A senior Brighton and Hove Labour politician has defended the council’s handling of its finances in response to questions from a candidate in the local elections in May.
Independent candidate Laura King said that Brighton and Hove City Council faced a £70 million “budget gap” in the next few financial years.
The number was taken from an auditor’s report – and in the coming financial year alone, the budget gap is forecast to be £31 million.
Deputy council leader Jacob Taylor said that the cost of providing services was going up faster than the income from government grants, council tax and business rates.
In those circumstances, the council has to reduce spending, including by cutting services that are not required by law, or it has to find ways of bringing in more income.
Ms King asked: “We are constantly told this Brighton and Hove City Council is short of money, yet the budget for 2023-24 is £895 million. How is this not enough for the city’s upkeep and goods and services delivery?”
Councillor Taylor said that the council had a gross revenue budget of almost £900 million but it included money that was “ring-fenced” such as the “dedicated schools grant” of £193 million.
Most of the money was earmarked for services that the council is required to provide by law – known as statutory services.
The council operates a general fund to pay for hundreds of statutory and non-statutory services – and Councillor Taylor said that the net general fund was about £250 million.
He said that that was the sum under the council’s control and from which it had to deliver many of its statutory and non-statutory services.
Councillor Taylor said: “What we’re facing next year in Brighton and Hove is what we call a budget gap of £31 million.”
Roughly speaking, he said, the council expected to have to spend about £53 million more on the services that were already being provided – but would receive extra funding of only about £21 million.
He said: “That leaves us with a gap that we’ve got to fill … I guess the thrust of your question is are we wasting money as a council on not doing things efficiently?
“A huge focus of the current budget-setting process will be to try to deliver things better – more efficiently – so that we can reduce costs and keep delivering services.”
The Labour finance chief’s answer, at a council meeting at Hove Town Hall on Thursday (14 December), foreshadowed an opinion column in the latest issue of the Sunday Times by Robert Colville, director of the Centre for Policy Studies think-tank.
Among other factors, he highlighted the rising cost of four important areas of spending – adult social care, housing homeless people, children’s services and school transport.
He wrote: “All four of these are not only very expensive but subject to strict statutory duties.
“If councils don’t provide them, irrespective of their wider financial position, they will be taken to a court or tribunal. And they will lose.”
After Councillor Taylor’s initial answer, Ms King asked whether it was time for the council’s chief finance officer to issue a report known as a “section 114” notice.
This would signal that the council was, in effect, bankrupt – or unable to pay its bills – a position that five councils have found themselves in over the past year alone. Others have said that they are at risk of bankruptcy.
If the chief finance officer issued a report, under section 114 of the Local Government Finance Act 1988, the council would not be able to spend money unless the finance officer permitted it to do so.
But Brighton and Hove City Council was not in this position, Councillor Taylor said, although its financial position was serious.
Ms King also asked whether the current leadership of the council should step down “to make way for a local residents’ shadow council more able to manage the council’s finances”?
Councillor Taylor said that replacing the elected council with some other body – “presumably not elected” – was a novel idea.
He added: “It does highlight why it’s really important that we do manage to budget and that we do set a budget that’s sustainable next year – and it is controlled and managed by the democratically elected representatives of the city so that we can reflect our residents’ priorities in that budget.”
Ms King’s lack of understanding about how council budgets work would demonstrates her lack of qualifications to be a councillor herself had her crackpot conspiracy theories not already done so.
Also this article is rather already dated at time of posting given that yesterday a £4 billion increase in local government funding was announced by the central government following the financial pressures being faced nationally by the majority of councils across the country (financial pressures that Ms King demonstrates her ignorance of). I’d be far more interest to read about how that changes BHCC’s shortfall than I would be to hear about Ms King’s inability to understand the world around her.
“Ms King also asked whether the current leadership of the council should step down “to make way for a local residents’ shadow council more able to manage the council’s finances”?“
Well that’s not going to happen as legally it’s the council and elected councillors who have the statutory duty to manage the councils finances and set the budget.
The only other option is for the Government to send in commissioners which would mean zero control by councillors.
The issue with the budget is the demand placed on it by uncontrollable demand for statutory services (mainly in social care). No matter who is in charge will still have to deal with that.
tax is theft.the council could go on Kickstarter or GoFundMe if they want money.
the pied pipers at the BIS will probably magic-money-tree some Special Drawing Rights for failing local councils ,the same way they magicked money for the scamdemic and ukraine, and then local councils will be beholden to global government and they will own your children
Haven’t heard the rallying cry of the anarcho-capitalists for a while. Welcome.
