Aylesbury Liberal Democrats

Councillor Steve Kennell's reply to the Conservative administration's Budget said that the lack of any vision or strategy would be storing up problems for the future. His speech in full:-

AVDC BUDGET, FEBRUARY 2008 – REPLY OF THE
LIBERAL DEMOCRATS

Madam Chairman, I note that, in accordance with the Local Government Act 2003, we have a very useful report within our papers from the Chief Financial Officer, Peter Watson.

We have actually heard a lot more from Mr Watson on this Budget than we have heard from anyone in the Cabinet. This, in itself, is not a bad thing – anyone who has benefited from Peter’s experience and wisdom in financial matters would agree with that – but it is hardly demonstrating political leadership on the part of this administration. Yet again we have proof of a Cabinet marking time; content to be the Cabinet but without any real idea of what they wish to do with the authority and opportunity that allows them.

We are told that the Council is currently reviewing its corporate priorities to refocus for the years ahead, and so this budget is directed on delivering the existing Key Aims. That implies it is rooted in the past and not relevant to the future; that it is not relevant to tomorrow. But we are also told that the review of priorities will be unlikely to offer anything really different from what this budget sets out to deliver. Again, we have the spectacle of an administration that has gone as far as it either wants to travel in bringing change and renewal to Aylesbury Vale, or – perhaps worse – cannot bring itself to do more.

That there are no ideas or initiatives of note on offer from the Cabinet is not entirely their fault. Despite increasing the funding to local councils by more than their predecessors, this Government has developed an addiction even worse than that of the Tory Governments before it to trying to run everything from Whitehall, and targets and responsibilities to be met by us have accordingly flowed out – flooded out, even – with the money to pay for them oddly never even quite nearly enough. The new Concessionary Fares Scheme has understandably a lot of us worried, for today and for the years and funding awards ahead.

Capping – that brainwave of Margaret Thatcher and her ministers, let us not forget – remains in place as a constraint on local democracy and on activity aimed at improving the lives of local communities throughout the country.

The right and proper need to reward the staff of this Council with reasonable pay awards also strains the limited resources available.

And so we are left with what? What is the administration’s response? A commitment to financial prudence and stability that really amounts to doing nothing new off our own bat of any consequence and eking out the Revenue Balances for as long as they last – which, as we can see from the report in front of us, will not be long. As they deplete, the tipping point to real hardship is not far off and we are told that, at most, these reserves are a clutch to enable us through the transition to implementation of real changes in our operational delivery of services that will enable them to be sustained on the reduced means available.

Well, that’s a plan. Perhaps it’s the only plan that could be followed. The options are hardly numerous and with the growth agenda likely to squeeze us still further unless real additional Government funding comes to us, its sense is even more obvious.

But is this Cabinet- this administration – the one to deliver it? Again, there is no sense of leadership. There has been a belated waking up to the danger of needing to address the declining income from our property holdings, which echoes the neglect of the last time the majority party were in control. Pathfinder – a potential source of relief through joint working and the efficiencies that would accompany it – was, let’s face it, embraced as a means of avoiding change, not of making it.

And, whilst we have all these challenges, the administration has committed this Council to a long-delayed Waterside project, a new theatre and the Gateway offices. Capital projects, yes, but with implications for the revenue budget that will stay with this Council for a long time. Was this really good planning; to have dallied so long over Waterside that we approach it on the cusp of a potential economic downturn; with that, to have been potentially sucked into commitments on the theatre that we were not supposed to have had; and to have taken on new prestige offices first and then entered into discussions with others as to their relevance later. As for the eminently sensible warning in the papers that we need to keep a close eye on the costs of these projects due to the harm they could cause to the Revenue Budget and, presumably, the Capital Budget, well, Madam Chairman, there was an agreement before the last election to set up a Scrutiny Committee to provide overview of the Waterside and Theatre projects as that, it was concurred, was in the best interests of residents of Aylesbury Vale. That agreement was reneged on by the majority party as soon as they were re-elected. The excuse given was one of cost….Which is more likely, I ask, to bring financial distress to this Council – the cost of a scrutiny committee that needs clerking and papers distributing or two great big gorillas of capital projects sitting in the centre of this town? This episode in back-tracking hardly inspires confidence in the clear-sightedness of this administration and its ability to make good choices, any more than the recent extra Ł120,000 we will spend on a feasibility study on the Waterside food retail design after this administration spent how long ignoring the very concerns it has now suddenly discovered at the 11th hour it shares. We may get the money back. We may not. At the least, think of what could have been done with that money in the meantime.

It is because of the inability of this administration to look beyond narrow politics and employ some vision to resolve the problems facing us that, regrettably, I fear for our ability to cope with the budget pressures ahead of us. We may well muddle through, yes, helped by having the good fortune of capable officers and a stack of cash topped up by a sale of the housing stock that we all saw as unavoidably forced on us, but it will be painful and probably more so than it need be.

As regards the recommendations themselves that are before us they are there to see us through the next year of this Council in straightened circumstances and in themselves are therefore harmless. But we here cannot support them and will not do so because they portray a failure of this administration to employ either vision or a sense of what is really necessary as opposed to desirable in the narrowest sense.

Were this administration to possess both vision and practical sense, Madam Chairman, it would have pressed on positively with the transfer of assets and functions to Aylesbury Town Council – a non-capped authority – and not only given local residents control over activities in their own town as they have in Buckingham and Winslow, but also have given itself greater financial headroom and flexibility in the process as the capped limit on the baseline spending budget would have then provided more resources to deliver fewer responsibilities. It would also, at the very least, have paused before jumping into the Gateway and all that seems to be stemming from that, and really – really – have looked first at the needs of this Council and of Aylesbury Vale and the alternative ways of meeting them.

Neither course of action has been followed, Madam Chairman. Instead this administration is carrying on as before, without vision or strategy, and without due regard for the dangers that could befall it - and, ultimately, the staff of this authority and the Council Tax payer. Part of me actually hopes they pull it off, in the same way that you hope a sleepwalker doesn’t injure themselves, for who likes to see failure. However, we have seen ample evidence up until now that the odds of such failure are lengthening.

Aylesbury Liberal Democrats

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