Council spending and the cuts

The Leader of Camden Council Cllr Nasim Ali wrote to all councillors last week on how the council is working to tackle the huge budget challenges it - we - now face.

I thought it would be useful to publish the letter in full below. As you can see there will be dialogue with the community and community groups from November onwards. As opposition councillors, we will no doubt have some differences with what the new council administration is planning, but there can be little doubt that if there was still a Con/LD administration here. I really hope that the public consultation does produce some new thinking about where reductions really should or can be made, but what is certain is that the Council will have to produce a legal, balanced budget in March next year. Cllr Ali's letter follows below:


Council spending and the cuts: working together to meet the financial challenges ahead
As you are aware the council, like all parts of the public sector, is faced with meeting huge financial challenge. Over the next few years local authority funding is going to be reduced significantly and as an elected councillor I recognise that your local residents will want to talk to you about what’s happening in Camden.
The scale of what is to come locally has already been demonstrated by the announcement by government to significantly scale down the Building Schools for the Future programme. This has resulted in the loss of £167m of vital infrastructure works and we anticipate further significant fallout in government grant funding across the board.
To assist you in responding to tough questions, but also in representing the council when meeting the local community, I would like to keep you informed about the challenges we face. You can share this information with the community, tailored as you see appropriate.
While the implications for the council will not become clear until after the government’s comprehensive spending review is published in October 2010, we estimate that cuts in government spending will leave Camden with a budget gap of between £80 and £100 million over the next three years. In addition, we face a severe capital funding gap approaching £400 million over the next five years, forcing us to look much more radically at the assets the council owns.
We are working on a plan to protect Camden residents through this period, retaining its uniqueness as a place where people from all walks of life can live, work and visit. We want to support those in greatest need by developing core entitlements in housing, education, care and employment. We will deliver savings in a planned way over three years, 2011-14. Preparatory work started last autumn and to date Camden has identified town hall efficiencies of £30million.
This has been achieved by looking to automate more of the council’s administrative processes online, improving the way the council buys goods and services and reorganising management structures. You will also know that I have agreed with the Leader of Islington Council to explore the possibility of sharing a chief executive and a management team with the view of developing shared services to reduce costs for both boroughs.
But being more efficient will not plug the budget gap alone. In the coming months we will be setting out our proposals for service changes, and talking and listening to residents and community groups about how best to face the grim financial challenges together. We will need to rethink the services we deliver and this will mean changing the services we currently offer, listening to the concerns of residents, and asking whether services could be delivered differently, cheaper or regretfully sometimes even not at all.
We will be engaging with residents in three phases. First by raising awareness of the situation, which we started through a successful local strategic partnership seminar, and we have recently followed this up by putting clear council financial information on our website. The second phase, due to start in November, will be a dialogue with residents and other community groups about the way forward. Phase three will start in February 2011 and will build on the results of this dialogue with the community.
As a councillor you can play a key role in helping to support the council by both gathering and sharing information and getting important messages on the big financial challenges out to the wider community. The community needs to understand that we can’t change the financial situation and, like all parts of the public sector, we will have to radically change the way we do things. You will be aware we are setting up area action groups as a new way to help you engage with local residents and I am sure you will want to discuss the current financial challenges facing the council at these.
You may find it useful to familiarise yourself with the new pages on the website, so that you can refer people there when they want to find out more information about the council’s finances.
I will continue to keep you regularly informed about developments and support you to engage the community in this conversation, particularly after the comprehensive spending review.