That’s almost brilliantly bonkers, tell me more!
Nurse !
What ‘crack pot conspiracies’ are you referring to?
I don’t take a massive interest in her life to know how deep down the rabbit hole she is, but has been reported in the past that she believes in anti-lockdown, anti-vaxxer related conspiracies and is a “Corbynista” of the Piers variety, not the Jeremy variety.
Spot On. tbh she comes across as making comments worthy of Argus BTL 🙄
Never understood why every utterance of this deranged person gets an article devoted to it.
Being a former candidate gives you no special privileges or titles.
More accurate headline would be “local resident …”
Mmm it does give you a lot of knowledge though…
My experience with candidates differs on this point, PK.
It certainly does not give you a ‘lot’ of knowledge. Simply standign goves you know extra knowledge.
If she had a ‘lot’ of knowledge she’d know that a ‘shadow council’ taking decsions would be illegal and she’d know about the difefrence between the revenue and capital budgets
Link for ChrisC below
Just because you are unable to imagine a concept beyond your ken doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Do we not have a shadow government in this democracy? Why would a shadow council not be possible along similar lines?
http://www.nalc.gov.uk/our-work/create-a-council
Yes we have a shadow cabinet. But the members of it are all elected MPs
It’s not made up of random members of the public.
And above all it can’t take decisions on behalf of the government which !s what Ams King seems to think such a shadow council in Brighton could do.
And that article is interesting but it’s about creating a properly created neighbourhood / town / parish councils that would still be made up of elected representatives covering small areas with very limited powers.
Given the current financial crisis the council is in, how did they justify spending £13m on a bike scheme?
Yes, Which also took away the revenue from the cars that would’ve normally parked there.
Was that a statutory requirement?
You can fool some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time.
I think Green leader, Steve Davis, was indeed fooled by the board of Beryl Bikes. The problem was there was only on tender after the previous scheme collapsed, so the Greens just had to save face and therefore would pay whatever the asking price (a ridiculous £13.4m) was
No, there was one other group bidding to win the BikeShare contract – the previous provider.
Unfortunately for residents, the Greens only sought to justify their spending to themselves.
Yet another item which Labour Council Leader Sankey was Agenda’d to answer but passed on to her deputy Jacob Taylor.
Are we witnessing a leadership handover in play?
Pretty standard affair to delegate, Barry.
Why put themselves on the agenda to answer questions if they are not going to answer questions? How is this constitutionally acceptable? Unless this explains why they are re-writing the council constitution whenever they feel like it to suit themselves. Personally I think something bigger is brewing.
…because it’s common practice to delegate a question that can be answered by, to someone else. Ain’t a difficult or unusual concept. Has nothing to do with any constitutional practice either, that’s just an odd thing to say.
If you work for BHCC and think this is acceptable behaviour when the Council Leader is present in the chamber, fobbing off their questioner right in front of them, you are part of the problem. Contempt for the public they are supposed to be representing and accountable to is all pervading.
From what you are articulating here, the problem is that you don’t like it. Unfortunately, that’s not a good reason.
I encountered Laura King a number of times online during COVID. The woman is completely off the deep end with conspiracy theories and I find it deeply troubling that she had managed to be elected to local government
Catch up that’s an absolute cheap throwaway line created by the CIA. And if you look up those words you will find that they have been and are being proven daily to be true! If it is fear that’s making you react the way you are,
I understand that! So face your fear and then turn into something positive. We all need to get on……
…speaking of being off the rails…
Well I have met Ms King in real life and find her intelligent, caring and passionate about her city, qualities I struggle to find in many elected councillors. It’s no conspiracy that our money is being recklessly squandered. It is common knowledge and it’s time to do something about it.
Most people are nice people, and being intelligent doesn’t make one competent at a potential role. Being a critic is on the lower scale of difficulty. However, I’m sure she is caring and passionate about her position. Appealing to emotion, unfortunately, is fallacious, however.
Considering how complicated the budgeting for BHCC actually is, anyone who isn’t directly involved in it claiming a positive or negative trend beyond superficial top-level reports is being disingenuous at best, I’m afraid.
Still, I’m glad you like Ms King. It’s the first time I have witnessed you say something positive here!
Well luckily she wasn’t elected!
Slightly important point, that one!
