Agenda item

Local Government Funding

 

Councillor Samina Riaz asked the following question of the Leader of the Council:

Does the Leader of the Council agree that Nottingham needs emergency no-string funding from Central Government to enable us to maintain services for all our citizens as asked by the City’s MPs and would he thank Resolve Nottingham, a coalition of 140 city organisations, for their support for the Council in asking Government for additional funding?

 

Councillor David Mellen replied as follows:

Thank you Lord-Mayor, and can I thank Councillor Riaz for your question.  I agree with you. We certainly need someone to come to our rescue because there simply isn’t enough money in this Council to run the services our citizens depend on - not this year, not next year and not until we get the funding we deserve. Its not just this Council, but councils across our land. You’re going to hear this a lot today, but it bears repeating: this callous and cruel-hearted Government has brough local government in this country to its knees. I would like to be clear on one point right at the start – this is not a Nottingham problem. This is a national problem caused by a government that has failed to fix social care, caused massive inflation, and generated a cost-of-living crisis that has seen soaring rates of homelessness. A failure of Central Government, but for some reason the buck stops with us – Nottingham City Council, and the people we represent. We are the ones that must pick up the pieces of their broken Britain without the resources to do so.  I’m afraid, Lord-Mayor, that this is a bad day for Nottingham and for this Council, at a meeting has been convened to approve huge cuts to our services and put people who work for our Council out of a job. Years of Tory underfunding of councils has led us to this day - years of austerity, years of rising prices and inflation and years of a broken care system. So yes, we need a miracle right now and if that meant, Councillor Riaz, no-strings funding from the Government then I would certainly welcome it. However Lord-Mayor, I’m not holding my breath because with this government there is no such thing as no-strings funding. In order to balance our budget today not only do we have to make sweeping cuts to our services, we have had to ask the Government for exceptional financial support to fill the gap that continues to open up before us. It is not money, it is certainly not a bailout. All that we have had approved is the economically nonsensical permission to sell buildings and land and use that for everyday expenditure.  The £66.1million permission over two years we receive as exceptional financial support is less than the money we have lost each and every year in the last decade - £100million less a year than it was a decade ago.  Hundreds of millions of pounds of funding for services has been lost under this Conservative Government. We received agreement for exceptional financial support for Government last week, but only ‘in principle’ and there are most definitely strings attached. In order to gain this financial support we must vote for every cut, every service reduction, every redundancy contained within the budget proposals, and only then will the Government allow us to sell our own properties and buildings and allow us to use this money to plug the gap as a one-off measure. This is without doubt a short-sighted approach to running a council, or indeed running any organisation, or even running your own household. You can only sell the silverware once. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. So, in the face of a lack of real response from this uncaring Government I’m really grateful to Resolve Nottingham for their leadership, collecting over 11,000 signatures on a petition that calls on the Government and on Michael Gove in particular to provide immediate no-strings financial support in order to fund the way forward. This petition was handed in at Number 10 Downing Street on Friday and I want to say thank to all those involved in the mammoth effort to show the Government that the people of Nottingham understand that the current crisis is not down to decisions that the Council has made, but down to a huge underfunding of the Council.  This is hugely important Lord-Mayor. People will point at me and say “well I expect the Labour Leader of a Council to blame the Conservative Government for our problems” but the Resolve Nottingham petition does not originate with the Council. It is led by businesses, by charities, by community groups and the citizens of Nottingham standing up to be counted, and we are grateful. Like us here today, they have said enough is enough. We heard their voices on Friday on the steps of Downing Street, just as we heard the voices outside today on the steps of the Council House. No one wants this for Nottingham. No one wants this for our country. As I said earlier, this is a day that will be remembered by our city. Sadly, it will be for all the wrong reasons.

 

Commissioners

 

Councillor Nayab Patel asked the following question of the Leader of the Council:

Could the Leader of the Council confirm that with the appointment of unelected commissioners by the Government, what the implications of this are including cost on our residents and Nottingham?

