The leader of Brighton and Hove City Council set out the Labour administration’s first budget since being returned to power at the local elections last May.
Councillor Warren Morgan spoke after a singing protest from the public gallery interrupted the meeting at the County Ground in Hove.
He said that he would deliver an ambitious agenda and at the same time cut his cloth.
Councillor Morgan said: “It is an honour and a privilege to propose the first budget of this administration, the first Labour budget in nine years, and one that sets a course for this city in the most challenging of financial conditions.
“We face unprecedented reductions in our funding, unprecedented demands on housing and infrastructure, an unprecedented need for new and imaginative answers to the challenges we face, and unprecedented opportunities to build a better Brighton and Hove for the future.
“There is no hiding the scale and extent of the cuts we face this year and in the next three.
“Let there be no doubt that jobs will be lost and services will be hit. We will no longer be able to do what we did in 2010 in 2019.
“However, we do not, as a local authority, stand alone in this crisis. The crisis in local government funding stretches far beyond our boundaries.
“The policies of the current government seem to many incoherent and unfair, let alone sustainable.
“The head of Solace, the organisation of local government chief executives, said of the local government settlement: ‘Many of these measures do not make local services sustainable in the long term.
“‘Without more fundamental change to how local services are paid for and provided, the support individuals and communities receive will be drastically curtailed.’
Black hole
“Conservative peer Lord Porter, chair of the Local Government Association, said last summer: ‘Even if councils stopped filling in potholes, maintaining parks, closed all children’s centres, libraries, museums, leisure centres and turned off every street light they will not have saved enough money to plug the financial black hole they face by 2020.’
“No private business can absorb £25 million in cuts and increased costs year on year, as we are in this council.
“Few businesses of comparable scale can add £25 million to their profits each year, every year. It is not a sustainable or viable situation.
“The government challenging all councils to be financially self-sustaining goes to the heart of who we are and what we do.
“Are we a public service or are we a private business whose primary function is to generate revenue?
“Any private business that charges its customers more can expect demands from them for better services in return.
“We, like other councils, face charging our residents more in council tax, fees and charges, in return for less.
“We will no doubt hear from the Conservative group today about inefficiencies, about trades unions, about managers and about waste.
“We will hear from them about the need to be self-sufficient financially and about how we should achieve that, somehow without increasing council tax, fees and parking charges on local residents.
“We will hear them say that what is happening beyond Brighton and Hove, about what their fellow Conservative councillors are doing with their council tax levels, is none of our concern. But it should be.
“The Conservative-led Local Government Association said in September that Councils have withstood a fall in core central government funding of 40 per cent over the past five years.
“Having already made £20 billion worth of savings since 2010, there is limited scope to keep protecting services through making further efficiency savings.
“If spending reductions follow a similar pattern over the next five years, councils will be facing a £12.4 billion funding gap by the end of the decade.
“Despite finding over £300 million in ‘transitional funding’ for mostly Conservative-run shire counties, not that we are not grateful for our £30,000 share of that, the LGA says: ‘Most councils will continue to have serious funding gaps.’
“Why did Brighton and Hove receive just £30,000 in so-called transitional funding last month, when Surrey County Council got £11 million?
“Yes, they have four times the population as Brighton and Hove, but why get 300 times the funding?
“I’m sure the letters of protest from Tory leaders and threats of rebellion from Tory backbenchers played no part in that decision at all – or indeed the petitioning by Mr Cameron’s mum and aunt.
“Why does the Chancellor not use some of the £20 billion windfall from lower inflation and falling borrowing costs he will announce in his budget next month, for local government?
Pain
“Just a fraction of the unpaid corporation taxes from highly profitable multinationals, with whom the Chancellor has frequent meetings, would go a long way to address the financial crisis councils face.
“Local government of every political stripe is feeling the pain, paying the costs of austerity at a point when the government says austerity measures are coming to an end.
“No let up, no reprieve. And it is residents, till now shielded by the remarkable efficiencies of local government, who will feel the pain most.
“In their parks and streets, in their schools and children’s centres, in their care homes and day centres.
“The Tory government can, as they did last week, find £80,000 for printing laws on vellum but they can’t find money to fund our essential front line services.