So much more preferable to elect individuals who squander our taxes to the point of bankrupting our city and pander to their party lines and ideologies without question, eh? No wonder our city is in such a mess.
Oh, Barry…you’re replying to the wrong thing, so your sentence comes across as quite disjointed. Unless you did mean to do that…which, honestly, I can’t say for certain with my experience with you. In which case, you’re blaming the current council for problems caused by the previous council, so your sentence still doesn’t make sense!
The person who calls himself “Pedestrianise Seven Dials” (lol) is ignorant and uneducated. Labour or Green? The way the council have squandered our money is shocking.
I’m guessing you’re one of those types who would cry “Beryl Bikes, i360, councillor expenses, valley gardens” etc as a cause of the council’s shortfall? If so then welcome to the ignorant and uneducated club.
There have been instances where council money could have been better spent and I’ll never claim it is a perfect organisation, however none of these significantly increased the expense of the council between 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 to be the cause of going from a £3 million shortfall to a £30 million shortfall (which now needs updated figures given yesterday’s announcement).
The cause of this has primarily been inflation which has increased the council’s expenses while not increasing its main sources of revenue and increasing demand on services, especially from those requiring emergency housing caused by the cost of living and housing crisis. This is clearly the case as this is affecting the majority of local authorities across the country, which is why we saw yesterday’s announcement from Michael Gove. Had that announcement not happened, a third of local authorities had stated that they would likely have to issue a section 114 notice next financial year.
Brighton isn’t even the worst hit by some of these factors. Take Hastings for example, whose expense on temporary housing went from £730,000 in 2019 to £4.5 million this year.
As for my political affiliation, when I vote, I examine the policies and values of the candidates on the ballot and choose which I think best aligns with my values, which has led to me voting for a range of parties in the past. Thank you for your interest about me.
‘I’m guessing you’re one of those types who would cry “Beryl Bikes, i360, councillor expenses, valley gardens” etc as a cause of the council’s shortfall? If so then welcome to the ignorant and uneducated club.’
Yes, I’d certainly say that about the i360 and Beryl Bikes. Not sure what’s so ignorant or uneducated about it, these schemes have cost huge amounts of money that will have to be repaid by the city. Not sure of the exact figures, as they seem to change every 5 minutes, but around £51 million owed on the i360, £2.2 million allocated each year, for 20 years, for repayments. £13.4 million spent on a bike hire scheme that no one is using (go and have a look at them rusting in rows on the seafront and all around the city centre). 780 bikes just handed over to a private company and they still charge too much to rent them out. No one ever seems to be accountable for these decisions, so no surprise that people are not happy about it. Please explain why that is not a problem as far as you are concerned?
Has the expense of these increased massively between 2023/24 and 2024/25 to explain a tenfold increase in the council’s shortfall? On the scale of these figures, these are just small fry issues compared to the more significant pressures on the council’s finances that the typical commentator here ignores because it doesn’t fit with either their anti-council, anti-active travel, anti-Green, anti-Labour or anti-trans mindset that they seek to twist any issue reported here into being about.
This isn’t a discussion forum after all, it’s just a venue for lonely suburbanites who spent too long on social media during the pandemic to vent their frustration that their council tax goes to anything other than refuse collections and fixing potholes.
Hmm, PSD
£13.4 Million spent on bikes, could have easily been spent on providing homes for families that desperately need them, that in turn would generate rent and council tax revenue. Had that thought crossed your mind.
£2.2 million on the i360 before we start, then we have to factor in any increased costs running this project.
The point you don’t get, while the bikes might look great stacked up and un-used, also stacking up is the un-collected Rubbish and recycling that are in fact a legal requirement, so yes, people have every right to question BHCC.
BHCC need to get priorities in order.
People like yourself in my opinion sometimes can’t see the wood for the trees and need to take a step back and look at the whole picture instead of their own blinkered view.
PSD is right, most economists agree that council shortfalls across the country (not limited to Brighton & Hove, very important to note), is caused by fundamentally having to provide more with less.
Just look at the amount of Section 114 notices in the last year compared to the last 20.
These sums may seem like loose change to you but it looks like a lot of money to me. In any case it shows a degree of financial mismanagement. If money is being spent unwisely in one area, no doubt it will be happening in others. We are entitled to question these decisions.