 

Councillor David Mellen replied as follows:

Thank you Lord-Mayor, and can I thank Councillor Patel for her question.  The Government is intervening in a number of councils across the country, and in each case the Council and the taxpayers in the areas receiving the intervention have to meet the costs of those sent in by the Government. This is the case for each of the councils involved. It might seem strange that this is the case when councils are counting every penny, and in Nottingham today making budget cuts, but these are the rules. So, although we made it clear to the Government that in our view commissioners were not necessary, we acknowledge their presence here today and will work constructively with Mr. McArdle and his team.  Councillors and officers work tirelessly for this Council and want what is best for the people of Nottingham, and if the commissioners can help us leave Nottingham in a better way then we welcome that support and advice. As Leader of the Council, I am committed to working with the commissioners. They have been with us for only a week, but the conversations so far have been positive and constructive. Would I rather see this journey with democratic control in our own hands? Yes. However, this was not our decision, and if this is the path we must follow then we must work together to bring about the necessary improvements. It won’t be easy, but we owe it to our citizens to do everything we can to reach our goal and return the governance of Nottingham City Council to the democratic control of those elected by the City’s citizens as soon as possible.

 

Homelessness

 

Councillor Devontay Okure sked the following question of the Portfolio Holder for Housing:

As of 20 February there were 208 households in bed and breakfast accommodation in Nottingham due to homelessness, and over 2,000 live homelessness cases reported to the City Council. Does the Portfolio Holder for Housing agree that sufficient support has not been forthcoming from the Government and can they inform Council of what actions are being taken to support those who are homeless and to reduce the council house waiting list?

 

As Councillor Devontay Okure was not present to ask his question, it received a written response instead. 

 

Adult Social Care

 

Councillor Michael Savage asked the following question of the Portfolio Holder for Adult Social Care and Health:

Can the Portfolio Holder for Adult Social Care and Health confirm the number of Nottingham people who are currently receiving support from our adult social services and do we have a higher proportion of our elderly residents not being able to contribute to their own care compared to national averages? What actions are we taking to help support those most in need?

 

Councillor Linda Woodings replied as follows:

Thank you Lord-Mayor, and thank you Councillor Savage for your question.  I want to start by talking about the term ‘adult social care’. I think for people who don’t have any experience of accessing the service, that’s a very generic and unspecific term. We’re actually talking about people who need the Council’s help and support: it’s not just older people. Adult Social Care helps people who live with a lifelong disability, or people who developed a serious condition or a serious injury throughout their lives, people with mental health needs, people with learning disabilities, and older people and people who are frail as well. We also care for people on a temporary basis, if they need support recovering from a serious illness or on discharge from hospital. So, I can tell you that it is a fairly fluid figure each month as to how many people we are supporting, but we have the figures for last year. Between January to December last year there were 7,299 citizens supported by our Council’s Adult Social Care Service and that’s just around a 6% increase on the previous 12 months. So, in the previous 12 months it was 6,915 and around 5,000 of those people are people who receive long term care from the Council.

As far as our funding is concerned, you’ve heard me say many times before we still have the frankly disgraceful situation of people having to pay for their own social care if they have the funds available and despite Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s bragging that he had solved the funding for Adult Social Care, those plans, inadequate as they were, were shelved and the lack of national funding for Adult Social Care is still unresolved 13 years on from the Dilnot Commission recommendations. So, despite paying tax and National Insurance your whole life, you are still expected to support the cost of your care in case of illness or in later life from your own savings and when they are depleted people are forced to sell their homes that they may have saved up for all their lives to pay for their care.  In Nottingham, approximately 2,700 people with support in their own homes pay a contribution of some level to their care, and we have just 199 who self-fund entirely themselves. 1,300 pay nothing due to having income and savings underneath the threshold which is £14,000. In our Adult Residential Care Homes we have just over 1,000 citizens – 1,071 citizens – of which 68 are self-funders. So, 1,003 of them are charged at some level for their care. Unfortunately there is no access to national data to benchmark if this is above or below the national average, but it is highly likely that Nottingham is below the national average for the number of citizens that are able to self-fund their care because the proportion of people with over £23,250 in savings or capital, and the number of homeowners plus lower property values means that less contributions will be received to the Council.  We do know from surveys conducted by the Nottingham Financial Resilience Partnership and national data that Nottingham residents have the least disposable income in the country, at just £482 per month on average. So, we are 38% below the UK average for having disposable income. We also know Nottingham has one of the youngest populations in the country as well. 50% of people who live in Nottingham are under 30. So that is one of the indicators of greater deprivation and therefore an increased pressure on demand for Adult Social Care. We don’t have data on people who self-fund their own care with no support in arranging that care from the Council.

