In The Bleak Midsummer
August 25th, 2010 by Diana SmithComment?
For the last few years so little has happened in August that I’ve put up a summer photograph and gone away until well into September. Traditionally it’s the ‘silly season’, when parliament and the courts aren’t sitting, and neither does Surrey County Council and its committees.
In-Year Cuts
But the Government has been busy since the election, and this has knock-on effects for local Councils. As soon as the Coalition got organised in May it announced £6.2 billion of cuts in government spending nationally in the current year. Of this, £1.165 billion is to come from local government. The emergency budget was in June, and further in-year cuts to local government grants were announced on the 5th of July.
A number of the grants to local authorities that have been reduced were originally linked to particular uses, but now the ‘ring-fencing’ has been removed from many of them.
Surrey has lost £6 million revenue income for this year (2010-11), and more than £3 million in capital funding. Making cuts to budgets that have already been set and have begun to be spent is extraordinarily awkward. Staff (quite rightly) can’t be instantly dismissed to save money; buildings still have to be maintained; contracts with outside organisations can rarely be abandoned without serious cost. The longer decisions are left, the fewer the options and the worse they are likely to be.
Hurried change
On the 13th of July Surrey’s Cabinet allocated the new cuts. They ran across the board, details were sparse, and there had been little time for consultation. Included in the appendices was a reduction of funding of approaching a quarter for the ‘Connexions’ service which works to help young people get into work or training. Some of this work is commissioned from the voluntary sector, which now faces rapid cuts. (papers here , see especially appendix 6b)
The ‘Stronger and Safer Communities’ Committee is supposed to keep an eye on the Connexions service, which only came back under Surrey’s control quite recently. The Chairman called an extra meeting for the 4th of August.
In their submission to this meeting, the Surrey Youth Consortium (which includes Woking YMCA and the Surrey Care Trust) pointed out the extra value Surrey gets from voluntary organisations; the commitments that have already made to programmes for young people this coming autumn; the threat to the very existence of some small voluntary organisations without reserves; and the loss of experienced and highly trained people who will not be easy to get back.
Doing this much damage is particularly counter-productive when Surrey has already said its longer term strategy depends on increasing the amount of work it commissions from the voluntary and community sector.
The Council’s ‘scrutiny’ committees can question Cabinet decisions, but not change them. All the ‘Stronger and Safer Communities’ committee could do was refer the decision back to the Cabinet, asking them to think again. The Cabinet then had to have an extra meeting in the middle of August.
I was not surprised that the Cabinet upheld its own decision and nothing changed. But I was impressed at the determination shown by Lavinia Sealey and her committee in dragging questions about the impact on the Voluntary Services, and on the commitments Surrey has already made to them, more into the open. It’s not just the Connexions service. The cuts to Connexions are symptomatic of a system forced to slim down, with no time for dieting or exercise to take effect, and resorting to surgery.
But it could be worse …
According to the cabinet papers, Surrey had been bracing itself for £20 million in government cuts this year if they had been shared out ‘pro rata’ between local authorities. As it is we’re getting £5.30 less a head. This time round, Durham loses £13.09 a head, while the national average reduction is £9.70.
For years the complaint has gone up from Surrey County Council that our money is virtually being shipped north by the truckload. At the last full Council meeting this July it was agreed to ‘press the government for a fairer share of funding for Surrey’ after blaming the country’s ‘parlous financial state’ on the ‘previous government’s mishandling of the economy’.
The Medium Term Financial Plan has been based on the expectation of a £70 million reduction in revenue funding, with capital grants reduced by half. Now we wait to find out in the autumn, and particularly with the ‘spending review’ in October, whether local government money for 2011 – 2015 will be as restricted as Surrey County Council currently assumes.
Puttenham’s Public Sex Environment
The ‘Stronger and Safer Communities’ committee had to meet for a second day running to discuss the motion put to Council about closing a lay-by on the Hog’s Back near Guildford.
Among the papers for this meeting was the clearest and it seemed to me most balanced account of what was happening, its effect, and the legal position, in the police report which you can find here.
The Committee recommended that the lay-by be closed, as you can see in the report to the same special meeting of the Cabinet that considered the Connexions cuts. (here) The Cabinet did not agree, reasoning that the lay-by was too generally useful to close, especially when closure would not fully solve the problems felt locally. The minutes are here if you want to see them in more detail.
More Local Committee Stuff
This posting is going to be shorter than it would have been if I were not about to go out (in the customary summer rain) to a site meeting at Victoria Arch in Woking, with other members of the Local Committee. We will be looking at what the plans to adjust the cycle lanes will mean literally on the ground. We failed to come to a decision about cycle routes through Victoria Arch and also the shared use between pedestrians and cyclists of parts of Woking Town Centre in July. As a result we now have an extra meeting on the 2nd of September at Woking Borough Council’s Offices, 6.30.
Although it is an extra meeting, primarily for these left-over decisions which still have to be made, it is also a ‘proper’ public meeting with some time at the start for an open question session with the public, and public as well as members’ written questions. So if you have strong feelings on the issues and want to be there, this is open to you - I don’t think you’ll be alone … papers for the meeting are already on the SCC website here .

