was time to bring down the
curtain on the Leader’s Report.