Spending review and the city council

Next Monday there will be a special full meeting of the city council to agree the council's annual revision of its four-year rolling medium term (financial) strategy.

Normally the MTS would be approved at a normal meeting of the council but the meeting on the 21st October was presumably deemed to be too soon (one day) after the HM Treasury's spending review. Also given how many politicking motions were introduced at that meeting it's probably a good thing that this important consideration wasn't dwarfed.

The council operated on cautious assumptions when devising the strategy so overall there are, fortunately, no nasty surprises for the city.

One notable assumption was that there would be no compensation for the council tax freeze, but as I expected, the original promise is being kept and the funding will be to match what would have been a 2.5% council tax increase. It would therefore be scandalous for the city council not to take advantage of that multiplier; it does seem that the Lib Dems have at last listened to sense on this one.

The budget for next year won't be set until the spring; I hope councillors can be relied upon to follow through on the council tax freeze. Of course I hope they go further and fund a reduction through councillor allowances.

On the debit side it seems that 'front-loading' of reductions to the formula grant will create a corresponding vaccuum at the beginning of the spending review period, which in the case of an indebted government and a debt-free council is probably the right way round.

Overall this review is undoubtedly the right thing for the country. If we stayed in denial of the need to eliminate the structural deficit we would just be adding more and more to the final cost of fixing the public finances. Some things will be difficult but in the long term welfare reform will be good for our society and a slimmed-down public sector will help the private sector grow.

In Cambridge I urge the ruling group to concentrate on providing good value for money. We are being freed from swathes of government targets and ring-fenced budgets and should be able to afford high quality basic services if we take a good look at what we should and shouldn't be doing. It's time for zero-based budgeting!

City Council Tax U-Turn Welcome

We tentatively welcome the news that the city council seems to be coming round to our way of thinking and is planning a council tax freeze for 2011/12.

Local Conservatives were delighted when George Osborne announced in Autumn 2008 that a Conservative government would provide for two years the funding to enable a council tax freeze for councils that keep their rises to just 2.5%. This good news was consistently rubbished by local Liberal Democrats despite Chris repeatedly calling for the city council to plan to take advantage of the offer. The county council, however, very sensibly signed up to the deal.

Unfortunately, not winning the general election outright, this pledge had to be watered down to one year only (with a second year as an aspiration), but the good news is that now the Liberal Democrats are part of the coalition they no longer feel the need to oppose it for the sake of it.

The council's medium term strategy currently in force plans for a 3.5% tax rise this year. Executive councillors agreed at a meeting on Friday to recommend a new strategy which plans for a council tax freeze this year followed by 2% increases. This is certainly an improvement and to be welcomed. The final decision on the strategy will be made by full council on 8th November and the budget and council tax levels for next year at meetings in 2011.

The new MTS slightly pessimistically assumes that the central government funding for the freeze will not be forthcoming. I was previously calling for a cut in councillor allowances to trigger this funding. If the council is looking to make the saving in other ways then I call on them also to reduce the councillor allowances by 33%. This would then enable a council tax cut of 1.25% - welcome relief to hard-pressed residents.

Bower's Contract: 1. Lower Council Tax

This is the first of a series of posts running up to the city council election on Thursday in which I will cover my five main pledges to Coleridge to which I would work if elected.

Every Conservative should put the taxpayer foremost when dealing with taxpayers' money. That means that every pound is spent well.

Cambridge City Council has been increasing council tax by 4.5% year on year. For this general election year only they are raising it by only 2.5% but have planned to raised it by 3.5% and then 4.5% in the following years. That means an Olympic-sized cumulative tax rise of 11% by the Olympic year of 2012.

I would push for the city council to keep council tax rises down to 2.5% or lower for the next two years so that they can benefit from the council tax freeze promised by the Conservatives nationally if, as we all must hope, they get elected. In contrast the Conservative-run county council is planning 2.5% rises for those years, meaning council tax bills would be frozen.

The graph above shows council tax rises after the application of the Conservative national council tax freeze for frugal councils that keep their rises below 2.5% by 2.5% matching funding.

The full Conservative policy on the city council for keeping council tax low is on pages 10 and 11 of our manifesto.

We need a new culture at the city council to keep council tax under control. Instead of incremental budget changes that are thoroughly opaque we should instigate 'zero-based budgeting' whereby all expenditure is justified afresh and the council doesn't just keep on doing things which may not be to taxpayers' benefit because they haven't been identified.