How do we support people? Well, when we are doing peoples’ reviews and assessments for their care, we make sure they are getting all the benefits that they are entitled to or we tell their power of attorney if they don’t have capacity. We’ve also done what we could locally to protect welfare rights services, but what we need to do more is concentrate on transformation and put more resources towards prevention from the need for long-term care.  Our transformation programme is attempting to do that: supporting people to live with as much independence as possible in their own home with support, ensuring that people receive the benefits that they are entitled to, reviewing and providing support and adaptations to help people stay in their own homes and helping carers support them in their own homes as well.  Thank you very much.

 

Children in Care

 

Councillor Leslie Ayoola asked the following question of the Portfolio Holder for Children, Young People and Education:

At the BAFTAs Nottingham-born Samantha Morton dedicated her BAFTA fellowship to children in care, like she was. She also highlighted the broken care system which “costs the taxpayer a huge amount of money to keep a child in care, to take care of them”. The costs of child social care are spiralling far beyond the rate of inflation, in part due to a broken market. Can the Portfolio Holder for Children, Young People and Education give the number of children currently in care in the system and the length and cost of journeys to take children to schools? Can they confirm the actions the Council is taking to reduce costs while supporting those in need?

 

Councillor Cheryl Barnard replied as follows:

Thank you Lord-Mayor, and thank you Councillor Ayoola for your question.  As of the end of February, the number of children in care was 679, a reduction of about 50 from our highest number last year. We’re working on a number of initiatives to reduce costs while also ensuring that quality of care is sustained. These include recruiting more foster carers, providing additional support to our in-house foster carers and working through improved commissioning processes to ensure best value is achieved, as well as working with regional D2N2 colleagues to ensure high quality cost-effective commissioning of external placements. We currently have 401 statutory school-aged children in care. During summer and spring terms to date the Virtual School has contributed just under £34,500 to support the transport to school of 11 children. This is made up of payments to social care for 10 children and direct payment to a school of pupil premium plus for one child in care to attend alternative provision. It is important to note that the payments made to social care don’t necessarily cover the full cost of transport in every case. The Virtual School is not in a position to monitor journey times, but clearly the intention is that children attend a school as close as possible to their foster home or residential placement, and the priority afforded under the School Admission Code does enable us to direct admissions where necessary.  However, this is also a balanced decision as when a child comes into care it is important to try and maintain the continuity of their existing school place and support any transport for them to attend school when necessary. Samantha Morton is a great role model and advocate for children in care and care leavers. The points she makes about the care system are correct. The system is broken and children’s care costs have been allowed to spiral with the Government failing to step in and regulate in any way. I’m grateful to Samantha for using her platform to speak up for children and young people.

 

Children’s Services

 

Councillor Georgia Power asked the following question of the Portfolio Holder for Children, Young People and Education:

Local authorities across England increased their spending on children’s services by £800 million for 2021 – 2022 but 81% of the recent increase was funnelled into crisis intervention services, a rise from the 67% seen a decade ago. Of this additional spending £4 in every £5 went on late intervention services. Does the Portfolio Holder agree with me that the Government has failed children and pushed children’s services to breaking point?

 

Councillor Cheryl Barnard replied as follows:

Thank you Lord-Mayor, and thank you Councillor Power for your question.

The key factor in the imbalance between crisis intervention and early help is the fact that one is a statutory duty and the other is not. There has unfortunately been a steady decline in early help. To give more context, a Labour Government launched Sure Start Centres in 1999, delivering services and support to young children and their families. Initially targeted at the poorest 20% of wards in England, it was scaled up to deliver 3,500 children’s centres across the country. Sadly, cuts to funding of local government under the Conservative Government have seen a steady decline in the number of children’s centres providing that essential community-based support, activities and early help to families. In Nottingham we handed some centres over to local primary schools and we were able to retain nine children’s centres until the last two years when we reluctantly had to take a decision to close five as part of Council’s budget savings. The remaining four currently operate as family hubs, with outreach into other areas of the city. At the same time, we’ve seen a reduction of engagement with children and young people as our youth services – again, not statutory – have been cut in order to meet budgetary pressures. All this means that some children, young people and families have a reduced chance of being picked up at an early stage and given the help needed, meaning that problems often escalate and don’t come to us early enough. This lack of recognition of the value of and importance of early intervention at government level means that in the context of soaring costs of children’s social care, early help for families and young people will always be the casualty.  The Government has had warning after warning from local authorities and national children’s charities and has done nothing but tinker at the edges. They are failing our children and young people and wholescale reform is needed along with investment into early intervention. So yes, Councillor Power, I completely agree with you and look forward to having a Labour Government in power in the near future that will understand that investment into early intervention can reduce the high cost of crisis intervention and give children and young people the right help at the right time.

