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Councillors back Greenwich budget cuts

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Greenwich Councillors unanimously supported plans to cut spending by £48.6 million last night.

Council leader, Chris Roberts, presented the council budget to colleagues at the full council meeting at Woolwich Town Hall. He told councillors that it was “a robust budget” but issued the stark warning that there was a “ticking Tory timebomb” underneath it.

The proposed budget would protect the frontline, he said, but acknowledged increased charges for parking and allotments would cause concern for residents.

“It is a budget that will come under increasing strain as Tory policies bite hard. When the poor shift out of central London because they can no longer afford their housing costs, they will land in boroughs like Greenwich in need of affordable housing, schools and social care.”, said Cllr Roberts.

The speech by the Council Leader drew applause from his Labour colleagues, including the Deputy Mayor, and was labelled “the finest I’ve heard in this chamber” by Cllr Don Austen.

Over £7.5 million will be cut through “management de-layering” and over £3 million has been found in back office savings. A pay freeze for employees will save almost £1.5 million and £2million has been cut from grants to the voluntary sector.

The council will “endeavour to keep open” all of its Sure Start centres and protect leisure centres. The council has stated there will be no cuts to the library service – although this claim has raised eyebrows in Kidbrooke.

Responding to the Budget on behalf of the Conservative Group, Cllr Spencer Drury praised the “tough decisions taken by the cabinet” and said they “deserve our support in this chamber”. Any disagreements they did have would be “quibbling around the edges” of what was a “substantial package of cuts.”

The council is anticipating that £63 million worth of savings will be required by 2015 as part of their Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) with most of that front-loaded into the next two years.

The meeting was notable for the lack of protests that have been witnessed at other council meetings in London and elsewhere. A small group of trade union demonstrators congregated at the entrance to the town hall but their protest remained out in Wellington Street and there was no sign of it in the chamber itself.

Paul Webbewood: Cuts – mind your own business!

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Although I am a supporter of the Coalition Government, I worry about its approach to local authorities.  While Nick Clegg fiddles around with alternative voting and House of Lords reform, Eric Pickles seems free to burn and slash his way through England’s town halls.

However after being given a chance to occupy the moral high ground Greenwich Council is determined to vacate it.  The Council seems reluctant to take local people into its confidence over proposed cuts in services or to offer any comprehensive strategy.   Its initial approach is to nibble at things which, although not life and death, add to the quality of life in the Borough – Blackheath Fireworks, Maryon Wilson Zoo and now Blackheath Halls – and at  least in the case of the fireworks the timing of the announcement to stop funding was  at best incompetent and at worst malicious.   And we still haven’t officially heard whether Greenwich will implement the one cut that almost everybody wants – the £30k spent on the invitation-only Mayoral inauguration.

Another example of the Greenwich Way occurred on 21st February when the Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee (O&S) commenced a marathon task of hearing representations from voluntary bodies whose grant may be removed or reduced.  Effectively O&S has been asked to quality review the process adopted by the Council’s executive.

Now all credit to the O&S councillors for putting in the hours and there seems to be some merit in the idea.   However this was negated by a unanimous vote by Labour and Conservative members to sit in secret, using a procedural device usually adopted when a committee is considering commercial tenders.   Although there is an element of competition for the available funds, it seems far-fetched to claim that commercial confidentiality is involved when the Council decides how it allocates grants to voluntary organisations.  In the past similar representations have been heard in public.  However this time O&S chairman Councillor Mick Hayes (Labour) – normally a genial and popular figure – seemed rather put out when he was told that the Committee could vote on going into secret session, rather than meekly obey a recommendation to do so.

This seems part of a pattern of obfuscation.   On February 14th the BBC 10 o’clock News ran an item on the cuts with Greenwich as a case study.  There were contributions from voluntary sector supremo Naomi Goldberg, Mark Sesnan of Greenwich Leisure Ltd, a possible Big Society prototype, Union man Onay Kasab, plus Nick Raynsford MP.  No contribution from the Council who had declined to speak to the Beeb.  Don’t ask me why they passed up on the opportunity to address an audience even larger than the local blogosphere or that reached by Greenwich Time’s distribution network.

The Government’s answer to grumbles from Councils about funding is to say:

1) Pay Chief Executives less

2) Save money by working with neighbouring Councils.

