Agenda item

Councillor Dave Liversidge asked the following question of the Deputy Leader:

 

Would the Deputy Leader advise Council whether Nottingham has been offered the same deal as the one offered to Surrey County Council?

 

Councillor Graham Chapman responded as follows:

 

Thank you Lord Mayor. Nottingham City Council has not been offered the same deal as Surrey County Council. I have written to the Department of Communities and Local Government about receiving the same deal and I have had an acknowledgement but no substantive reply. Actually, we do not know what the precise deal is. In an article in the Municipal Journal last week it was stated that Whitehall had refused to disclose details of the discussion, not just with Surrey, but with other potential pilot areas.

 

Although the DCLG has insisted that all councils will be free to participate in these public pilots, those in the frame do not know what they are applying for. Except, of course, if you are a Conservative council threatening a 15% council tax rise and referendum and are called Surrey. And, of course, if you happen to have the Chancellor in your area as an MP. If you meet these objective criteria, not only will you know what you are applying for, you can do deals on the internet, with people called ‘Nick’ in the Cabinet Office who for some reason, are empowered to cut through the normal rules of fairness and good governance and offer sweeteners, because that is precisely, what is happening. Unfortunately, the Leader of Surrey got his ‘Nicks’ in a twist and by mistake he tried to deal with the Leader of the LGA Labour Group who is also called Nick, as opposed to the Nick in the Cabinet Office. If he hadn’t, we would never have known about this deal.

 

Even though we know there was skulduggery, only Surrey and Nick in the Cabinet Office seem to know what the nature of it is. Legitimate pilots have been agreed to take place from 2017 but they are designed to be 100% cost neutral at the point of delivery. So, the question begs to be asked what precisely was in it for Surrey for them to do a U-turn on the referendum and what precisely were they offered by the Cabinet Office during phone calls and internet messages that were going back and forth between Surrey and the Cabinet Office.

 

I suspect the following, that Surrey will be able to retain 100% of their business rates without the strings other authorities will be asked for, without the expectation of a mayoral system and possibly not top sliced by the government. That is what I suspect, I may be wrong. I also believe that it will apply not from this year but from next and that it will not be announced with a fanfare but hidden in some obscure document which is slipped out into the public domain under the cover of a much bigger event, perhaps even as a coder for the Chancellor’s announcement next month. I have two further thoughts, firstly, Surrey, not only has it got this sweetheart deal, it was the foremost recipient of two years running of transitional grant, which was dished out to mainly Conservative authorities – Surrey received an additional £24 million. Transitional grant was dished out 80% to certain types of authorities, and they were mainly down south. People will note that the vast bulk of transitional grant has been distributed to the south of England. People will also note that there are little patches across the country where people did not get a penny and they are the cities and the urban areas. Mostly, the transitional grant went to counties, inner London got nothing, outer London received a lot. Birmingham got very little and a band across England (from Hull to Liverpool) got very little indeed, as did the north east. The political distribution of that grant is even more interesting, virtually all of the Conservative authorities received additional funding. In north east, Liverpool to Hull, across through south Yorkshire in the urban areas, received nothing.

 

So, you have a combination, of shifting money down south, to places like Surrey, which is already well-off, from urban areas in the north which are Labour. It is from Labour to Conservative, from poor to rich and from the north/midlands to the south. That is what has happened with that transitional grant and the biggest recipient is the impoverished county of surrey. The second point I would make is the real litmus test of how legitimate this move was and just imagine that it was a Labour authority which had threatened a 15% council tax rise and a referendum. Would the Cabinet Office have come riding to the rescue? You can bet that it wouldn’t. It would have ringing its hands with delight telling everybody just how mismanaged that authority was. It would have called its friends in the Telegraph and the Daily Mail and they would have been crawling over that council to find places where they had misspent money. That is what would have happened.

 

As it was, it was a Conservative authority, which held a gun to the Cabinet Office’s head and they blinked and dished out money in the form of the transitional grant and in this sweetheart deal.

 

The whole of local government grant system, that when I was brought up, was fair, objective, administered by mutual civil service, is being corrupted, at the expense of areas like Nottingham. We have got nothing out of this, yet Conservatives like Surrey, have had three bungs out of this, they’ve had fewer cuts than we’ve had overall, it has got £24 million of transitional grant and on top of that it has got the deal with the Cabinet Office which we cannot get information about. Meanwhile, Leicester, Derby and Nottingham, the big cities, did not get a penny. It is corrupt as far as I am concerned. The problem is for us is that the one area we can look to for help is our own opposition and quite honestly, since this has been happening, we have had no support from them. They have supported their government in what I think is a national scandal.