 

Student Accommodation

 

Councillor Kevin Clarke asked the following question of the Portfolio Holder for Highways, Transport and Planning:

Given the Council’s financial pressures, does the Portfolio Holder agree with me that the developers and operators of student accommodation in the City should make an ongoing revenue contribution towards the Council’s budget?

 

Councillor Angela Kandola replied as follows:

Thank you Lord-Mayor, and thank you Councillor Clarke for your question.  I fully recognise the reason for asking this question, given the Council’s financial pressures. Purpose-built student accommodation is classed as residential development, which would normally pay council tax. However, full-time students are exempt from council tax. This exemption is set nationally, and there is no scope for the Council to unilaterally change this. Whilst the Council does receive some revenue support grant from Central Government to recognise this, it has decreased in recent years and despite lobbying efforts by university cities to address the impacts on Council finances, Government has not addressed this.  The Council has no ability to acquire an ongoing revenue contribution from operators of student accommodation. At the planning application stage, the Council does secure one-off financial contributions from new student developments for necessary improvements to open spaces, highways, public ground, as well as funding for employment and training opportunities. Since 2021, we have required new schemes to also pay affordable housing contributions. There is no ability for the Council to seek ongoing revenue from new student developments. Our recently adopted student living strategy has been designed to help jointly address the challenges associated with accommodating a large student population in Nottingham while fostering positive community relations and maximising the contributions of students and themselves to Nottingham.  The Universities have committed to invest approximately £1million in 2023/24 into the prevention and enforcement of issues relating to waste, noise and other antisocial behaviour. This is a threefold increase in spend since 2019/20. We will continue to work collaboratively with the Universities and other stakeholders to reduce costs to the Council from managing student-related matters. It is also important to acknowledge the significant economic contributions of our Universities to Nottingham, which together forms about 14% of the local economy and supports 25,000 jobs across Nottingham and Nottinghamshire.  Thank you.

 

Council Plan

Councillor Kevin Clarke asked the following question of the Leader of the Council:

The Leader will be aware that the Council Plan is now being revised. Given the depth of cuts proposed in this budget how does the Leader have any confidence that the plan can be delivered?

 

Councillor David Mellen replied as follows:

Thank you  Lord-Mayor and can I thank Councillor Clarke for his question.  I’m sure if you’ve read far enough through the agenda today you can see that it’s been revised and it is being brought here for agreement later today. It lays out our statutory duties and the Council priorities which incorporate the manifesto pledges on which this majority Labour Group won a resounding victory in last year’s local elections. It is timed to coincide with the agreement of the Medium Term Financial Plan, which we are also due to consider later in the meeting. I will never tire of pointing out the fact that it was a manifesto that helped Labour secure 51 seats out of a possible 55 in last May’s elections, increasing our majority from the last electoral term, and we saw an end to the Conservative Party in Nottingham, who failed to win a single seat and who are no longer represented on the Council.  Maybe that’s why you’re feeling a bit sorry for Mr. Bradley and are going to give him your support rather than the Independent candidate in the Mayoral election, as we read in social media as the meeting starts?  Maybe that’s deliberate?  Not only did we increase our majority in the Chamber, but we did so with 62% of the popular vote. The people of Nottingham spoke loudly and clearly, they support the important work carried out by this Labour authority, and they gave us a clear mandate to continue. Our manifesto has informed this Plan and it is an ambitious plan, I make no apology for that. But, as you rightly point out Councillor Clarke, it is a plan that recognises the difficult position we are in financially. So, I applaud and thank the officers that worked together with Portfolio Holders to make sure that as many of our proposals as can be are in the Plan, maybe with slight adjustments; and it clearly sets out how they can be achieved. Of the 111 pledges, 98 are considered deliverable and affordable within our current resources and some have already been achieved. However, we cannot escape the cuts that are before us today, and so 12 of the pledges are on hold until we can find resources in the future to make them a reality.  Lord-Mayor, I’ll set this all out before the Chamber when I move to the report later in the meeting, but I must be clear now for the avoidance of doubt that I have every confidence that this remains, despite our financial restrictions, an ambitious plan and it will be delivered for the people of Nottingham by 2027. This is the least that they deserve and Labour members will work hard to see as many of these ambitions filled as possible.