A far as the massive shortfall that we are now being told about, it seems to have come from nowhere. At the time of the elections it was supposed to be around £3 million, then it was £35 million, now it appears to be £70 million +, why? Have our statutory obligations gone up, or the funding gone down by that much in that period. I’m not sure but I doubt it, it looks like yet another financial miscalculation by the council. I’m not thrilled by the idea of a new CEO being hired on a £200,000 starting salary, but perhaps we do need professionals to sort this out. Councillors are certainly not qualified or paid enough to deal with this level of spending.
David, to explain the jump in figures you describe in a very quick abridged version:
The £3 million debt was incorrect, turns out the Greens as a previous council didn’t count it correctly. £35-40 is about what BHCC is currently in terms of shortfall. There’s an older article on here that goes into detail about this.
The £70 million is an example of Laura King not understanding finances and should be ignored, the next few sentences in the article explain why Miss King has gotten it wrong with a pretty good explanation.
From a previous Argus article, 29th September:
‘A report from auditors Grant Thornton said: “The council is now in a position where it must consider a realignment of priorities to coincide with securing financial sustainability.
“This may involve making politically unattractive or undesirable decisions in the interests of the authority’s future viability.”
Grant Thornton warned of a £70 million budget gap between now and the end of March 2027 – the period covered by the council’s medium-term financial strategy.
The firm’s audit report said that the council’s General Fund, which is used to pay for day-to-day spending, was on course to overspend by £14 million in the current financial year. And the budget gap for next year, 2024-25, was forecast to be £25 million.’
Bit unfair to judge the success of a bikeshare scheme during the winter, isn’t it?
The earlier iteration was very popular and I believe it actually turned a profit for the council.
A link to this information please?
Not really, we have winter every year so it affects the overall viability of any bike hire scheme. Even during the latter part of the summer, when the scheme was in full operation and the weather was lovely, the bikes were not getting used.
This was supposed to be good for local commuters. It’s completely unsuitable, for several reasons, and too expensive for that purpose. If you were a regular commuter you could easily buy yourself an e-bike for the monthly cost of this scheme.
It’s also supposed to be good for visitors and tourists. That’s fine, but private companies could have been given licences to operate on the seafront which would have covered that. It would have cost council tax payers nothing and could have been expanded as needed. Instead of which we have a £13.4 million fleet of mostly unwanted bikes, how did they even manage to spend that much money?
Couldn’t have turned a profit, for one the scheme has just started and secondly, it is minus £13.4m.
Laura King is right to ask the question.
Money has been wasted on bike lanes, etc while basic services are not been delivered: the streets are dirty, the roads have potholes, not to mention some major projects like the neglected arches…
That’s because the Parking and Transport dept has its own agenda and sees itself as unaccountable to residents. It is also vastly overpopulated with dogma driven amateurs. Sack them all!
Then you’d have inexperienced dogma-driven amateurs!
Dear Benjamin,
You must have the patience of a saint. How do you keep going challenging all this nonsense?
The council should get rid of all councillors and staff and simply be run by individuals with certain pet peeves. The chief executive should be paid 20p a year but also be sent to prison when something goes wrong. It all makes sense and will be easy….
I genuinely want to understand why people think they way they do. I am always prepared to have a good debate with people and amicable discourse, because I think the worse thing one can do is to become apathic, and even if I disagree with someone, I learn a bit more.
Be a passionate critic, be a passionate supporter – these are catalysts for positive action. With apathy, nothing changes.
It’s thanks to determined individuals, like Laura King, that our shambolic council is held to account. Having worked within a local authority under financial pressure for many years, I’m very aware of the way in which budgets are mishandled, and efforts to generate income often result in squeezing the pockets of residents, whilst senior staff receive handsome sums when they’re ready to toddle off into redundancy.
Thank you Laura, and others like you, for holding to account those who need scrutiny!
Yes, also when the heads of service retire they get a massive payout🤷♀️?
The council spent £2 million on making all school toilets gender-neutral. Safeguarding issue for children.
Then they said they were closing all public toilets across Brighton and Hove in order to save £300,000 pounds.
BHCC are not fit for purpose.
No wonder Bella Snakey was dropped by Labour as a potential candidate for MP.
I suspect it’s more to do with Bella being the leader of the council, rather than anything else, the factual phantasmagoria of your comments being set aside for a moment.
BHCC is an absolute disgrace. Out with the lot of them. Let’s see locals, who are passionate about the area they live, like Laura King, and many like her, take a stand.