 

Councillor Liaqat Ali asked the following question of the Portfolio Holder for Education, Employment and Skills:

 

Can the Portfolio Holder comment on the fact that under new Government proposals Nottingham schools are set to lose £578 per pupil and how this will affect education levels?

 

Councillor Sam Webster responded as follows:

 

Thank you Lord Mayor and can I thank Councillor Ali for his question. As a school governor is Radford, I know he is as concerned as I am about the government’s proposed funding cuts to schools in Nottingham. On 14 December 2016, the Secretary of State for Education, Justine Greening MP, proposed a new national funding formula for schools. The Conservative government’s new method of funding directly targets schools in Nottingham for, potentially, the biggest real term budget reduction they’ve ever faced.

 

While our schools in Nottingham are set to lose tens of millions of pounds in keeping with the current Conservative them, schools in some of the wealthiest places in England are set for big gains. In targeting Nottingham, the Conservatives have demonstrated yet again, that they do not act in the interests of our children, our schools or our city. This latest move quite simply takes money from children in Nottingham only to hand it to wealthy, rural and mainly Conservative voting shires, such as Cambridgeshire and Buckinghamshire, very similar to the way the transition  grant has been distributed, as Councillor Chapman set out earlier. Other large cities, urban areas and areas with the highest levels of child poverty, such as Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool are also being targeted in exactly the same way.

 

Nottingham schools are set to lose £22 million by 2020. Our children are set to lose an average of £578 each by 2020. Ninety eight per cent of local schools would lose out, Council maintained community schools, academies and free schools are all set to face harmful funding reductions. Councillor Ali rightly asks what impact these cuts will have and in all honesty, I feel the scale of these reductions will damage local schools and would ultimately reduce the effectiveness of our schools to provide a good standard of education. Eighty per cent of children in Nottingham currently attend a school rated as either good or outstanding by Ofsted and Nottingham City has the highest proportion of outstanding schools in the region.

 

However, this Council’s ambition is that every child should attend a school rated as good or better by Ofsted. To achieve that ambition, as a city, given the challenges that local schools and academies face, it is, I believe, essential, that adequate funding is forthcoming. Alas, the government, so far, has not listened to any voices calling for action on education or equality and it is important that we all understand that Conservative education policies have widened education inequality in this country. One of the shocking features of our education system nationally, is that the gap between poor pupils and their better off peers’ increases during their time at school, rather than reduces. In the current education system, the progress poor pupils make is all but wiped out during secondary. The consequence that successive generations of poorer children are being let down by a school system that is supposed to be there to help them move up and get on. They are not my words Lord Mayor, those words of from the government’s own commission on social mobility which only last month highlighted this widening gap in education outcomes and encouraged more funding for schools in areas of deprivation, not less, which is what the government is currently offering, more funding, not less. The recently retired, Chief Inspector of Schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, in his final contribution warned the government that they must do more to tackle the growing gap in education outcomes for children in wealthy areas and lower outcomes for children in poorer parts of the midlands and the north of England.

 

This latest announced shows that yet again, the government is ignoring the problem of educational inequality, rather than recognising and working to deal with the challenge, the government proposals, in my view, will make matters worse. This programme is being driven with overall funding cuts in mind nationally and the National Audit Office has warned that schools face an 8% real terms cut in funding, per pupil by 2020. The scale of the cuts mean that schools in England will have to reduce spending by £3 billion between now and 2020, incidentally, the first drop in funding since the mid-90s, when the Conservatives were last in majority government. In fact, I’m so concerned about the potential impact of these cuts, that I’ve asked schools to work with the Council to inform all parents and carers of the proposed changes and I have asked for a consultation process to take place to get opinions and views of Nottingham people. I can inform Council now that the response to date has been overwhelming. The number of responses received, even if the first few days of the consultation have broken all records. We on this side of the chamber will continue to raise awareness of this disgraceful, short-sighted and totally unnecessary attack on our schools. Reducing school investment in England’s big cities will not help to increase skill levels and therefore, productivity will not get the boost it urgently needs. I say unnecessary, because there are choices here for the government, rather than cutting £674 per pupil at Edale Rise Primary School, they could stop wasting money on half empty free schools where they are not needed. Rather than cutting £843 per pupil at Nottingham Girls Academy, they could stop wasting money on new grammar schools that no one voted for. Rather than cutting £742 per pupil at Bulwell Academy, the government could reverse the £7 billion corporate tax giveaway. That is why parents and teachers are so outraged by the proposed cuts, because there are choices, but sadly the government is making the wrong choice.

