Hounslow's 2012/13 Budget Passed - Zero Council Tax Increase, and a growth fund for Improvements

Tonight's Council meeting ended with the passing of Hounslow's 2012/13 budget.

•  - Council Tax Freeze for the 6th succesive year
• -  a £2m growth fund to deliver our pledges, and improve efficiencies

The Government has cut £62m from our overall budget over four years, and they will impose more in future years as they intend to continue to make the public sector pay for their failed deficit reduction policies.  Despite the challenge we  set a budget that achieves the required savings and allows for growth. There will be no closure of children’s centres or other services..The £16m savings for the next financial year are all efficiency savings -  such as on assets, contracts, shared services, transport and staff restructuring.

We have also created an element of growth:
-headroom to support growth in jobs and support for those needing  good quality work opportunities.  With 3 staff Hounslow must have the smallest Economic Development team, with no capacity to attract investment in borough and little scope to support to the vibrant but often fragile small business community
- better support to those 100s of families being tipped into real poverty as a result of this Governments tax and benefits policies. We are beginning to see the impact of some of these, and the Universal Credit will further exacerbate it.  Better advice and support, fair and affordable loans, good quality training.
- Investing in improvements to childrens and older people's services to better serve the most vulnerable in Hounslowl
- an Improvement fund that can be drawn on to invest in IT, training, re-organising and changing systems and processes to provide better run services, at lower cost to residents and the tax-payer.

All this on top of the achievements of the last year:

• no closure of children’s centres
• Transforming and modernising our processes
• Recruited 10 additional police officers and over 100 special constables,
• schools results continue to improve and remain above national average
• 330 Reception places 60 year 1 last September and another 90 next September.
• 1000 affordable homes completed or under construction, and 50 empty homes
• Grimebusters hotline
• Improvements to Hounslow Town Centre and the Masterplan agreed,
• Vacated 10 buildings to ensure better use of fewer buildings.
• Supporting those in Debt by funding the CSB to provided new and extended services,
• Innovation Grants for the voluntary sector
• A dedicated Olympics officer to ensure the borough makes the most of the Games coming to London

The Tory opposition had, for the first time brought along an alternative budget. They proposed a cut of £23.99 for a band D tax payer, around 50p a week.  They criticised us for tokenism when we did the same when in opposition.   Their budget deleted Labour's growth options, and made the mistake of suggesting a one-off VAT refund could be used for recurrent spending.  Sadly their lack of financial literacy was exposed at this point - you cannot fund recurrent costs from a one-off source.   In the end they supported half of the recommendations in the budget paper, and voted against the other half.

Leader Jagdish Sharma said  “We can look forward to a year of investment and progress - a year when our staff  earn the London Living Wage as a minimum,, when we’ll see the Hounslow town centre masterplan start to become a reality, when we will open our new Sandbanks resource centre with new residential and day places for older people, and we will build further on the good progress we have made on our pledges.”

Happy New Year - not

Residents are receiving through their doors the list of cuts we (Hounslow's Labour Councillors) are considering in order to make the £18m budget reduction imposed on us by withdrawal of Government grant. It's on-line "http://tinyurl.com/3x329mo" £18m is far more than anything Hounslow, and most other authorities, have ever had to find before.

Too Far - Too Fast
As the Council's leadership, we have been left with no choice but to cut services and jobs next year - Government grants make up c70% of Council income and the spending review and subsequent local government settlement forces Hounslow to make 25% reduction in spend over the next four years. Dressed up as part of deficit reduction strategy, these cuts in our Government grants are an ideological attack on public services, yet the difficult decisions as to how to deliver the cuts are being forced on local Councils to make. Grant reductions have been far worse for urban authorities - whilst Richmond borough, Surrey County, and Cameron's Whitney have got off very lightly, and some northern authorities, along with Hackney and Islington, fare far worse.

The proposals in the consultation represent the least worst possible, and try and protect services to our most vulnerable residents, the frail elderly, disabled people, and vulnerable families and youngsters. We are also trying to reduce the number of redundancies to Council staff.

We will continue to drive out inefficiencies and unnecessary costs. But Mr Pickles is in fantasy land to suggest that joint work and cutting out chief executives can bring the kind of savings we have to make. Even the 3-borough grouping of Hammersmith, Westminster and Kensington reckon their radical efficiency proposals around joint services will only find £15 savings between them in four years.
Hounslow is investing time and expertise into redesigning how things are done so residents get a better service, for less. But it takes time for that change to be implemented, and time is what the Government has not given us

So we cannot avoid making real cuts that will impact on local people and local services. We remain committed to a tax cut and will freeze it again next year if we are not able to cut it. We also remain resolute on our 5 pledges – crime and community safety, schools, new homes and jobs, cleaning up, and cutting Council Tax.

We'll also be working closely with our local health, education and police partners who are also facing funding cuts - to ensure that we don't make cuts in one service that end up costing other partners more.

Please do respond to the consultation to budgetconsultation@hounslow.gov.uk