It’s not a conspiracy that the council, and others around the country, have been acting fraudulently, and wasting tax payers money on ‘Woke Agendas’ whilst lining their own pockets. You only have to take a look at the recently elected Labour councillors in the last ‘fixed’ election to see how few are actually holding surgeries. Quite happy to grab the money and run back to where they live. Which apparently, isn’t even B&H in some cases.
Oh. Call me a conspiracy theorist as much as you like.
Conspiracy Fact, more like! Wake up!
Does anyone seen the two ladies from Leicester lately? Or Cllr Alison Thomson?
Another three by-elections incoming. What larks.
With a few recent exceptions, councillors are usually locals who are actually passionate about the area they live in. They get paid a pittance for working ridiculous hours and are normally hated by everyone, I wouldn’t want to do it. On the other hand they are in charge of billion pound budgets and have almost no training to deal with them, so they are often not very suitable people and make some dreadful decisions. Top council officers on the other hand are unelected, paid a lot of money, have a huge amount of influence on policy, and walk away when things go wrong. I think it’s time to treat councillors as professionals, pay them accordingly, give them the necessary training to do their jobs, and make sure they are accountable when they are corrupt or incompetent. Possibly we could pay for this with a reduction in pay for some of the most expensive council employees. A new BHCC Chief Exec was announced recently, on a salary of £200,000 (a councillors basic allowance is about £13.500). Cut that and other high salaries down, and we might be able to pay for some decent councillors.
One of the other main problems with local government is the electorate, who sometimes can’t seem to be bothered to inform themselves but complain bitterly about every council. You tend to get what you vote for. We did have council elections this year, so this is the new crew. How many administrations do you want to throw out?
Well said David. I am always grateful to the Wars Councillors in my area who dedicate loads of their time, often many late nights, weekends, early mornings, to do good for Brighton.
The abuse thing is very real, even as an advocate for the area, I’ve received some quite nasty stuff. And really, it is quite hurtful when you’re not even being paid to do any of this. To be subjected to it relentlessly like all the Ward Councillors do, has my unwavering respect.
Why? The same reasons why all the other council are going bankrupt
And now in the Argus it turns out BHCC can’t find even more money than they couldn’t find last week. Someone buy them a calculator, please.
http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/24000401.brighton-council-slams-government-finances-extremely-perilous/
Watched an interview with the Tory leader of Kent County Council the other day. He admitted that they were in deep trouble. So this is not confined to Brighton and Hove by any means. He also admitted that the government of his own party had been ‘no help’ over the last couple of years. Presumably he was thinking about Liz Truss’s shortlived reign in particular, and the effects of that disaster have still to be fully felt.
What really struck me was the percentage of Kent council’s expenditure that goes on social care – 70 percent. It’s going to be about the same here, and this does help to explain why the overall budget figure sounds high.
RE some of the comments above – I’d point out (yet again) that a lot of funds handled by the council are grants for a specific purpose. So if it comes out a central pot for sustainable transport, for instance, it has to be spent on that – it can’t be diverted to keep (eg) public toilets open.
Clive.
I am with you on most of your post.
I would like to point out a few things on your last statement.
Yes you have pointed out that funds are grants for specific purposes, but you fail to understand the full implications of those funds.
You correctly state funds come from a central pot, lets go with say Active travel. So somewhere like £2 billion is available for use. Lets go BHCC, they apply for a grant and awarded funds, say for argument the King Alfred project, so £9.9m is won, as we know the costs has risen to £13m, we the tax payers in the main will need to top that up.
We have had so many projects that have been awarded funds, Western Road, A259, Madeira drive, Old Shoreham road, VG 1/2, current black rock, VG 3 to come and Main A259 (another bike lane) to come too and sure there’s a few I’ve missed.
All these scheme’s have all needed additional funding reducing council pot funds. Far too many projects running at the same time costing a fortune.
My thought, with councils across the country pleading poverty and close to bankruptcy and voicing concerns on shortfalls in budgets, wouldn’t these Government Vanity Schemes be better used to give councils the funds they need ?
Good points. Our council hasn’t so much lost funding from central government over the years as been awarded it in lump sums with an effort from central government to dictate on which ‘projects’ it should be spent. This is wholly unacceptabe interference in local towns and cities – which are all different – on the part of central government and councils should keep all their own revenues including business rates going forwards. Cut the reliance on central government for anything and the cancer of national party politics out and we could have a decent city back. Unfortunately the Localism Act 2011 didn’t go far enough and is now largely forgotten.