Agenda item - Questions from Councillors - to a member of Executive Board, the Chair of a Committee and the Chair of any other City Council body

Agenda item

Questions from Councillors - to a member of Executive Board, the Chair of a Committee and the Chair of any other City Council body

Minutes:

Councillor Georgina Culley submitted her apologies for the meeting and was unable to ask her question of the Portfolio Holder for Business, Growth and Transport. A written response would be provided in response to this question.

 

Councillor Jim Armstrong asked the following question of the Portfolio Holder for Business, Growth and Transport:

 

The Buses Bill 2016-17, sponsored by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon was recently debated in the House of Lords on the 24th October, with an extensive discussion on Clause 21 of the Bill. Lord Ahmad said, and I quote:

‘Let me at the outset answer a question that was asked of me. I have said this before and I will say it again: there are existing municipal bus companies, such as Reading Buses and Nottingham City Transport that deliver a high standard of service. They can expect to continue to do so. Their ability to do that will not be affected by this clause; nor will it prevent local authorities working in partnership with a bus company. That is an underlying thread of the Bill.’

Does the Portfolio Holder accept that Clause 21 of the Buses Bill 2016-17 will have no impact on Nottingham City Council and Nottingham City Transport’s current arrangements?

Councillor Nick McDonald replied as follows:

 

Thank you Lord Mayor. Yes, I think the word used by Lord Ahmad are fairly clear, however what I would say is that I’m not sure they’re entirely correct. Actually, when one reads the legislation, I think there are activities and commercial decisions which a publically owned bus company might make that could be affected by that Clause. We don’t know, it’s not clear, the government haven’t explained it and a lot of the guidance notes I was reading this morning, do not make it clear either.

 

Secondly, and I’ll leave it to colleagues to tell the Conservative Group why publically owned bus companies have been such a valuable asset for authorities who have had them for a number of years. I think our experience in Nottingham is having a publically owned bus company has been extremely important to the way that we run the city, to the way that we think about transport networks and the way we think about connecting our communities. That is why we don’t think other councils should be prevented from owning their own bus networks. There are a number of other interesting things in the Buses Bill, it’s a complicated piece of legislation and there are all sorts of things that could come from it for the future of councils and their transporting policies.

 

However, at a time when local authorities are being required to be more commercial by the cuts they are receiving year on year, actually, what they’re saying is, ‘not only are we going to require you to be more commercial, we’re going to make it more difficult for you to be more commercial,’ makes no sense whatsoever. Our point is not just in relation to Nottingham or Reading or other authorities who have had publically owned bus companies over the last 20 or 30 years, but actually our point is that this is a model that potentially can work very well for cities, has worked very well for Nottingham and that other cities shouldn’t be stopped from following it if they choose to.

 


 

Councillor Andrew Rule asked the following question of the Portfolio Holder for Community Services:

 

Given the trend over recent years for late leaf fall will the Portfolio Holder consider reviewing collection periods for green waste with a view to starting them later so that they can continue this period in future years when they are most needed?

 

Councillor Nicola Heaton replied as follows:

 

Thank you very much Lord Mayor and can I thank Councillor Rule for his question. It’s great to have such an imaginative question in this Chamber; he must have really stretched himself, recycling former Councillor Steel’s often-asked words. I’m afraid I’m going to have to refer him to the answer I gave to Councillor Steel a number of times because my position on garden waste collections hasn’t changed – except, of course, that the Conservative government has taken even more money out of our Council budget.

 

As I have explained previously, the decision to reduce garden waste collections’ service to a seven month season, April to October inclusive, was taken by Council when setting the 2012 budget. As councillors will know, this Council has seen hundreds of millions of pounds taken out of its budget by a Conservative government and we are being forced to make several service reductions, such as this, to balance our budget. As leaders of this city, we have made choices about what to prioritise and where we are being forced to reduce services we have tried to do it intelligently. In this case, we looked at when garden waste was most presented in deciding what service to offer residents. Historically, 82% of garden waste tonnage was collected in the months April to October and only 18% was collected between November and March. We therefore, made the painful but ultimately sensible decision not to provide this service in those months. Let me be explicit, five months of the year is 42% of a full year’s costs and service and yet citizens were only putting out 18% of the year’s garden waste. In the months we offer, we are collecting about 82% of the years’ garden waste but only 58% of the costs of a full year’s service.

