Liberal Democrats - Richard Baum (incumbent)
Constituency - St Mary's Ward
Dear Sue,
Thanks for your letter inviting my comments on the Council's budget and the future of its services. I intend to give a full and honest answer, and I suspect some of the members of your group may not like all that I have to say. I hope they bear in mind though that my answer is a true account of where I stand, and that those Councillors not answering you at all (most of them, I suspect) aren't necessarily more sympathetic to your cause or worthy of your votes just because their silence means that they haven't said anything that you don't like.
I am a backbench Councillor and a member of the smallest political group (8, of 51). I have limited, but not zero, influence. As a Councillor I am someone who voluntarily gives a vast chunk of his spare time to trying to make Bury a better place. I have been a Councillor for four years and in that time have never encountered a fellow Councillor from any party who has anything but the borough's interests at heart. Of course, approaches differ from party to party and within parties, but we are all worried about the affects of service changes on communities. Sympathy for the plight of people is not limited to those who oppose all cuts or changes. I was born in Bury and have lived here more or less my whole life. It means a great deal to me, and I take my responsibilities to make sure that the Council is financially sustainable and provides good services seriously.
The current financial situation that the Council finds itself in is uniquely challenging. Government has asked us to find savings equivalent to around a quarter of our entire budget in four years. That's a challenge we've never had to meet before. This year's budget which was passed by the Council cut the youth service, LAP Managers, school crossing patrols and park rangers, as your press release and letter points out. It also cut many, many other services which you choose not to focus on, including for example weekly bin collections. Your decision to prioritise the services you have done illustrates an important point, which is that budget setting is about priorities. Your priorities are clearly the youth service, parks etc, but these are not necessarily the priorities of the borough as a whole. Your press release and letter do not ackowneldge this or the fact that prioritising other things may mean de-prioritising the youth service, parks etc.
Budget setting means tough compromises at the best of times. These are the worst of times, hence the particularly severe cuts this time round. We can argue for a long time about the rights and wrongs of the approach to cuts being asked of us by the government, but one thing is clear about that - it was the approach put forward by the government, the coalition of parties led by the party which got more votes and more seats than any other party at the General Election. That might be annoying (and I certainly didn't vote for it) but it's democracy. The way to change it is to come up with an argument that convinces enough people to vote for it at the next election. That's what I'm trying to do.
You ask various questions in your letter, which I will try to answer now.
Budget Cuts
You ask whether I would restore jobs in certain service areas (the ones you have prioritised, although no others which may be big priorities for other people). Of course I would like to ensure that every service has more than enough staff in it. But the fact is that there simply isn't the money for this. Jobs haven't been cut by evil people cackling their way to the Council Chamber as their employees are tossed into redundancy. The decisions have been taken as a result of incredibly difficult decisions whereby some very important services have had to be de-prioritised, and jobs cut. As well as being a Councillor, I have a full time job in the NHS and my own organisation is cutting posts. I am very familiar with the impact of these things.
In terms of the effectiveness of the youth service, I would challenge your inference that it will no longer be "effective" or that it was fully effective before. Certainly its users valued it, but far more young people in Bury don't use the Youth Service than use it. What I would like is for a range of services, provided by a range of service providers, right the way across Bury and for all types of young people, that they can access, which are part-unded by the Council but also using innovative ways to deliver those services. I am not a youth service delivery expert but this has been done elsewhere and could be done here. Simply preserving the status quo is not right, in my view.
Having said that, the Council's plans seem only to cut, and not to make plans for alternatives. Were I to have been in charge, I would have tried my utmost to postpone the bulk of the big service cuts across many services (but not all) for one year, and in that time embark on some service re-design work which would have provided the answers to the funding questions before the funding was withdrawn. I would have continued to fund the services on a non-recurrent basis for one year from reserves, and challenged managers to meet not only their savings targets but also re-pay the reserves over a number of years through re-design work. Unfortunately this idea was not adopted by others and so didn't happen.
