Richard Baum

Last night was the first meeting of the Resource and Performance Scrutiny commission last night. It wasn’t a hugely dramatic meeting in comparison to the last one, where we discussed Equal Pay. However, the appearance of the Executive Member for Resources did rile me slightly as he once again refused to acknowledged the hard work of staff in maintaining and improving council performance.

The main agenda item was the best value review of homelessness services. The report presented a mixed picture to be honest, but there is some good work being done on prevention of homelessness. The Council is still using B&B and hostels more than we’d like to to house people struggling to get into permanent accommodation. The problems are likely to get worse in the recession, and this is a crucial area of service for the Council, which is obviously related to another pet subject of mine - the quality of Council housing. In my view it’s little use putting families into Six Town Housing flats and houses if the services they receive thereafter are as poor as they often are. 

The meeting continued with a a report on equalities and diversity, with a lot of statistics on employee numbers for reasons beyond my understanding. The Council has achieved a great deal in terms of improving its provision for staff from all parts of the community - there’s a multi-faith prayer room, for instance, and young people have benefitted from more apprenticeships whilst older people benefit from Age of Opportunities initiatives. However, the industry of producing statistics on every facet of diversity does strike me as a bit off. The public of Bury will not be rejoicing in the streets at the slight increase in gender equality ear on year whilst services continue to be cut.

Some good news towards the end of the meeting. The Council got a score of “3″ out of 4 for its Use of Resources after an inspection by the Audit Commission, which is good. This despite another challenging budget ahead. Our budget position is OK, but the major area of concern is adult services, with a £2m overspend. There is a £4m budget gap overall which will need to be plugged somehow in the new financial year. This doesn’t include the adult services £2m so the overall position could get worse. Put simply, the money the council gets in through Council Tax and government grant isn’t quite enough to pay for the services we provide, so we’ll have to either make efficiencies (i.e. cuts) or charge more in taxes and fees. The budget is being written over the next couple of months, and we’ll see how Labour’s lack of funding from government affects the Council’s budget. The Tories running the Council will have some tough cuts to make.

Rick

Rick