In Lewisham Mayor Bullock has launched an all-party constitutional review which we are told will look at top salaries and whether the Borough needs its current number of councillors.  Greenwich’s sole constitutional reform so far is a mean-minded measure to make it harder for planning objectors to access councillors.

Greenwich Leader Chris Roberts has said that he isn’t that keen on joint arrangements across Borough boundaries and prefers closer links with other public sector organisations in Greenwich, although I am not aware of any practical suggestions on what this might mean.  Anyway Lewisham, our most obvious potential partner, perhaps scarred by the Blackheath fireworks debacle, inclines towards an alliance with Southwark and Lambeth.

Not for the first time I am tempted to conclude that, if London is Europe, then Greenwich is Belarus.

Changes agreed to Planning committee system

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More objections will be required for future planning applications before they are referred to council planning committees following a decision taken at last night’s full council meeting.

Currently a planning application that receives two or more objections will be referred to the local Planning Board by council officers, but this threshold is being increased to eight.

The cost saving measure is estimated to cut the number of applications considered by committees from 179 to 75 in a year and result in a saving of £27,000 in 2011/2012.

Council officers say that at least ten London borough have a higher threshold than that which is being introduced in Greenwich, or they leave referral at the discretion of officers and members.

Conservative councillors voted against the plans, with Cllr Alex Wilson suggesting the plans wait til the Government’s Localism Bill has been published – expected to make many changes to local planning rules – and Cllr Geoff Brighty questioning whether applications could be dealt with in a timely manner if the number of meetings were being reduced.

Deputy Leader of the Council, Cllr Peter Brooks, backed the plan and said that the proposals could be reviewed at the council’s AGM in May.

Anger grows at allotment price hike

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Allotments

Green fingered allotment holders from around Greenwich are planning to fight against the council’s plans to increase their fees.

A £21m package of cuts and savings recently unveiled by Greenwich Council includes a steep price hike for gardeners and growers at the borough’s 18 allotments – 2 of which are in SE10.

Allotments are measured in size using a system called “rods”. Prices currently vary between £3.50 and £8.50 per rod but the new costs will be £20 per rod in 2011/12 and £25 per by 2013/14. Allotment holders from outside of the borough will pay double.

One allotment owner told Greenwich.co.uk that the net result of the changes is that his allotment will rise from £67 per year to £200.

A spokesperson for the allotment holders commented “Allotments foster a sense of community among diverse nationalities and income groups. They should not be priced to appeal only to the rich. They help keep older people healthier and happier – thus probably saving money on the Council’s social services budget. The Council is sending out the wrong message”.

Representatives from the allotment holders are planning to be a thorn in the council’s side over the proposals, and will be attending a meeting at the town hall on Thursday night (20th) to raise their concerns.

There’s a long waiting list for allotments and the council no longer accepts applications from non-residents because of the strong demand.

Cost of parking set to rise in 2011

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Greenwich residents face a 150% increase in the cost of car parking permits next year and visitors to the town centre could pay almost twice as much to park.

The large increases in the cost of car parking are part of a package of cost saving and revenue raising measures put together by council officers in response to budget cuts imposed by the Government.

The proposals would see the cost of a yearly resident car parking permit rise from £27.70 to £70 – a rise of over 152%. A further rise would come into effect in 2013 taking the cost to £84 per year.

Business parking permits face a 358% increase, leaping from £24.00 to £110 and then rising again to £132 in 2013.

Town centre parking is set to rise by 92% with the price per hour at Burney Street, Greenwich Park Row and Cutty Sark Gardens car parks going from £1.30 an hour to £2.50, and then rising again to £2.70 per hour by 2013.

The cost of parking in metered pays in road adjacent to Greenwich Park, such as Maze Hill, Park Row and Park Vista, will also rise to £2.50 and then again to £2.90 per hour in 2014.

The cost of parking in the park itself increased this year to bring it into line with local authority charging but a spokesperson for Royal Parks has told Greenwich.co.uk that “Royal Parks currently has no plans to increase parking charges in Greenwich Park.”

New charging areas would be established in East Greenwich and Westcombe, as well as elsewhere in the borough, although council officers say that “detailed consultation will be required” and that a review would take place after six months.

The new charges are expected to come into force on April 1st, 2011. Taken as a whole, the council believes that the changes will bring in almost £2million in additional revenue a year by 2013 which would be used to “contribute additional revenue towards the cost of the parking service and enforcement operations and other transport related activities.”