 

I know that many of my Labour Group colleagues, just like Councillor Ali, volunteer as school governors and are well aware of the existing strain on school budgets, even before these cuts come into effect. That’s why this week, we’ll be out across the city, talking to parents at school gates and inviting their opinions, making sure that they know just how much money is being taken away from their children. The people of Nottingham see this for exactly what this is, another Conservative attack on our city. That is why they have been sending us their views in opposition to this proposal and thousands have responded in the first few days alone. There is no way to dress it up I’m afraid – the Conservative government wants to take money away from children in Nottingham with one hand and give it to schools to some of the wealthiest parts in the country with the other. These are choices, time and time again the Conservatives make the wrong choices for Nottingham.

 

So, our point of difference here, between Nottingham Labour Group and Nottingham Conservatives, we oppose the cuts to our schools, they Lord Mayor, support the cuts.

 

Councillor Gul Khan asked the following question of the Portfolio Holder for Adults and Health:

 

Does the portfolio Holder for Adults and Health agree that the government has failed to adequately fund adult social care, leading to a crisis in the system?

 

Councillor Alex Norris responded as follows:

 

Thank you Lord Mayor and I thank Councillor Khan for his question, I know that this is a question that we both feel very strongly about. I have said before in this Chamber that in the UK we have a care crisis. It has been characterised in the past as an accident and emergency crisis, but that is no longer true, it has also been characterised as a winter crisis and similarly, that is not true as it is very much all year round. It is a national crisis and a crisis made in Downing Street. According to Age UK, in a ten year comparison, government funding for social care is now 20% less in real terms than it was a decade ago. In that time we have seen a number of people aged over 85 increase by a third, with more people to look after and less money to look after them with.

 

We have actually seen the raw number of people receiving services from their councils over the last six years has actually gone down, despite a much bigger population. It means less care, it means later care, it means care in institutional settings like hospitals and it means costly care. This is bad for individuals and it is bad for their independence, bad for their choice and dignity and it is bad for all of us too as it leads to a system that is so overburdened that we are struggling to make the finances work.

 

We in Nottingham are not immune to this at all and we will speak a little later about the decisions we are having to make to meet this growing problem. I was listing on my way over to the meeting the very worst decisions taken by our government, such as imposing the bedroom tax at the same time of cutting the top rate of tax, failure to meet the ‘Dubs’ amendment, real signs of ineptitude and inability to lead. With regards to social care we have the shining example of dereliction of duty. In November last year, in the Chancellors’ autumn statement, a chance to really show a vision for public finances and crucially, a vision for public services for our community in Britain. How much did they talk about social care, what proportion of that important session was dedicated to social care? Nothing, not one word. It had been all across the media with commentary on the implications for social care, yet not one word was mentioned which was absolutely astonishing.

 

In the days after when people questioned the silence over social care the government sought a quick dash to action and scrabbled together their social care precept that they are imposing via local rate payers. In terms of where we go next, the government has another chance to get it right in the budget on Wednesday and a chance to lay out a vision for public services and public finances.

 

Councillor Linda Woodings asked the following question of the Portfolio Holder for Community Services:

 

Can the Portfolio Holder comment on the HMIC report which states that Nottinghamshire Police requires improvement? What measures can the new Chief Constable put in place to support community policing?

 

Councillor Nicola Heaton responded as follows:

 

Thank you Lord Mayor and I’d like to thank Councillor Woodings for her question. Over the last decade Nottingham’s Community Safety Partnership has taken great strides to make Nottingham a safer place for people to live and for businesses to invest. Since 2006, Nottingham’s Community Safety Partnership and Nottinghamshire Police have reduced overall levels of crime by around 60% largely as a result of partnership working.

 

This has been achieved with many successful local initiatives such as the Aurora Project. The Aurora Project involved the creation of a single, integrated enforcement service with Police Officers working alongside 100 Community Protection Officers within a neighbourhood policing structure across Nottingham. This successful programme was recognised by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in several national reports.