The same approach would've happened for school crossing patrols and park rangers. On crossing patrols, I did ensure that one in my ward which was due for removal has been retained.
On LAPs, it is not in the power of the Council to restore LAPs. They are not Council functions, but are part of Team Bury the Local, Area Partnership (of which Bury MBC is one constituent member). Local area working is important, which is why the Lib Dem budget amendment restored three Community Development Worker posts to try and replace some of the valuable work of the LAP Managers. The LAP meetings themselves can simply be replaced by any groups of local people willing to hold them. This is exactly what we intend to do in Prestwich. The 8 Lib Dem Councillors there (out of 9) have launched a consultation on Local Area Forums and intend to hold the first one, taking coments into account, in June. These meetings will cost almost nothing, and replicate the work of the LAP meetings, hopefully improved as a result of the consultation. I urge other localities in Bury to do the same.
Transformation Strategy
All of your questions on budget cuts ask what we would do to mitigate the effects of the cuts, and to me the tone suggests that we're unaware or unwilling to accept that things will get worse. This is simply not the case with me. I am aware that cuts mean reductions in service. I am saddened by this but the fact is that there simply isn't the money any more to continue with some of the services we provide. The government is deadling with an unprecedented deficit which, one way or another, needs to be brought down. At the general election the approach to this was put to the vote, and the result is where we are now. It's one of the reasons why the transformation strategy has been launched, because in order to minimise actual cuts, services will have to be transformed. There is a middle way between continuing with the unaffordable status quo and simply cutting, and it's transformation.
Informing and involving the public is of course important. However, I feel strongly that decisions should be taken using the public's elected representatives i.e. Councillors. You elected us, and if enough people don't like what we're doing, we won't be re-elected. That's how it works. Anyone who thinks they can do better should stand to be elected and get the public mandate they need. Should you wish to stand I would gladly support your right to do that.
Unfortunately the current system of overview and scrutiny at the Town Hall needs improving, but that's the method through which public involvement should chiefly be undertaken, in my view. Backbecnh Councillors should be able to compel attendance from the Cabinet member concerned with decisions. Where Scrutiny disagrees with a decision, I would like to see it mandatory for the Cabinet members to explain in writing why those objections are being discarded. I would also like to extend the opportunity for members of the public to ask questions at Full Council by allowing supplementary questions and by allowing questions to be given without notice. And I would also like members of the public to use existing methods to scrutinise the Council. I Chair the Council's Scrutiny committee, at which members of the public can ask any question they like and get it answered. Very few members of the public take this opportunity up.
All of this should be supplemented by consultation events (e.g. using whatever local Councillors decide should replace LAPs) which I would hold quarterly to give local people updates and to take soundings from local people. These should be formal and minuted.
You ask what I would do to prevent outsourcing. The answer is that I would only prevent outsourcing if I thought it would be bad for the service. One of the principle objections to the Transformation Strategy is that is first draft contained the assumption that all services should be outsourced. This seemed to fetter the discretion of the Council in that decision making process, which is why I objected to it and asked for it to be changed (which it was). However, objectors such as your group seem to make the same mistake in reverse - i.e. would like to rule out outsourcing in all circumstances. My view is that every service should be analysed and a decision arrived at regarding the best way it should be provided to give a sound service to the public. This may well be in-house provision, and this is fine. But it may not be, and to me that's fine too.
There should be open discussion amongst Councillors on all of these points, and then a decision should be subject to a vote. But if the vote doesn't go your way, that doesn't mean the process is flawed. Believe me, as a Lib Dem on Bury Council I have been disappointed with decisions for years, but the process has been fine every time. It's just because democracy is imperfect.
Making an impact as a Councillor
I agree that the role of Councillors has been diminished. I would like to see it grow again. An easy thing would be to hold Executive meetings in public again and to have opposition members on the Executive. I would do that, and to do some of the things with Scrutiny I explained above.