“I’d argue, and I’m not alone, that this is local government reorganisation by the back door, slash and burn reform, survival of the fittest, a bonfire of the civic values that have made Britain’s towns and cities great over the last two centuries.
“The 2016 State of Local Government Finance survey, conducted by thinktank the Local Government Information Unit and published last week, found that 89 per cent of the 132 councils surveyed say they will have to increase charging in 2016-17. Nine out of ten councils are increasing car parking charges.
“The number saying they will have to dip into their reserves has risen sharply, from 55 per cent in 2012 to 82 per cent this year. And nearly 40 per cent say cuts in their frontline services will be evident to the public.
“At the very least, as called for by LGA vice-chair Nick Forbes, the planned £700 million of new funding from the Better Care Fund should be brought forward to 2016-17 in order to help alleviate growing social care pressures.
“The full retention of business rates is held out as an answer but it won’t come until 2020, long after our revenue grant has gone, and after a revaluation that could see revenues fall.
“Whether we will actually benefit from an additional £50 million, after appeals, remains to be seen.
“However, it will only go part way to offset the loss of almost £150 million from this councils funding in the decade that precedes it.
“With no freeze grant on offer, nine out of ten of England’s unitary and county councils are increasing their council tax by 3.99 per cent, including the 2 per cent social care precept, as we are proposing, yet three-quarters of them say that the money raised from residents will not be enough to keep pace with increased costs.
“Even our neighbours in Conservative-led West Sussex, who have frozen council tax increases for the past six years, are putting up their bills by the same amount as we are in their 2016 budget.
“So we will take no lectures from the group opposite about the council tax increases we propose today.
“I would have respect for those members opposite seeking to reverse cuts in their communities if they, like their Conservative colleagues elsewhere in this county, acknowledged just once that it is their government that is removing the funding for essential local services.
“We are after all, Madam Mayor, all in this together.
Failed
“We will hear from the Green group about the past, about what could and should have happened and how if only we had, then that would have prevented the cuts we face today.
“They will say that if only we’d had a referendum on bigger tax increases, if only we had fought outsourcing and privatisation alongside them, then none of this would be happening.
“It is empty rhetoric.
“In harking back to the budgets of the past there will, however, be no mention of the failed Green administration budgets of the last two years, where Green councillors voted against Green budgets because they could not cope with even the limited responsibility they took in office for the challenges we face.
“It’s an empty promise of a failed alternative.
“I’m not surprised by Councillor Mac Cafferty’s attacks on the Labour budget. They are little different to the attacks on Green budgets over the past four years.
“He and his colleagues have but one function setting, opposition, and they seem much happier there than in office this time last year. Empty words are easy in guilt-free opposition.
“Where are their answers? Not implementing cuts would mean setting an unlawful budget and handing the running of our city over to government-appointed bureaucrats.
Empty gestures
“Putting up council tax to offset the cuts and cost pressures would mean increases of 20 to 30 per cent on residents’ bills, not something they will back in a referendum and not something I’d impose on the city’s lowest income households.
“But even those empty gestures remain words rather than actions, with neither proffered as an alternative here today.
“Last week half a dozen Green Party members were outside an empty Treasury building, protesting against officials and ministers and a Chancellor who were not there to hear it.
“An empty noise outside an empty building, an empty gesture from a party that failed to deliver on empty promises when in office, one that is empty of ideas in opposition, as we can see from their lack of any amendments today.
“This isn’t fighting the cuts. It’s walking away, hands in the air, leaving others to deal with things they simply can’t or won’t face up to.
“It is a shameful abdication of the job the voters of their wards elected them to do.
“Last May the residents of this city saw through the Green Party’s empty record and their empty manifesto with its empty promises and realised there was nothing there worth supporting.
“With nothing but empty protest the Green Party’s utter and abject failure to propose an alternative today proves those voters right.
“Instead, the people of Brighton and Hove chose substance, chose imagination and chose hope.
“They chose leadership that meets challenges with innovation, that meets inequality with fairness, that meets competition with co-operation.
“These are the values of the Labour administration I lead and these are the values that our four-year budget plan will deliver, giving clarity and certainty to residents and staff in very difficult times.