 

I very much appreciate that residents in some parts of the city have concerns about the lengthening gardening season and it’s clear to me that because of climate change our seasons are changing and there’s far more variability in our weather. However, I do not believe that it is practical or affordable to extend or vary the months that we collect garden waste. I really would have to argue that bringing up this issue every autumn does amount to asking for an extension to this service. Councillor Rule does not stand here in the beginning of April asking for the beginning of collections to be delayed to compensate for collections in November. That might be because our records show that every April we collect far more garden waste than we do even in October. So, extending collections until November would likely mean even fewer residents actually using the service than compared to the numbers using it in April.

 

Any extension to the garden waste collection service would cost an additional £70,000 for a single extra month. In light of the massive budget cuts we’re being forced to make I do not think this is something we can afford to prioritise. Let me make it clear that we do provide other options for people, if they bag leaf fall waste it will be collected in their normal waste collection. Alternatively, people can look at home composting or using the household waste recycling centre in Lenton. I would also like to remind Councillor Rule, that in our neighbouring authorities, Rushcliffe, Broxtowe and Gedling people have to pay for their garden waste bin, all year round, and that’s not a choice we would make for people in Nottingham.

 

I think we have the right solutions for Nottingham citizens within the current budget context and in the light of the continuing attack on funding for local authorities by this Conservative government. In the circumstances, I would suggest that this Council is making intelligent and pragmatic decisions about service provision and about how to manage massive Conservative cuts. I do look forward to the Conservative Group asking the same question next year, I must warn them that they will probably receive the same answer. In March next year, we will agree a budget that will see over £25 million taken out of the Council. If Councillor Rule would like a more flexible service, with more months of operation can I suggest that he ask his government to stop implementing draconian cuts that hit cities and areas of greater deprivation hardest to reverse them? Until then, I feel that asking this question again and again, will not meet with a different answer.

 


 

Councillor Linda Woodings asked the following question of the Portfolio Holder for Business, Growth and Transport:

 

How likely is it that promises will be broken in regards to the electrification of the midland main line?

 

Councillor Nick McDonald replied as follows:

 

Thank you Lord Mayor and can I thank Councillor Woodings for her question,

At the Midland Mainline Electrification debate last week, the Rail Minister, Paul Maynard MP told Parliament that the Government will deliver electrification from London to Kettering and Corby by 2019 and that development work is continuing on further electrification of the route to Sheffield and Nottingham. However, he refused to be drawn on any timetable for electrification to Nottingham and Sheffield which following a previous pause which some of you might remember, was programmed for 2023.

 

Electrification of the Midland Mainline has strong cross-party support and it vital to the continued growth and prosperity of Nottingham and the rest of the Midlands. Although it is difficult to speculate on whether promises will be broken, a lack of commitment to the project from Westminster has been disappointing and concerning, particularly for a project that is a long standing idea, has got cross-party support and for which the economic benefits have been analysed in depth and at length and have shown themselves to be self-evident. 

 

The electrification of the Midlands Mainline has many positives; it’s a major driver of local growth, a key asset for the government’s Midlands Engine initiative, it has strong support from businesses, it will reduce the operating costs of the railway as well as reducing maintenance costs. It could improve the journey experience, certainly the journey time for passengers and has significant impact for health. It also deals with what is increasingly creaking infrastructure at a time when investment for infrastructure is important to the economy as well.

 

There is also a strong linkage between Midland Mainline electrification and HS2 in that it unlocks the ability to run classic compatible services into Nottingham City Centre once the HS2 Eastern leg has been built. Despite all the benefits of electrification, we therefore sadly remain unconvinced by the government’s commitment to fund this project, though hopeful that the commitment will ultimately be made. Once again, regions outside of London do find themselves waiting for projects to move forward whilst money always seems to be available in the south east and the next good idea in the South East always seems to attract that money ahead of the queue of cities in the regions. 

