Making your money work for you

Broxbourne Labour councillors have revealed their alternative budget for the borough, making your money work for you with a 1.1% cut in the council tax financed by increasing the council's reserves by £½million less than the Conservatives proposed.

Councillor Richard Greenhill delivered the opposition group's budget speech in the council chamber on 23 February 2010:

Introduction

Madam Mayor,

This is a momentous time for the borough of Broxbourne. Sometimes a group becomes so dominant that you forget they have only been around for 36 years. And yet, sometimes, their amateur manoeuvres take your breath away. I refer, of course, to the Chuckle Brothers, to whom this council played host at the Civic Hall last week with, I am reliably informed, hilarious consequences.

Well perhaps Paul and Barry have something to teach us here.

Surplus u-turn

In the past year, we've had Broxbourne Conservatives bumbling over cash reserves after the Labour group proposed in last year's budget to stop increasing our bank surplus and start putting our taxpayers' money to use.

Barely a month later, the Tories quietly took our advice did a u-turn when they hoped no one was watching, allowing the Service Organisation's £100,000 surplus to be ploughed back, despite voting against our budget amendment, one year ago.

To me, to you. To me to, to you. They're may not chuckle, but they buckle.

Brookfield hits taxpayers

Sadly, not all our advice has been taken.

For example, the Conservatives are still obsessed with pushing ahead expanding Brookfield at the expense of our town centres.

In fact, the budget before us tonight shows the Conservatives' premature site clearance at Brookfield costing the taxpayer over £50,000 as units at Fairways are left vacant and rents unpaid.

Oh dear, oh dear, as the Chuckle Brothers would doubtless observe.

Well it's time to stop the slapstick and start getting serious about tackling the problems which face our borough.

And nothing could be more serious than the safety of our residents.

Reversing community safety cuts

As the budget estimates reveal tonight, community safety spending is set to be cut under the Tories' proposals, which means we will be doing less in the fight to make our borough safer.

Tackling crime, dealing with yobs and supporting the police are the number one issue for people across our borough. It is the Labour group's top priority. And we believe that priority should be reflected in the way we allocate the budget.

That is why tonight, the opposition make a commitment for more police support officers on the frontline to fight crime and disorder on behalf of the well-behaved silent majority who live and work in our borough.

You cannot fight crime if you cut crime fighters' funding. We have record Home Office funding and record police numbers but it's up to our council to play its part.

We propose to allocate £120,000 of extra funding to the police, to provide uniformed staff at peak times in our town centres and wherever they are needed.

Let's be tough on crime, not on crime fighters.

Saving Hoddesdon Open Air Pool

And, speaking of crime, there was a very different sort of offence caused by this council's cuts at the Hoddesdon Open Air Pool.

For more than a year, Labour councillors have been presenting evidence of the inconsistencies in the stories that the ruling group have told.

After all this time, there have been more questions than answers.

The Tories may choose to sack anyone who speaks up for local people, but the Labour group will never be silenced when it comes to standing up for what is right.

We believe it is wrong to spend over £100,000 on demolition at the pool site when that same money could be used to refurbish it.

And as for the £70,000 running cost, which the Conservatives claimed they could not afford? Well turn to page 87 of the budget estimates book before us tonight, and you'll see that the pool is still costing nearly £10,000 while it provides benefit to no one.

Meanwhile, the council has boasted of its "efficiency savings" that have reduced the leisure service organisation's management fee by £70,000.

In fact, page 83 of the budget estimates shows that net funding for Cheshunt Park Golf Course is set to rise by around £400,000 in the year ahead. Yet still, we are told that the Tories have "no money" for the pool as they try to hit plans into the long grass.

It's time to put those efficiency savings to good use.

We propose to set aside the ongoing savings to pay for the ongoing cost of running the pool.

To commemorate this historic event, and what caused it, I'm sure that members of the public would happily contribute towards the costing of putting the names of every Conservative councillor on a plaque.

Reversing frontline environmental health cuts

But it seems the writing's on the wall for our council's frontline staff.

The Conservatives propose to get rid of three environmental health officer posts. My colleagues and I know all too well how vital these frontline staff are when it comes to tackling all sorts of nuisance and noise that can make so many people's lives a misery.

The Tories propose to replace one of these posts with a Corporate Climate Change Officer, which is all very well, but our residents have had enough of hot air when it comes to rats and other pests. We want to tackle nuisance, not be a nuisance, so the Labour group propose to abolish these frontline funding cuts.

A fairer deal on purple sacks

We also remain steadfast in our opposition to the purple sack tax that has extorted money from our citizens with very limited effect on recycling and no regard for people's ability to pay.

With sack sales expected to reach over £95,000 in the year ahead, we think this is being used as a hidden tax on our residents.

This council has given Broxbourne citizens a rough deal on waste collection when we believe they deserve a fair deal.

We propose to provide £27,000 of funding to introduce immediate concessions for pensioners, families and others less able to pay.

More funding for cleaner streets

And not only has rubbish collection turned into extortion, our streets are full of too much rubbish. The budget includes extra funding from outside bodies towards this, but the Conservatives don't propose to make use of that money, with net spending set to be cut by around £10,000.

