Vicki Elcoate, 05 February 2019, Tags:
Paper by Green Councillor Jonathan Essex
Our Challenge to Surrey County Council – don’t just secure more funding for day-to-day funding from central government but invest differently – in a better and more sustainable future for Surrey.
At the 2018 budget setting meeting, the Chief Financial Officer of Surrey County Council noted that the current revenue budget was ‘not sustainable’ in financial terms. Unlike last year, this year’s budget does not include either unmet ‘savings’ (cuts) carried forward, has reduced the scale of demand pressures[1] in adult and children care, and does not include any plans to draw from reserves to fund the budget, as was the case in 2018/19. However, we argue they are not sustainable more broadly – more support needed from central government[2] to be socially sustainable and more finance invested in different things to make Surrey more environmentally sustainable.
Research in March 2018 by the National Audit Office report on the financing sustainability of local councils is still worsening. From 2010/11 to 2016/17 this showed an overall reduction of central government funding of upper tier (county, unitary) councils by around 45%, resulting in a reduction in revenue spending power by around 25%. In Surrey the government funding cut resulted in (still significant but less than average) 14.6% reduction in revenue spending power over this six-year period.
Source: Visualisation of Financial Sustainability of Local Authorities. NAO, March 2018.
This highlights that while Surrey needs a better funding settlement this should be part of a better overall funding settlement for all Local Authorities, as part of this year’s Comprehensive Spending Review, committing substantially more funding for the front-line services and local investments that local councils provide.
The budget includes significant savings (cuts), highest in ‘other services’, although the Adult and Children's Services cuts are greater including ‘demand pressures’ (which are not calculated for non-statutory services). This is shown in Table 1.
Table 1: Breakdown of Surrey County Council Directorate budgets over the last five years
|
Gross Budget (excluding Direct Schools Grant) |
2014/15 |
2015/16 |
2016/17 |
2017/18 |
2018/19 |
2019/20 |
|
|
|
£m |
£m |
£m |
£m |
£m |
£m |
5-year change |
|
Adult Social Care |
33.4% |
34.3% |
34.0% |
34.7% |
36.0% |
35.1% |
1.7% |
|
Children, Schools and Families |
32.0% |
32.2% |
33.7% |
34.3% |
34.8% |
37.6% |
5.7% |
|
Environment and Infrastructure |
11.9% |
11.2% |
10.7% |
10.7% |
10.9% |
11.0% |
-0.9% |
|
Fire |
2.9% |
3.0% |
2.8% |
2.5% |
2.5% |
2.4% |
-0.5% |
|
Other services |
19.8% |
19.3% |
18.8% |
17.7% |
15.8% |
13.8% |
-5.9% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Total (excluding schools grant) |
100.0% |
101% |
104% |
107% |
112% |
112% |
11.8% |
|
|
annual increase |
1.4% |
2.8% |
3.2% |
4.5% |
0.0% |
|
This has significant cuts to front-line services in it due to political choices made in response to cuts in the money provided by central government, which has also sat alongside council tax revenue. These cuts are not as severe in Surrey as central government funding accounts for a much lower percentage of the budget (than in areas with higher deprivation, for example). However, this year it includes significant cuts to front line services including to public health, an unallocated saving in the overall Highway and Environmental Services budget, and services consulted on up until January this year: to close Children Centres, Community Recycling Centres, reduce library and cultural service provision, change Special Educational Needs and Disabilities funding and reduce concession fares for those with disabilities to travel on Surrey’s buses.
Since consulting the public this has been produced as a cabinet paper, scrutinised by the Council’s Corporate Overview Select Committee (COSC). Last week the cabinet decided to put the closure of Community Recycling Centres on hold for 6 months (although stopping them receiving black bag waste) whilst the other consultations remain relatively unchanged. However, the detailed responses have not been analysed and scrutinised by the council’s relevant Select Committees. The public consultation responses on these significant front-line service changes in this budget were huge (children centre’s 3,814, community recycling centres 12,132, concessionary bus travel 3,082, libraries and culture 7,901 and SEND 1,133).
The Cabinet decided to hold back from approving the closure of Community Recycling Centres, and instead required a cross-party Task Group to be set up for 6 months to explore alternatives to closure. What if the same cross-party working was agreed to explore alternative ways of working to respond to the need to operate within budget constraints in these other areas?
We will need more money to be specifically invested in a sustainable future – continued austerity is a deliberate decline of public services. This requires a needs-based and long-term budget. Rather than proposing more short-term, untenable cuts, we would seek to address the continued decline in services by adopting a joined-up view that looks at investment in delivering sustainable savings, measurable outcomes and public-sector transformation together. Such an alternative joined-up approach to binary cuts would:
Two budget amendments were proposed. The first to provide new SEND school places and bring care back in house was supported. The second, to shift investment strategy to invest beyond property in energy efficiency, renewables and sustainable resource improvements in Surrey was not.
