Brighton and Hove’s housing budget is predicted to end the year more than £1 million in the red, resulting in a call for a report into how this happened.
Conservative councillor Anne Meadows wants a detailed report after hearing about the predicted £1.173 million overspend as part of a budget management report to the council’s Policy and Resources Committee earlier this month.
The council’s general finances are currently forecast to end the year more than £11 million over budget. The Housing Revenue Account (HRA) is a separate budget funded from tenants’ rents.
Councillor Meadows asked for a report into HRA spending at the last Housing Committee meeting in November but her request was refused.
Now she said that she has been “proved right” after the overspend was revealed at the Policy and Resources Committee meeting a fortnight later.
The report to the Policy and Resources Committee said that £605,000 of the overspend related to “short-term pressure” from borrowing undertaken earlier than planned.
There is also a £371,000 overspend on “supplies and services”, of which £200,000 is linked to “disrepair claims” and £100,000 from professional and legal fees.
Councillor Meadows, who chaired the Housing Committee from 2015 to 2019 when she was a Labour councillor, said that she had never known an overspend in all her years on the committee.
She said: “This Green/Labour coalition have spent it on youth services. The youth services are spending a lot in the city centre but less in the outlying areas where council estates are.
“How are the children and young people supposed to get into the city centre to access these new buildings and services?”
She said that the council was also subsidising tenants in brand new properties from the rents paid by existing tenants.
She added: “The subsidies for new tenants to ensure they only pay 27.5 per cent rent (compared with the market rate) is increasing incrementally all the time so it may be £1 million this year but could be £2 million next year, £4 million the year after and so on.
“And for paying over the odds for an in-house service … This coalition still has to sort out the in-house call centre, the in-house repairs service, where another 11 sub-contractors have been hired to deal with the backlog of repairs. (There are) still 10,000 repairs outstanding. In the meantime, costs are spiralling out of control.
“Perhaps tenants should know that this coalition is raiding their account for their own pet projects and we don’t know what the consequences for tenants will be in the future.”
Everyone knew that ditching the Mears contract would lead to this. Just as everyone knew that the I360 would never be profitable. But the council never listens.
Unfortunately, on that side of things, you simply could not predict the last couple of years and the impact it was going to have. Contractors have to pay somewhere in the region of 50% more for their materials, and the costs are of course going to reflect that.
As for the i360…well, that was ill-conceived in my opinion.
I got as far as ‘Green/Labour coalition’ (there isn’t one; she is being petulant), that I realised it wasn’t worth reading more of her quote. She has, in this instance, nothing to say.
Al
You are aware the green party require 27 seats to have overall control of the City.
The facts are, they don’t and therefore need CO-OPERATION from the other parties to get any motion passed.
It is obvious to the rest of us that Green/Labour often work together so co-operation then perhaps a more suitable word if that works for you.
BHCC lacks business sense and financial acumen. It wastes money on its own pet projects whilst being incapable of providing basic services that council tax payers expect. It is not fit for purpose and should be in special measures.
Sadly yes there is a green/labour coalition
It’s a bit of a dumb question asking why there are finanical struggles. Inflation, the war in Ukraine, UK’s poor recovery, Covid-19, and Brexit are all contributing factors that couldn’t really be controlled at a council level. What’s more important is looking at the next steps.
The Council uses the Housing Revenue Account, the tenants’ rents, to fund projects for the wider community, which ought to be funded from the Council’s General Fund. In effect, tenants pay twice, through their rents and their Council Tax. It’s regressive at best, and possibly even punitive. Whatever it is, it’s wrong to plunder tenants’ rents and wrong to hit the poor so much harder than the rich. These are the very people you might hope the Greens and Labour would protect, not exploit.