David Cameron has the right idea when he talks about Labour’s ‘carnival of waste’:

I know there are those who will hear us talking about cut waste and say "you'll be no different, you'll have your pet projects, you'll go native when you start living in the land of bureaucrats". So let me explain why we'll be different. We'll be different because we are different. First, our attitude is different. Conservatives loathe waste. Efficiency is in our DNA. We never forget that fundamental fact about public money, which is that it's public, it's yours, not ours. It doesn't undergo some magical transformation at the Treasury to become government money. Those are the same pounds that were earned by you on the factory floor, on the hospital ward, in the office and we will never forget that we have a moral duty not to spend your money but to save it where we can.

Good government costs less with the Conservatives!

I would do my best to keep council tax down, following the best practices of Conservative councils across the UK and taking a lead by calling for councillor allowances to be cut by 10%.

Folk Festival Enquiry Published

The final report of the Councillor-led enquiry into the Folk Festival ticketing fiasco enquiry has just been published, and will be reported to next weeks Civic Affairs committee at the City Council.

A previous internal enquiry found serious failings in the Arts and Entertainment department - and it is fair to say that this department in general, and folk festival ticket sales in particular is now one of the most scrutinised in the Council.

But Councillors were keen to know what wider lessons should be learnt. We were promised an independent external enquiry, but instead a Councillor-lead enquiry was setup. Labour refused to sit on this enquiry (as it wasn't the promised external enquiry), which meant that I was able to step in and be part of the committee.

As part of this, we read a lot of evidence from the initial enquiry, and spent three afternoons interviewing staff, from the Chief Executive down - having been through this, I don't feel that there is anything more I could learn about the situation - the picture of what went wrong and how £650k of taxpayers money came to be lost is now pretty clear.

With hindsight, it is immensely frustrating to see what happened, because as well as the main problems within Arts and Entertainments, several departments in the Council were aware and could have stopped the problem, all of these came very close to stopping the problem, but they never quite managed to push the emergency stop button.

Concerns weren't escalated appropriately - so some senior people weren't involved as soon as they should have been - nobody blew the whistle.

Nobody stepped back from the situation that was unfolding around the time the most disastrous decisions were made, and looked at the bigger picture - or considered all the options available.

Finally, the nature of the relationship between service departments and those given professional advice was very unclear - nobody seemed to know if advice was guidance or mandatory, who was responsible if advice turned out to be wrong, or if it wasn't followed as intended.

In summary, the Councillor lead enquiry revealed that problems were not confined to just one department at the Council - all managers at the Council need to rethink risk management - how they identify and respond to risks to taxpayers interests, and those providing advice and support need to make it clear who is responsible for the outcome of their advice, and to make sure that even if it is not acted on, the possible consequences are made clear.

My final thought on the process is a wider and more political one - the Council generally does not put first and foremost the Council taxpayer - it appears services are delivered without always thinking where the money has come from, and when this goes wrong, it is the taxpayer who picks up the bill. And to this extent, the Council is taking its lead from the politicians who are responsible for setting the tone in the policies they make. It remains remarkable that after such a series of failings resulting in a £650,000 loss to the taxpayer, none of the Liberal Democrats running the Council have felt the need to resign over this.

Labour's plan to hike council tax

Labour has been caught red-handed preparing for a council tax revaluation scheduled for after the general election. They are advertising for a £2m contract to implement the scheme, which would see council taxpayers across the country fleeced.

Caroline Spelman MP, the Shadow Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government said:

"This is a tax bombshell – primed to go off after the general election, hitting families and pensioners with soaring council tax bills".

"Labour’s class war politics is all about punishing those who have saved and worked hard with even higher taxes", she said. "This Big Brother contract is yet another sign of how Labour Ministers have no respect for people’s privacy and how they want to snoop inside your home".

The Conservatives would stop the revaluation and, furthermore, abolish council tax inspectors’ rights of entry into our homes.

Is there no limit to how underhand and cynical this government is prepared to be? Only Nick Hillman can help in Cambridge to kick out this deceitful government. The Lib Dems are ideologically close to Labour and their activists tend to side with them (despite the image they try to give out in selected areas to get Tory votes) so they are no use.

Climate Change starts at the Guildhall

I visited the Guildhall just before Christmas to check out a local planning application. My abiding memory of the visit however was that the whole building appeared to be stifflingly hot.

I wrote to the building manager, who explained it was down to problems with the heating controls adjusting after a power surge. I don't think this is good enough - it must be possible to avoid wasting energy in this way.

The Liberal democrats like to talk the talk on climate change, with all the fervour of a true believer. The Council employs at great expense a 'climate change officer', and has huge budgets it spends on telling us we are all doomed, and making people feel guilty about their own behaviour.

