Consultation response: Argyll and Bute Council Planning our Future

Transcription

1 John Finnie MSP Highlands & Islands Region Consultation response: Argyll and Bute Council Planning our Future Section 1 Key aims in transforming the work of the council I agree on the whole with these aims. However: Prosperity is created by working people. Therefore the economic strategy of the Council should prioritise enabling and empowering the people of Argyll and Bute to control their working lives, enhance their skills, and put those skills in socially useful, fulfilling and fairlypaid work - including but not limited to starting their own businesses. Prosperity created by, for and in Argyll and Bute will always be more reliable than itinerant international business "attracted to" the area. While the Council must of course prioritise help that is needed now, its estimation of those priorities does not override its statutory duties. The proposal to cut classroom assistance for children for Additional Support Needs demonstrated what appeared to be a somewhat cavalier attitude to the Council's responsibilities under the Education Act 1980 and the Children Act 1995, so it may be that this statement of aims contains an explicit commitment to maintain all those services to which the people of Argyll and Bute have a legal right. It is essential that the Council protect jobs, but I am not clear that the proposals in this consultation do that. This document is littered with references to staffing cuts, amounting to more than 270 FTE, and raises the possibility of more that are not explicitly enumerated.

2 Section 2(b) savings options Category 1 Transformation Outsourcing leisure and library facilities to an arms-length charitable trust is a false economy, likely to present significant negative consequences for largely illusory financial savings. Much of the saving generated will come in the form of reduced business rates, which only moves public money around the system, and in any case will be undermined by the proposal under Category 4 to end discretionary non-domestic rates relief for charitable bodies. Arms-length management organisations reduce democratic control over public services, and frequently succeed only in increasing bureaucracy. Instead, I would recommend investigating options (possibly making use of the provisions of the new Community Empowerment Act) to expand direct community involvement in, and in some cases ownership of, leisure and library services. The voluntary sector can be an excellent provider of local services, and I would have no prima facie objection to the Tiree Service Point being delivered in this way. However my support for this would be dependent upon a) there being a suitable third sector organisation willing and able to deliver the service, and b) the staff currently employed in the service either being retained by the Council in another role, or transferred to the third sector provider with full TUPE protections. I support the in-housing of catering to reduce Council spending on outside contractors, but I suggest this might be one area in which co-operative working might yield benefits. For example, the NHS in Argyll & Bute has a very significant need for food preparation services and this will only increase with the integration of health and social care - there may be potential for a catering service to be developed in partnership with the NHS. I strongly support efforts to improve the efficiency of the Council's use of water and energy, which of course have an environmental imperative on top of the financial savings, but I believe there is vast potential in this area that is not fully explored by the consultation. The potential to reduce the Council's energy demand by improving the heat efficiency of its buildings through insulation and similar measures is far greater that that acknowledged here, and there is no proposal here to address the supply side by increasing investment in renewable energy installations which would supply energy to Council buildings and/or for sale to the grid. The proposed investment in biomass boilers is very welcome, but many more properties (including local residents) would share in the benefits and the cost to the Council would be defrayed if instead of settling for single-property boilers, the Council took the opportunity to develop district heating schemes with its buildings at their heart. Given the well-documented difficulties that have already afflicted the introduction of the UK Government's Universal Credit, it seems optimistic that the roll-out of this policy will reduce