 

Support for Voluntary Groups in Local Communities

 

Councillor Kirsty M Jones asked the following question of the Leader of the Council:

Will the Leader of the Council agree with me that the proposed budget reductions to councillors’ ward budgets, together with proposed changes to the Resident Development Officer team will have a huge and detrimental impact on the support councillors provide to the tireless work of voluntary groups in their communities, and comment on how they plan to mitigate this?

 

Councillor David Mellen replied as follows:

Thank you Lord-Mayor, and can I thank Councillors Jones for her question.  The answer is emphatically ‘yes’. I have no doubt that this budget cut, alongside most of the service reductions that we are being asked to vote for today will have a negative effect on our city. There’s no point in pretending anything other than that. How could it not? Until now, as councillors we’ve held meagre ward budgets, but those few pounds and pence have all worked wonders for the people in our neighbourhoods. It might be that we’ve been able to support a community event for children or for the elderly, or maybe helped to fund a new piece of play equipment or a bench for our citizens, or maybe it simple ensured that there was a Christmas Tree for the people in our wards to gather around and share their good cheer. All of us sitting in this Chamber, you all know what I’m talking about. This rises above political lines and rivalries. Regardless of our political persuasion as councillors, our main duty is to serve our citizens. I’m sure we can all agree on that here today.  We understand the small way we can make huge differences to the people of Nottingham. Although, of course, we will still be available to listen to our citizens who come to our surgeries, who ring us up, who contact us increasingly by social media.  They are often anxious, sometimes angry, at times in tears because of the situations they find themselves in. Our ability to solve their problems, to fund or partly fund community events to bring communities together will be impaired by the loss of these budgets and the changes in the Resident Development Service which will hamper councillors in their ability to carry out their roles as champions of the areas they represent.  I fear, Lord-Mayor, these cuts will do more than reduce services. They have potential to reduce the goodwill and support that knits communities together. Councillors are the visible face of this Authority to the people of our city. We live in the city. We use the services here. We are familiar within the community resources that our citizens benefit from. We don’t sit in office buildings all day, we are out among our people who voted for us. We hear what they say, we pick up litter alongside them, we are involved with local groups, we listen to constituents’ problems and we understand their needs, and we are supported by our valuable Resident Development Officers who do so much good in our neighbourhoods and our communities. So yes, Councillor Jones, I completely agree that the proposed changes to the Resident Development Officers will have a huge and detrimental effect. I would like to thank Councillor Sajid Mohammed who is working behind the scenes to bring a measure of mitigation to this budget reduction to both Resident Development Officers and Community Protection Officers. We’ve been told that the restructure in the Service will retain elements of the current role, including working with community groups, councillors and the voluntary sector, but I have no doubt that it won’t be the same.

 

Splendour

 

Councillor Andrew Rule asked the following question of the Portfolio Holder for Leisure and Culture:

Given the tendering process for Splendour has resulted in its cancellation, can the Portfolio Holder comment on how the process has demonstrated value for money for the residents of the City?

 

Councillor Pavlos Kotsonis replied as follows:

Thank you Lord Mayor, and may I thank Councillor Rule for his question.  It is indeed disappointing that the tender process did not lead to an event being secured for this year. Splendour is an event we were really proud to bring back after the pandemic and it has a number of local, regional and national fans. It goes back to the early 2000s and it has a deep resonance with many people in Nottingham. The Council is working to ensure contractual compliance across all the relationships and in certain cases that can be a complex and technical process, but the Council has a duty to work to ensure that all contracts comply with relevant contract and procurement legislation.  So, speaking of Splendour, it would be inappropriate to give further details about the event in question just yet, taking into account that it is actually still a live procurement case. I can say that we are working at the moment to secure the event back for 2025.  Councillor Rule, of course, will be happy to know that Wollaton Park has a number of other events taking place this summer. These will include Ibiza Orchestra Live on Friday 31 May, the Sausage and Cider Festival headlined by Scouting for Girls on Saturday 1June, Live at the Hall headlined by Razorlight on Friday 30 August and Hacienda Live on Saturday 31August. So quite a lot of activity there. Thank you, Councillor.