“My colleagues with through the course of this debate focus on the positive work we are doing in protecting our services wherever we can, building new services where we are able, redesigning services where we can do better for less and joining in new partnerships with the voluntary sector, communities, neighbourhoods and residents, local businesses and not-for-profit trusts, to find new ways of designing services fit for the future and fit for our local need.
“I want to pay tribute to the work of my lead councillors, and the officers of this council, in bringing forward these final budget proposals today.
“We have listened and we have acted. We have worked hard to put funding where it is needed most.
“More money for park rangers and animal welfare. More funding to tackle domestic violence and poor standards in private rented accommodation. More resources to enable change in the Playbus service and in the Brighton Centre. More money for public toilets than planned under the Greens, and funding for community groups at the heart of our neighbourhoods strategy protected.
Tough
“We’ve made investments in modern customer service and online systems, in revenue-generating services within Cityclean, ever better use of our buildings and property, all aimed at bringing in funds to pay for public services.
“We’ve taken tough decisions to get the £9 million overspend we faced when taking over last summer under control.
“We must live within our means, despite the pressures we face.
“We’ve asked for our city, one of the best educated, innovative and creative cities in the UK, to put their minds to new solutions via our City Innovation Challenge.
“We’ve asked some of the best experts we could find to bring together and build on the work being done to tackle poverty and inequality in the city via our Fairness Commission.
“And we have asked some of the best business minds in the city to look at how we can unlock the talent and potential of our young people via our Employment and Skills Task Force.
“We will deliver on our pledge to build 500 new council homes by 2019 – indeed we may exceed it with construction beginning on almost half by May.
“In the next few weeks we will seek approval for our Living Wage Housing joint venture that will deliver over a thousand homes to rent at 60 per cent of market rates.
“With work to tackle an unfair and unaffordable rented market, we will meet the housing crisis in this city head on.
“We will within weeks present a new strategy to tackle rough sleeping and next month will see the start of a new service to crack down on the littering and fly-tipping that blights our streets.
“We said we’d get the basics right and we will.
“We will work with our service users, our vulnerable residents and their families, to design support that meets their needs.
“We’ve acted to ensure better pay for staff in the social care sector though the Unison Ethical Care Charter.
“We will work with health partners to ensure GP provision meets demand and that mental health provision sits alongside on an equal footing.
“We will work to provide school places and the highest standards in education, in the coming months begin consultation on new school catchment areas and to raise aspiration among our young people so that no talent in our city is wasted, no opportunities missed.
“We will continue to support the arts, tourism and creative digital industries so vital to our economy and draw in new businesses like John Lewis so we become ever more resilient, attractive and prosperous on a local, regional and international stage.
Millions
“We will continue to attract and invest hundreds of millions in our city’s infrastructure over the next four years – a new arena at Black Rock, a new shopping centre next to the Grand, a new leisure centre at the King Alfred, new homes, facilities and business space at Circus Street and Preston Barracks, new seafront infrastructure at West Street, investment in our heritage at the Madeira Terraces and Royal Pavilion estate.
“We will cut our own cloth as a council to fit our budget. Almost £2 million in savings from management costs. Tens of thousands less on councillor allowances this year compared to last. An independent review of the number of councillors to be elected in 2019.
“We will win new devolved powers from government and we will devolve power down to local residents in every community, becoming a new co-operative council that works with residents designing and building solutions to their local issues.
“Cuts to our funding mean we may no longer be a provider and a funder but we will be an enabler, a partnership-builder and a leader our city’s diverse neighbourhoods.
“As the leader of this council and the Labour group I am proud to move the general revenue fund, capital resources and housing revenue account budgets for 2016-17.
“As a whole this budget reflects our priorities for this council and for Brighton and Hove, our principles as a Labour and Co-operative administration, our determination to act and not just protest in the face of cuts, our determination to deliver for our residents.
“These are the values, these are the actions, these are the ambitions that underpin our budget and our plan for this council and this city for the year ahead and the years to come.
“This is what having a Labour administration means for this city.
“We are delivering on our contract. We are delivering a council that works for you. We will deliver a better Brighton and Hove.”