 

Of course, we agree that infrastructure investment is important to London too, but not at the expense of the rest of the country. Too much decision making is focussed on the south east and too much decision making is made in Westminster rather than devolving both money and decision making out into the regions where it is most needed. We would therefore, welcome clarity from the government on comments made around the Midlands Mainline electrification debate, it has left a number of questions open, we’re really clear about what the benefits would be here in Nottingham as they’re clear in Sheffield and other places that would benefit from this improvement. It is an extremely important improvement for the growth of cities like Nottingham and we hope that the government will make a stronger and clearer commitment over the coming weeks and months.

 


 

Councillor Michael Edwards asked the following question of the Deputy Leader:

 

I understand that research for the film, ‘I, Daniel Blake’ was conducted in St Ann’s and the film highlights the shortfalls of the welfare system. How fit for purpose does the Portfolio Holder think the welfare system is?

 

Councillor Graham Chapman replied as follows:

 

If you want a brief answer, it isn’t, but allow me to elaborate. ‘I, Daniel Blake’ is about the injustices and cruelty of the benefits system, in particular the system of sanctions implemented under this and the previous coalition government. Rarely do statistics speak for themselves, but in this case they do. The latest statistics for Nottingham on sanctions since the regime was put in place in 2012, for Jobseekers Allowance there have been 34,200 referral sanctions in the city under the new JSA sanctions regime. In only 14,700 cases was there a final decision to apply to sanction, that’s 43%. Of the 14,700 decisions, 5,200 went through the appeals process and of these, 3,200 decisions were overturned. In short, only 1 in 5 of all original decisions to apply sanctions were upheld and only 1 in 16 of referrals were upheld and many of those would not have been legitimate because many people would have been too demoralised to appeal – and we all know people who would not have appealed, even though they had a just case.

 

So, you’re down to 1 in 16, and in my view it’s probably 1 in 20 or 1 in 30. As for Employment Seekers Allowance the numbers are much smaller, nearly 2,000 original referrals since December 2012 and only 400 decisions were taken in impose sanctions, that’s 1 in 5. Of these, 150 were overturned which means that only 1 in 8 people were actually sanctioned.

 

The significance of this is that the whole infrastructure has been developed, taking up the time of thousands of officials, of assessors, adjudicators, food bank volunteers and benefit advisors, to help implement and pick up the pieces of a system that is grossly inadequate and incompetent. Worst still, this has inflicted misery on whole groups of people, some mentally ill who did not deserve it. Further still, it has forced a lot of hard working civil servants against their will to become people who sanction rather than support. This too, was well illustrated by the film. Nor should anyone believe that this exercise has been driven principally by the need to save money because it has probably cost far more than it has saved. It is to do with punishment and indiscriminate punishment at that. It derives from a view that people on benefits are fundamentally ‘scrounging’ – that they are taking money from others. It is a tabloid view of the world which now seems to dominate certain parts.

 

It forgets that large numbers, like Daniel Blake, have paid into the system for many years, large numbers are children, like the children in the film who are caught up in ‘punishment’. It forgets that most benefits go to people already in work but in low paid jobs, but none of that counts when you are looking for scapegoats for a crashed financial system. Actually, it is a class issue – some very well-off people caused the crash, but on the whole it has been lots of not very well-off people who have paid for the consequences. Compared with the brutality applied of the benefits sanctions system, the approach to tax evasion, to syphoning off pension funds has been kid glove and in some cases, some people have even been awarded with honours.

 

Which brings me on to the phrase which encapsulated a lot of this attitude and that phrase is ‘something for nothing’ – how many times have we heard that phrase from the papers and from a certain Mr George Osbourne MP? This phrase means that if you are a wealthy newspaper owner living abroad and paying virtually no taxes or if you are the son of a wealthy family benefitting from inherited, unearned income and a place at a Westminster school, which you certainly didn’t pay for by doing a paper round then you are a respectable member of society, even though you are getting a great deal for not a lot. If you are Wayne, living on the Aspley estate, with no chance of inheritance or any of the privileges it can buy then, somehow, you are a ‘scrounger’ and so are all of the other people on benefits.

