Aylesbury Liberal Democrats

No Openess or Transparency, where's the Scrutiny? Asks Steve Kennell Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group on the County Council in his reply to the Buckinghamshire County Council Budget Statement

This year has seen a welcome change in how the administration handles the budget process. The sound and fury and wailing and gnashing of teeth that usually precedes this day has been largely absent. There has been relatively little blaming of anyone and everyone else in advance for the decisions that will be taken by the majority group here today and, if that is proof that the recent quarrels within Buckinghamshire Tories over the future of local government in the county was distracting them from the day job well, perhaps it was no bad thing.

It’s all been rather too quiet. A very quiet imposition of a cash freeze budget – an effectively cutting budget – on Buckinghamshire County Council and the services it provides. Too quiet, actually, because there has been too much quiet working behind closed doors on this budget and not enough public discussion and scrutiny on what public money will be spent and how it will be spent.

None of the information finally, belatedly, here in front of us in outline form today has gone to a Council committee for scrutiny, in meetings open to the public, with the background explained, concerns discussed, priorities chosen and recommendations minuted and publicly known. There has been no opportunity for openness and transparency, no requirement for choices to be challenged or defended in the daylight of public debate.

Last year, albeit in pale reflection of the often effective and therefore, to the administration, inconvenient, Corporate Resources Committee with its strategic overview and oversight there was at least The Corporate Task Group, with cross-party backbench membership and a mandate to look at the 2006/07 Budget. Whilst its criticisms were stifled it at least was there, and met. But tolerance of it, and the notion that there should be Council-wide budget scrutiny, soon ended. It has not been heard of again. So there has been no public scrutiny of the choices before us now, no public examination of the priorities in the Budget and the rationale for them.

This is not merely disappointing, not only contrary to the spirit of democracy, it’s also wrong-headed and bad practice; nobody and no thing has a monopoly of wisdom, and to keep the formulation of a budget away from open and public discussion and challenge is simply inefficient. Some Members in my experience have said that this Council should be more like a business. Well, imagine a business where the directors refused to discuss their spending priorities and did not allow shareholders and their representatives the ability to challenge and consider them until the day of the AGM. It would not prosper for long. As it is, we are a public body rather than a business, responsible for public money, which makes such a refusal and such exclusion of proper scrutiny far worse.

The people of Buckinghamshire have cottoned onto the sham that is a budget process in this Council. Last November, people were asked by BCC to give their views on future spending by this authority. Quite an effort seems to have been made to generate responses, although we did not really say much about it in The Buckinghamshire Times, which at least should go to every house. However, only 400 were received, less than a third of the number in 2006. What’s more, of these, only 21% came from people under the age of 45. This is hardly a representative cross-section and hardly a hearty response. Is this because people do not care? More likely it is because they do not see their involvement as worthwhile when today is the only - fleeting – public debate of the substance. Very little and very, very late it is, too. The Leaders’ Report mentions that the number of responses was so low as to be not statistically significant. What he did not say was why he thought that was and what he was going to do to try and improve matters. Is that oversight or indifference on his part? Either way, it is not encouraging for the notions of public consultation and involvement, anymore than our being presented with a budget that offers unspecified further library closures and other service cuts only a year after the public raised library provision to their 5th highest priority, and in the wake of widespread public concern over the loss of similar such services.

It could be said that what matters is not the process but the budget at the end of it; the end justifies the means. Leaving aside that that argument is a favourite of the morally ambiguous; this budget certainly does not justify any faith that darkness and stealth is preferable to transparency and public scrutiny by backbench elected representatives.

There has been no sign – above ground at least – of any root and branch review of why this Council does what it does and spends what is spending in doing so. This Budget presumably links in with the Corporate Plan, the Local Area Agreement and sundry other worthy initiatives to improve life for the people of Bucks, but we have nothing in front of us to say how it will do so, assuming it does! There are no stated priorities and no sense of a plan, just numbers – numbers hanging on the page without justification or a feel of substance.

That a structure is lacking in substance usually implies a house of straw, liable to blow over in the wind. This Budget has a similar feel to it. It neglects several grave issues, and exposes this Council to risk of service failure. Much of the investment proposed is simply funding residual previously unfounded growth in spending from previous years. The administration had ignored demographics and the resulting pressures on services for as long as it could and is now trying to catch up. But, what of tomorrow? The cash freeze on School Improvement – again - and the scrimping on the maintenance of the Council’s property portfolio help balance the books today, but will contribute to a poor legacy of future, higher, costs. What of tomorrow? School Transport, in a largely rural county, sees this budget proposing Ł18.5m spending - Ł1.7m more than last year – but with a Ł2m overspend hangover due to be repaid within two years, raising questions of cost-control and the sanctity of current entitlements. Again, what of tomorrow? Those demographics will not go away, and nor will any of the other problems, but we – and the public – do not know if this budget is the start of an attempt to address them or is effectively an irrelevance. That the information received on committed expenditure tells us that inflation is included but does not even say at what rate – and, so, does not even begin to indicate if the contracts involved are value for money – is hardly encouraging.

With the Capital budget, again there is no statement of the priorities and no real information is provided.

This Budget today emerged from the shadows and stands, shivering from weakness and doubt, in the light. There has been no public scrutiny of it until today, nor has there been an opportunity to try and form an overview of what it is supposed to do and how it will do it, and decide whether it provides either practical value for money or the substance to the vision of this Council’s plans and the partnership agreements we have signed up to. Today is too short and too late to do so, and it is a disservice to the people of Buckinghamshire and to the Members of this Council for this administration to pretend otherwise.

Aylesbury Liberal Democrats

News

"No Openess or Transparency, where's the Scrutiny?" Asks Steve Kennell
28 February 2007

News