 

Furthermore, the establishment of the Nottingham Integrated Drug and Alcohol Treatment Service – or the newly named Nottingham Recovery Network - introduced in July 2016 is now demonstrating clear benefits for all partners with increasing numbers of service users successfully completing treatment. Nottingham has the second highest successful treatment rate out of all core cities in England and Wales.

 

However, in recent years there has been increasing financial pressures on all public sector services across the country. Central government funding has been significantly reduced for local authorities since 2010/11 as we will hear in the budget discussion later today. Likewise, police funding in England and Wales has been reduced significantly in real terms since 2010/11. As it stands crime in the City has recently increased across a broad range of crime categories following years of sustained reductions. In the last year, the City recorded a 5.3% increase in overall levels of recorded crime.

 

Victim based crime – a Council Plan commitment - increased by 3.8% in the City and is now only one percentage point beneath our original baseline from 2014/15. The renewed focus on the quality and compliance of crime recording practices following HMICs national report on crime data is thought to be largely responsible for these crime type increases. However further clarity is needed on the proportion of recent increases that are attributable to improved crime recording practices. For example, increases in shop lifting and vehicle offences can be attributed to this process. However, they could be connected with the police no longer treating prolific offenders as prolific offenders for these offences.

 

Last week Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) released a series of national reports on police effectiveness across England and Wales. HMIC determined in their report that Nottinghamshire Police required improvement to keep people safe and to reduce crime. This was a deterioration on the previous year where HMIC judged them to be good.

 

The report contains many positive points with Nottinghamshire Police being judged to be good at investigating crime and tackling serious and organised crime. However, there are some concerns expressed by HMIC that I wish to raise with members today. HMIC found that Nottinghamshire Police were redeploying neighbourhood officers, on pre-planned bases, to support policing response teams in other areas. The report does not state the scale of redeployment across the force area, or indeed within the city.

 

The report also stated that Nottinghamshire Police had a limited understanding of the communities it serves. With Nottingham’s increasingly diverse population it is becoming more important that public services understand their communities to break down cultural barriers, build trust and form productive partnerships. In the last year I believe the police have taken a number of steps which will have hindered this, including abolishing the Nottingham City Division.

 

Finally the findings showed that Nottinghamshire Police’s overall performance for protecting vulnerable people had deteriorated since 2015. The report highlighted that the force identified vulnerable and repeat victims at the first point of contact inconsistently. The report also showed that some vulnerable people with a poor response as a result of inappropriate demands placed on the control room and response officers, resulting in sometimes significant delays in attending some calls for victims who are vulnerable.

 

Since the publication of the report the new Chief Constable has said that the vulnerability issues were immediately addressed following the inspection - which took place back in July 2016. The Chief Constable has also said that he will commit to community policing and will continue to invest in neighbourhoods whilst also maintaining neighbourhood officers and PCSOs despite the current financial challenges. Finally, he has also stated that his organisation will adapt accordingly to engage with the people they serve. I firmly believe that community policing – bringing policing back down to a more local level and increasing its visibility in communities – will improve outcomes for our citizens in terms of reducing levels and improving perceptions of crime and anti-social behaviour. International evidence shows that public satisfaction and confidence in policing services is improved with high levels of visible policing and constant engagement with local communities.

 

I therefore, believe that the following measures in relation to community policing will improve outcomes for our citizens: 

I would like to see a long-term commitment from the new Chief Constable on a forward plan to build on our previous success of Operation Aurora to drive forward integration, co-location and demand management between the City Council’s Community Protection and Nottinghamshire Police, which has been previously recognised by HMIC as national best practice.

 

I also believe that the Chief Constable should look to increase the Community Safety Accreditation Scheme powers available to our capable Community Protection Officers so that the Council can do more to tackle quality of life and low level crimes issues and reduce demand on frontline policing services.

 

I would welcome further joint work between Community Protection and Nottinghamshire Police on community engagement so that we can all better understand our new and emerging communities, build trust and confidence and prevent exploitation. 

 

Additionally, I would also like to see policing accountability brought back closer to local communities, with police and crime plans not based at the force level, but at the local authority level. This should include the Chief Constable reinstating a Nottingham City Divisional Commander and a Nottingham City Division to support this. I believe that by giving Nottingham’s citizens more opportunity to influence policing priorities we can improve accountability at the local level, public satisfaction and confidence in policing services.

Given the current landscape there is now an opportunity for us to strengthen partnership working and I am ready to support our new Chief Constable to help deliver a truly innovative community safety policing service across the City. I hope to discuss these matters with the Chief Constable at his earliest convenience.