3 the requirement for benefit advisors - in fact, the opposite seems likely. I would be grateful for the evidence upon which the Council has based this projection, which is, for example, contrary to the assessment made by Highland Council in the update to its Financial Plan, that "it is anticipated that as the cumulative impact of Welfare Reform continues to expand, the complexity of the [Customer Income Maximisation] Team s casework will likely increase." Furthermore, since benefits are paid for by central government rather than the Council, ensuring maximum take-up of benefits is an effective way to bring more money in to the economy of Argyll & Bute while also reducing pressures on the many Council services which work to mitigate the consequences of poverty. For example, the Highland Council Customer Income Maximisation Team mentioned above delivered 3.975m in financial gain to their clients in 2014/15. In this context, cutting benefit and other financial advice would seem to be not only a significant loss to users of those services, but also to the economy of Argyll & Bute and therefore to the finances of the Council. The Council might instead consider an investment in an improved Income Maximisation service with the reasonable expectation that his would increase Council income along with that of its clients. While the emphasis must continue to shift from waste-to-landfill to recycling, cutting general collections without any improvement to alternatives is not an acceptable waste management strategy. Argyll & Bute has the sixth-worst recycling rate in Scotland. There is an urgent need for a fundamental review of waste management in Argyll & Bute, prioritising waste reduction, reuse and recycling, seeking opportunities to create rather than lose jobs, and integrating the contribution of third-sector organisations such as Re-Jig Recycling on Islay and Jura, Kintyre Recycling Ltd in Campbeltown and Fyne Futures on Bute. The integration of health and social care is very welcome in terms of the continuity it will provide for service users, but I am unconvinced that in financial terms the strategy chosen to accomplish integration in Argyll & Bute will generate savings of the size estimated here. I would be grateful for more information on how the Council envisages it will be able to reduce expenditure by so much without affecting the quality of the service. Category 2 Grow council income Many of the charges pertaining to property development and planning remain small when compared to the profits available in these areas. The proposed charges for street numbering and naming are almost negligible. The proposed charges for pre-application advice for major developments and the requirement for Phase 1 Habitat surveys will only apply to projects with very substantial budgets and are, in that context, not large. I believe there is scope to increase the charges in this are without disincentivising development. Private landlords who fail to register or to provide up-to-date information not only deprive the Council of revenue but also undermine the rights and protections to which tenants are

4 entitled. I support the proposals to apply penalties for failing to provide information, and to increase enforcement efforts on landlords who fail to register. Category 3 Reduce and retain Library provision is essential, and the cost of providing it might be defrayed by making library space available for lease to other groups, for example as Macmillan nurses provide services from space in Campbeltown library. I am alarmed by the proposal to make such significant cuts right across the education service. The proposal to halve provision of classroom assistance for children with Additional Support Needs was especially shocking, and I am very pleased that this has now been rejected by councillors. However, some have voiced suspicion that that proposal was floated here in the knowledge that it would attract protest and media coverage and could be withdrawn, leaving the many other proposals for unacceptable cuts to education unquestioned. I am confident that that will not happen, and that these proposals will draw the scrutiny and organised opposition they so clearly merit. I have written to the Chief Executive to put a number of questions on ASN assistance and other issues pertaining to these cuts, and I await that information. This consultation as a whole is made considerably more difficult by the absence of any real assessment of the expected impact of the cuts proposed, but nowhere is this absence felt more keenly than in education. This section proposes the same 20% cut to a vast array of budgets, such that it cannot be believed that these figures were arrived at through detailed assessments of need, with each assessment coincidentally producing the same number. Later in the consultation, under Category 4, it is proposed to end two Early Years funds - given what we know about the importance of early years, these 'savings' would inevitably generate far greater costs in the education service and beyond as the affected children grow up, but there appears to have been no attempt to quantify these costs. Proposals such as cutting by one-fifth the funding for support for victims of domestic violence must clearly have the potential to cause very real suffering to people in grave need, but that risk is simply not addressed here. I will return to this recommendation in my final remarks, since it applies to the whole consultation, but it is this section that most clearly shows the absolute necessity for a comprehensive impact assessment to inform these budget decisions. Closing public conveniences has a very deleterious effect on quality of life and on personal independence, particularly for elderly and disabled people, and for people with caring responsibilities. They are not a luxury. Conveniences may be offered to the community to