I would like to see Councillors' views reflected more widely, but legislation at a national level makes this impossible at the moment. I would like to see some of these laws change, and for local Councils to have far more power. That's what my party has stood for for years, but sadly not enough people vote for us! I would like to see Councillors having the final say on planning decisions, for instance, and far more money raised through local as opposed to national taxation. There are many things I'd do, if I had the power, but Councils and Councillors don't.
It's impossible to say how I'd vote in future budget/transformation votes, because I don't know exactly what they'd say. I wouldn't automatically block outsourcing, nor would I automatically vote against a service cut. I'd try to get the best for Bury in difficult circumstances. Sometimes that means negotiating small concessions as part of a package of fairly negative things. And in hung Councils, it sometimes means abstaining so that concessions we've fought for can pass. That doesn't mean we don't care or that we support the proposals. Sometimes voting yes or voting no are equally unappealing.
At present I wouldn't be prepared to vote for an illegal budget. Such budget settlements haven't emerged from nowhere. They've been set by Parliament, democratically elected. At the end of the day Councils are subservient to Parliament and that's fine. Voting against a settlement is in effect saying "We, Bury Council, don't care how the country voted in the general election." Remember that Bury North voted for a Conservative MP, as did a hefty proportion of Bury South.
Your press release states that "None of the three main parties are prepared to challenge the government by setting an illegal budget." Setting an illegal budget isn't "challenging" the government, it's ignoring it, and I am not willing to do that. Nobody should. The rule of law is important, and the way to change the way the country is run is in an election. I suspect that all the parties have challenged the government. I know mine has. Just because I haven't done it through the letters page of the Bury Times doesn't mean I am an automaton robot happy with every nuance of every decision the government makes. It is up to the government how to respond to that challenge though.
Other Issues
Your press release asks how to maintain quality of privatised services. This would be through rigorous contract monitoring, performance management and appraisal, with tough penalty clauses in the way that contracts are managed across the world. It'll be a different way of doing things, of course, but gone will be the need for politicians to sweep bad practice under the carpet to get votes because they are running services which aren't good enough. It will be in the interests of Councillors to stand up for good quality services from the private sector. That's got to be a good thing.
Throughout the letter, you have asked some tough questions about protecting services. I would like to ask you whether you would prioritise only the services you've mentioned, or save all of them (e.g. have no cuts at all). If you would make some cuts, where would they come and what would they be? How have you arrived at that decision? And how would you plug the funding gap that reducing cuts would mean? It's fine to suggest an illegal budget, but the government simply wouldn't fund it, so how would you propose paying the staff?
Simply calling for fewer (or no) cuts is not acceptable to me. It's telling only half the truth, and that's not fair. It is the approach, sadly, taken by too many politicians, especially those currently members of parties not in national government.
I am a part-time Councillor, receiving a small allowance to give up a very large amount of my time to try and work for the community. I appreciate that my role opens me up to public scrutiny, and that's fine. I don't think though that the inference that Councillors are destroying services on an unthinking whim is right or fair. That is what your press release and conduct at meetings suggests to me. I think it would be fairer, and ultimately more successful, for people from your group to engage in positive discussions with openness on both sides. A good start would be to acknowledge the honesty of this response and to answer the questions I have asked you. I would also like to know how many of the 51 Councillors and 34 major party candidates at the coming elections respond to your letter, and to reflect on that and what you might do to increase the number.
"I would challenge your inference that it will no longer be "effective" or that it was fully effective before. Certainly its users valued it, but far more young people in Bury don't use the Youth Service than use it"
ReplyDeletethe youth service has never been resourced to reach every young person in Bury and has consistently had its budget reduced over a period of 15 years. it has by necessity had to target its work to those groups identified as being at risk.
you admit you dont know anything about youth service delivery but know enough to state it hasnt been effective? How so? On what basis do you make this assumption?
you again insult those workers you are throwing on the scrap heap.