You will remember that the administration made a wide range of cuts (savings) during their last budget. These were made because Havering has a large deficit in our finances, with costs going up and government funding being much reduced vs 2010.
Unfortunately, many of the savings were nessecary to prevent us from bankruptcy. But, of course, there are always choices about what to cut and how deeply. I'm not going to go into those choices today, instead I'm going to show you the progress Havering is making towards reaching those 'savings' goals.
Remember, we need to meet these savings to balance our books.
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Overview and Scrutiny Board
The Overview and Scrutiny Board (OSB) is a committee of Councillors from across all political parties in Havering. The number of members from each political group is determined by how many seats they have overall. The Conservatives have three councillors on this board, they are myself, Keith Prince and Dilip Patel.
OSB met on Tuesday 22nd October, to be presented a report on the progress of the savings.
RAG rating
Each saving is rated as 'red', 'amber', or 'green' based on whether they are on target. As expected, a red rating means that the saving is unlikely to meet it's goal.
I queried the ratings provided, at OSB, as there was some inconsistency. One saving was predicted to only be £300k instead of £500k. That got an amber rating. Another had a shortfall of £60k, against a £397k target, and got a green rating.
Following my query, which was shared by Cllr Philip Ruck (Ind), the council staff have committed to reviewing the ratings.
I also asked that, where a saving is rated red, we be presented with a plan to hit the target.
The table below shows the savings in each catergory. Overall, we are likely to miss the savings target by at least £2.452m (red) and potentially a further £2.733m (amber). This could mean a total shortfall of around £5.185m.
As a guide, putting council tax up by 5% this year would raise just over £7m.
In the red / amber
I'm going to focus on some of the savings targets specifically below.
Police funding (amber)
Havering Council has, for some time now, funded a Section 92 police team. This team is Havering focused, as opposed to those funded by the Met and who are dragged all over the city for events such as protests or carnival. Our S92 team have been highly commended, nationally, and do a fantastic job in recovering stolen cars.
Their funding was under threat, as they received £300k a year from Havering. The Resident's Association budget said they will find funding from somewhere else. So far they have only identified £70k of funding. This is rated 'amber'.
Public safety is one of Romford resident's top concerns, so this is one cut I'd say we can't do without.
Library Closures (red)
The Resident's Association proposed closing a number of libraries across Havering. They told the press and the public that their goal was to save £300k a year. In this review, the target is set at saving £150k.
The progress is red and the commentary says that "[Councillors] are considering next steps... any saving is unlikely until the latter part of the financial year".
I'm pleased to see this saving behind target as I don't want the libraries closed. It was a lazy suggestion by the administration. I've shown that funding is available to improve our libraries. We should be getting on with that, not twiddling our thumbs.
Parking prices increase (amber)
The Resident's Association had a plan. They wanted to stick up parking prices and permit prices, to make an extra £200k for their budget.
I warned them that this wouldn't happen, during scrutiny last year. Multiple times, in the meeting, I highlighted that their documents even admitted to having no accurate data on the impact of parking prices. They proceeded anyway.
They are now learning the lesson. If you put up prices, people stay away.
The number of parking permits sold has dropped and so they are missing their target by a full £100k. I will be campaigning for prices to be frozen. If they go up again, we will lose more people and may start to see income drop. That's before we mention the hit on our high street.
Fortnightly bin collections (red)
Yes, this proposal is slowly coming back, albeit very quietly. But, there was a target to save around £150k by changing over the bin collections procedure. The commentary on the saving says that this is still be explored.
Summary
The Resident's Association made a number of savings commitments that were either unsuitable of just not attainable. This means that we may be as much as £5m behind our target and Havering will be in a worse financial position than expected.
Setting a budget is hard, as is forecasting what the impact may be, but this is why we have scrutiny and why we look to work across political divides and skillsets to be more accurate. Why didn't they listen to us when we pointed out the error in their parking proposals?
We now hurtle towards the next budget, to be set in the new-year, and things look really bad. The council will need to make even more cuts and borrow more money.
There will be some things that are worth borrowing to fund, like police to keep our streets safer. There will also be some smarter decisions that can be made, such as not hiking parking prices and using the identified money to upgrade our libraries, which will reduce the cost of running them.
We also have the impact of Labour's pumpkin budget, which sounded all sweet and lovely until we saw it for what it really was. Their new rules on National Insurance Contributions has been confirmed as costing Havering Council another £2.1m a year. We must campaign for them to increase our funding, if they are going to kick us whilst we're down.
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Your information isn't shared with anyone else, including any political party, and I do not send election campaign material.
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