5 own and operate, as has successfully happened elsewhere, but if the community is not able to take them on the Council must make adequate provision. There may be some cases in which a facility can be closed without significant inconvenience by making other toilet facilities, such as in Council buildings or - through partnership working - police stations, accessible to the public. Given the present and expected impacts of climate change upon our weather, reducing coastal and flood defence budgets is unwise. We can expect more frequent and powerful storms, particularly those of Caribbean origin, as a result of climate change, and this will result in higher seas and more extreme rainfall events. The costs of remedial action to repair the damage caused by these events greatly outweigh the cost of precautionary action. As mentioned under Category 1, Argyll & Bute is in need of a fundamental review of waste strategy, and there are some excellent examples of the opportunity for partnership working in this area, such as Re-Jig Recycling, Kintyre Recycling and Fyne Futures. I suggest that the Council could profit from undertaking an assessment of the work of these projects and the potential they present for further cost savings and service improvements through collaboration. Category 4 Stop to save The dearth of public transport in rural areas is very often addressed by community transport services, and removing support for these is likely to have a very serious impact on welfare, personal independence and social inclusion, particularly of mobility impaired people, in rural communities. Democratic participation in spatial planning, as in many areas of government, is inadequate across Scotland; the fact that the total removal of the budget for Local Development Plan consultations would save only 5000 is a clear illustration of that. The Scottish Government Charrette Mainstreaming Programme presents the opportunity to democratise planning using 'charrettes' - multi-day collaborative events engaging local people, Council planners and other stakeholders in collaborative community design. The Charrette Mainstreaming Programme administers a grant fund offering up to 20,000 per project, to which local authorities are among those invited to apply. In my comments under Category 3, I have made clear my shock at the proposals for acrossthe-board cuts to education services, and the urgent need to understand the impacts of these, which will be significant.

6 Section 3: Transforming for the future Would you support the council sharing the delivery of services with other organisations as a way to make savings? Yes I support the Christie Commission principles, which encourage the pursuit of partnerships which are able to maintain services and protect jobs. I have mentioned four such opportunities in my evidence above: the possibility of working with the NHS in the inhousing of catering, the integration of third-sector organisations into an improved waste management strategy, working with organisations such as the police to make existing toilet facilities available to the public, and advancing planning democracy through the use of charrettes which can be co-delivered with third sector organisations and community groups. Council Tax It is clear that local government is in need of increased funding, and I strongly support local authorities gaining more control over their own funding. I look forward to the progress arising from the Commission on Local Tax Reform, on which the Scottish Greens were represented by land rights expert Andy Wightman. I hope that the government will give real consideration to a Land Value Tax, as proposed by the Scottish Greens and described in the Commission s final report as promising. LVT encourages economic development and penalising speculative land-banking; it allows the Council to invest more in improvements such as better transport links, by guaranteeing increased revenue when land values rise as a result; it ends the perverse incentives under Council Tax and Rates which penalise people for improving their buildings; it addresses inequality in wealth which is far greater than inequality in oncome and, unlike income tax, it is impossible to avoid or evade through accountancy tricks. What would you recommend for making savings or generating income for the council? Beyond the recommendations that I have made elsewhere, I propose a Tourist Bed Tax to generate income. Argyll and Bute is an exceptionally beautiful part of Scotland which attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors, staying for a total of millions of nights per year. Even a tiny charge - for example, 1 per person per night - would deliver a very significant new revenue stream for the Council without creating any disincentive to tourism.

7 Do you have any other comments you would like to make? While I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to this consultation, it is (as I mentioned under Category 2) extremely difficult to make a comprehensive response without even a cursory estimate of the risks and impacts of the cuts proposed here. To propose such large budget reductions across so many absolutely essential services without having undertaken a proper impact assessment seems both irresponsible and uncaring. There seems to be little strategic thought about how the affected services could and should be provided in the coming years. Instead there is what appears to be a rather arbitrary salami-slicing of budgets, with the effect of that left unexamined. This deficit in forward thinking and impact assessment is borne out by the Best Value audit of the Council, published on 17 December. Audit Scotland warn that, in this consultation, options for longer-term savings are heavily based on low-level cuts to individual service budgets and involve reducing or stopping services, rather than doing things differently. Links to Planning our Future are not clear, nor is the impact that the proposals will have on strategic priorities. I urge the Council not to pursue any of the proposals above without undertaking, and sharing with the people of Argyll & Bute, a truly comprehensive assessment of the personal, social, economic and environmental impacts we can expect as a result.