Meanwhile, on one of the coldest days of the year, the heating in the Guildhall was swelteringly hot, and staff were busy trying to open windows to cool down. As ever with Lib Dems, its more important to be seen to be doing something, than actually fixing problems.

I think we do need to take some serious steps to tackle the risk of global warming and energy security (which is somewhat different to signing up to every conceivable suggestions from the latest doomsday cult on the subject). Most likely solutions are going to involve major changes in the production, storage and transmission of energy, many requiring technological breakthroughs - very little of which Cambridge City Council can do anything about (short of fixing its planning policies so Cambridge can continue to be a world leader in technology development).

When it comes to what individuals (and local authorities) can do - I suggest the best approach is to highlight the costs of being profligate with energy - the only thing that will make sufficient people change behaviour is if reducing Co2 production is a significant money saver. Which brings me to the real sense of outrage about the Guildhall being swelteringly hot - it is Council tax payers paying for all that waste.

Conservative run Windsor and Maidenhead Council has not only installed smart metering in Council properties, but the usage is available online - allowing residents to check all the time if their Council is wasting energy, and encouraging them to keep bills low.

Why can't Cambridge City Council be more enlightened about climate change, and focus on saving money not on climate change ideology.

Folk Festival: Lets keep our fingers crossed

The Cambridge Evening News has a stunning story today detailing the contents of some internal emails sent relating to the Folk Festival ticket fiasco, where over £600k of last year's ticket sales were collected by a company that subsequently went bust after failing to hand over the money.  - the information was obtained through a freedom of information request.

I have read the FOI response (in which the names of the relevant people have been blacked out), and it is jaw-dropping. The emails do nothing to reassure me we have got to the bottom so far of why this was allowed to go on. They indicate the extent to which other departments in the Council knew the risks that were being run in the 2008 online Folk Festival ticket sales contract, but failed to stop the problem.

In October 2007, whilst three bidders were being evaluated, someone in the finance department was asked for a credit check (of the company and its holding company - note that  company names may not be precise in these quotes, and there are other similar sounding companies out there not related to this issue) - they replied:

"One thing is clear – Telsecure carry a very High Risk rating and are not making profits. Secureticket was not listed"

The reply, presumably from the Folk Festival team:

"A reminder to never ask questions if you don’t want to hear the answer. The first one is the one we used last year and wished to use again!!"

"This is a bit contentious as in the money goes into an escrow (clients account) so should be safe even in cases of bankruptcy but a) we would rather not take the risk (it being circa £0.5m). At the end of the day I’ll go with what you and audit recommend.”

So both departments clearly appreciated the scale of money that could have been at risk. (in apparant contradiction of assurances given to Councillors that this contract wasn't picked up as it was only ever considered as a £30k contract for services)

Finance also uncovered the Isle of Man holding company, i.e. the unusual corporate structure, but there still didn't appear to have been a recommendation issued not to deal with the company – instead everything went quiet until a couple of days before go live.

In early May 2008, shortly before the tickets were due to go on sale, it was realised there weren’t proper contracts in place, that there hadn’t been a conclusion to the credit checking and concerns were again raised about the company, one email saying:

“Every bone in my body tells me this company is a wrong’un – but I can’t put my finger on it. It would help if they were transparent… we are stuck with this lot so let’s keep our fingers crossed”

£618k of Council tax payers money protected by keeping fingers crossed - incredible.

Its clear that several departments were fully aware of what was going on and the risks being run, alarm bells should have been ringing in senior management, but still the contract wasn’t stopped.

The City council has agreed to setup a member-led enquiry to look at some aspects of the Folk Festival ticket sales fiasco. Conservatives are calling for this enquiry to look at how finance and legal failed to stop this disastrous contract, and consider wider risk management.

We have a long way to go before we have got to the bottom of how and why the Council let a company go bankrupt owing the Council such a large sum of money...

Bower's Blueprint #1 - Keep Down Council Tax

This is the first of a series of posts on Bower's Blueprint for Coleridge - a set of pledges to which I would work if elected as county councillor on 4th June.

Keeping down council tax
Council tax has more than doubled since 1997 when Labour came into power.

More and more obligations have been passed on to local authorities, without adequate funding (such as the 'fully-funded' concessionary bus fares scheme that is now costing city taxpayers £1.5m per year).

We also have whole areas of activity that never used to happen - or not to the same extent. 'Partnership working' between authorities and quangos is now a massively bureaucratic activity, consuming vast amounts of senior management time. The whole process is given fancy names like Comprehensive Area Assessment and Local Area Agreements, but the result is less accountability for individual authorities and greater emphasis on meeting government targets. Costs are vast and unquantifiable, benefits are almost non-existent.