 

That is the attitude which has driven the UK state, which I am very proud of, into punishing hundreds of thousands of decent, vulnerable and poor citizens in pursuit of a minority who are defrauding, and to concentrate on these mainly innocent people at the expense of concentrating on where the real money is, such as tax evasion from a number of large corporations and tax evasion from a number of very rich individuals, many of whom are associated with the Conservative Party. This, too, is an implicit lesson of ‘I, Daniel Blake’.

 


 

Councillor Gul Khan asked the following question of the Deputy Leader:

 

There is a national shortfall in funding for adult care. What is the gap in Nottingham, what are the consequences and what are the solutions?

 

Councillor Graham Chapman replied as follows:

 

Thank you Councillor Khan. Since 2011, this city has lost £72 million in spending power through the loss of government grant and for other reasons. That is £583 per family and we are due to lose more next year. Since 2011, spending on Adult Care has gone from £78 million to well over £90 million due to the increase in the number of elderly and disabled people living longer.

 

The shortfall in the city this year is £14.5 million and next year it will probably increase again. This means two things, which other services in the city have to pay the brunt of the increased adult care costs and that the service itself is under increasing strain. We then add to that the added cost of the living wage this year to pay for care staff, both in public and private sectors. Add to that, the decreasing abilities of the NHS and GPs to cope with the elderly and their care and you end up with a crisis, not just in Nottingham but everywhere in England – there is an adult care crisis.

 

You also end up with a gross spectacle of elderly people being kept in expensive hospital care costing them discomfort and wasting millions of pounds worth of public money. So, it is not a funding issue, it is a competent issue. You also end up with those receiving care in their homes not being assessed regularly or receiving the appropriate care or sometimes receiving care which is rushed or inadequate. All of this has been building up and been known about for a number of years and there is not a single member in this Chamber who did not know about it four or five years ago. All of this has been brought to the government’s attention, year after year and has been met with a wall of complacency verging on negligence. Then, only this year did the penny start to drop when the government announced that councils were allowed to increase their council tax by an extra 2% to off-set the pressures. This was neither adequate or appropriate but something most councils had to do for want of an alternative. Why was it inadequate? For two reasons, firstly it was unfair. Secondly, it did not raise the income needed to fix the problem. In low income areas like Nottingham, fewer people can afford to fund their own care, the total cost of care will always be large and by forcing us to increase the council tax in an area of predominantly band A properties is the government shifting the burden to people who cannot afford to pay the cost. The poor have to pay the costs of adult care through the 2% additional levy.

 

Contrast this with somewhere like Richmond-on-Thames where there are a large number of G and H band properties but where the demand is lower, then the levy may have some impact. The result is, in Nottingham this levy raised about £2 million when the need was £14 million and the less well-off band A properties are paying for it on the whole. Do not think that there is not a solution, whilst this crisis was building up, this government was syphoning-off into central budgets many billions of pounds from business rates which has not been reinvested into local government. We are told we can get 100% business rates but they are top-slicing all of the business rates and putting it into a central budget – we are not getting the benefit of redistribution of business rates. This business rates surplus is expected to increase by £2.4 billion next year, we are not talking about the total surplus, which is far more, we are just talking about the increase in the totality of the surplus for next year. At the same time, if we were to use that, we could also abolish the 2% levy which is fundamentally unfair. So, we will be joining our friends in Unison and we will be writing to the Chancellor to suggest this. We will also be briefing our MPs, government has shown complacency and incompetence in this area and they have wasted NHS resources by under-funding adult social care. It is not only us, but their own Conservative MPs who recognise the problem, this is the way in which the government, if it takes this option can redeem itself, and I look forward to a cross-party approach in this Chamber to what is probably the most urgent problem facing the city at this time.

 

I will end by quoting the King’s Fund, the independent health research agency, ‘there is no more burning injustice today than the old and disabled being denied the care they need to live within independence and dignity’. There probably is, it might have been the benefits system, they are competing for being burning injustices. Now, it is the government’s chance to do something about, now is the time for our Conservative colleagues in Nottingham to do something about it and I look forward to their support.

 

 

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