We are committed to reversing that cut and making our streets cleaner as well as safer.

Tories boost funding for council buildings instead

The cuts and charges imposed on our residents are in stark contrast to how the council treats itself. This building alone, and the old building next door, are set to benefit from a funding rise of £100,000 in the year ahead.

So when it is on its own doorstep, this council somehow finds a way.

Local spending

In fact, we think it's time to decentralise council spending and give control back to the people. We propose to devolve £¼million from centralised funding of frontline spending to local budgets for each ward, with local councillors made directly accountable to the people in their ward for how their money is spent.

By consulting local communities, we have the chance to revive local democracy and restore people's faith in the connection between what they pay and what they get back.

Repaying unlawful councillor allowances to the taxpayer

There is one items on tonight's agenda where the Labour group have already succeeded in getting money back from the Conservatives for the benefit of the local taxpayer.

Over a year ago, the Leader of the Opposition filed a formal complaint about councillors voting to have money spent on themselves in contravention of the law.

The money saved from the abolition of unlawful councillor allowances, backdated to last April, will save the taxpayer £30,000 at a stroke.

We will use this money towards reducing the council tax so that voters know that some councillors are not afraid to make sacrifices for the sake of doing what is right.

Stop charging taxpayers more than you spend

You won't hear it from the Conservatives, but the fact is that this government has increased Broxbourne's funding every single year since 1997. And yet large parts of that funding have simply been hoarded by the ruling group.

We know that funding was cut under the previous government as local and national services suffered. But the local Tories have also created another risk. By building up excessive reserves year after year, we risk having the council's reserves capped if there is a change of government.

Already our total net reserves stand at around £110million, including £50million in cash.

The Service Organisation's trading reserve is budgeted to rise by £140,000 and we do not propose to change that this year.

But other reserves are budgeted to increase even further, by £448,000, to add to the £110million.

Now, tonight, we have a choice.

We can charge taxpayers £½million more than we budget to spend, and stick the remainder in a bank earning derisory rates of interest; perhaps in the UK, perhaps in Iceland; the Tories in Hertfordshire have not been fussy in the past.

That's the bottom line of the Conservatives' proposal tonight.

Or, we can choose make taxpayers' money work for them while taking no more than is needed.

That's the difference between hoarding and investing.

Both parties here tonight claim to support our town centres. Both parties claim to want to deliver value for money.

Now is the time to put money where your mouth is.

Investing in our borough not overseas banks

We propose to use some of the Usable Capital reserve. Radical, I know, to use some of the Usable Reserve! Well, the clue is in the name.

We know from the autumn accounts that there's £40million in the reserve. I can't give you the budget estimates book page reference showing the Usable Capital reserve balance because, oddly enough, it isn't mentioned in the Conservatives' proposals.

Which is a shame, since the cash reserves are forecast to bring in interest of only 1% in the year ahead, according to the Conservatives' own treasury management target on page 50 of the estimates book.

Whereas over on page 26, the commercial property team have targets of an internal rate of return of over 5% and recent yields of even more despite the recession.

So let's not invest in overseas banks while we run down the borough.

Let's invest in our borough.

The Labour group propose to reallocate £10million of low-earning cash, that's just 9% of our reserves, and instead invest it in commercial property in our town centres. By making better use of our reserves, we don't need to borrow a penny.

If councillors honestly believe in our town centres, they will see the benefits of investing in them.

Benefits to residents, because better shops mean better towns.

Benefits to traders, because better buildings means better business.

And benefits to taxpayers, because better returns means better value.

A win-win investment

By the council's own estimates, the interest on £10million is only £100,000. In the long term, this will be massively outweighed by returns of well over 5%, and now is the perfect time to buy.

In the short term, we have been prudent in assuming no return in the first year while the property is improved. So we have quite properly had to budget for the £100,000 of interest foregone and which will be more than repaid to the benefit of all.

It's a win-win change, readily affordable from reserves whilst revitalising our towns.

The question is not whether we can afford to reallocate this money.

The question the Tories have to answer is: can we afford not to?

It all adds up

We have made a lot of commitments tonight, but we have been careful to fund them all.

The secret is that, once again, the Tories are quietly proposing to hoard nearly £½million more in council tax than they propose to spend locally.

The Conservatives have literally offered Broxbourne a something for nothing budget.

Something taken from local taxpayers; nothing provided locally in return.

So let's do the arithmetic.

For the council tax, we add up the revenue changes:

The council tax is forecast to raise £4,165,000 under the Conservatives' budget, so a net saving of £46,000 under our budget would allow us to cut the council tax by 1.1%.

Conclusion

Madam Mayor, I beg to move that the budget be amended accordingly and that the council tax be reduced by 1.1% to £111.99.

The last Conservative government prevented councils from spending their own capital receipts.

Now is not the time to increase further the £51million cash mountain in our £110million of reserves.

It's time to face the future and invest in it. It's nothing more, or less, than what the people who voted for all of us deserve.

- Councillor Richard Greenhill

Report filed 25/03/2010

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