Whole new areas have opened up, like community engagement as a separate exercise, rather than just an intrinsic part of what the Council does (witness the city council's area committee's costing over £100 per member of the public who attends). And the climate change agenda pursued by councils could be seen as more about feeling good and being seen to be concerned, than tackling the real issues of climate change and energy security (like how we make the major technological changes required to the production, distribution and use of energy to avoid dependence on fossil fuels at a national or international level).

Councils are governed by targets - with councils monitoring hundreds of targets, many of which are only to help meet the latest eye-catching government initiative, so that more ring-fenced cash can be 'won' as local councils become ever more like branch offices of Whitehall.

As if this wasn't bad enough, many local people are now losing their jobs (we are coming across people on the doorstep whose main concern now is how they are going to pay the mortgage). The last thing they needed was the 4.5% council tax rise from Cambridge City Council. The county council responded to economic concerns by making savings and reducing the planned council tax rise to below 4% but we need to go further. The Conservatives have promised that if councils can keep rises to 2.5%, the government will match this from cuts in central advertising and keep council tax rises to zero. Keeping council tax rises below 2.5% should be the minimum we aim for.

Enough is enough! It is time for local councils to say we do NOT need to waste our money on armies of bureaucrats ticking boxes for a dying government’s targets.

Our Councils need to focus on basic provision of services, like social services and direct funding of schools. We desperately need more money going into potholes and highways maintenance.

This can be achieved by acting now to reduce resources spent monitoring and meeting hundreds of government targets, that no-one wants and no-one needs, and ruthlessly finding real efficiency savings. Councils like Conservative-run Hammersmith and Fulham have proved this is possible - they have just cut council tax again.

Labour just doesn't get it. Britain cannot afford the size of the state that Labour has created. Difficult decisions need to be made both nationally and locally, to balance the books - this is the only way to get us out of the terrible economic mess that Gordon Brown's boom and bust has created.

Labour's candidate in Coleridge is also Labour's parliamentary candidate in South Cambridgeshire - his job is to support Gordon Brown and his approach to government: carry on spending regardless of the economic consequences. This is the last thing taxpayers need from the county council.

If this is the good news...

The BBC is reporting the headline: 'Councils may recoup Iceland cash'. If this constitutes good news for the City Council, then bad news doesn't bear thinking about.

What the article goes on to say is that Council's may recover 70-80% of their investment in Heritable bank - presumably this is just the capital, it doesn't mention interest. The City Council has £4m invested in Heritable, so could be looking at a further 20-30% of this amount, or £800,000 - £1.2m (remember annual Council Tax income for the City Council is only about £6m), currently unbudgeted, being lost. But, and its a big but, this is only the UK branch of the bank - the situation is likely to be much worse for the Icelandic parent bank Landbanski. It has previously been reported that the unsecured debt of this bank is trading at 10% of its value - so a much greater part of the £5m the Council has invested there could also be at risk.

I wonder if the BBC spin on this news comes from the Local Government Association, who apparently are being very helpful to local Councils tackling this problem - if I was being cynical I could imagine as much of this help was in deflecting criticism from Councils by managing news rather than actually making any difference to how much money is returned - they seem quite happy to spin on their own behalf (for example campaigning against elected police chiefs), and to protect Councils from legitimate criticism rather than concentrating on spreading best practice - I wonder how much the City Council pays them for this privilege...

Bad news on Icelandic Investments

File on Four on Radio 4 yesterday did not make happy listening for the City Council:

"Meanwhile for the councils with cash trapped in Iceland the future looks bleak according to Mark Horsfield, of Arlingclose which offers investment advice to more than 50 councils.

Mr Horsfield has been tracking the market in unsecured debt linked to the banking collapse.

"It is trading at the moment somewhere between half a pence in the pound and nine-and-a-half pence in the pound," he told File On 4, dashing local government hopes of getting their money back in the months to come.

He added that this was a "reasonable indicator" of the likely payout unless "a deal is structured" between governments and the liquidator.

Mr Horsfield thinks it is unlikely that councils will receive significant payouts.

"As an accountant with my prudent hat on, I'd be scaling back my expectations," he added."

In other words, the Council may be looking at losing at least 90% of its Icelandic investments (or at least 90% of the £4-5m invested directly in the Icelandic parent bank rather than the UK subsidiary). I've written to the Director of Finance at the City Council to ask what our latest information is about recoverability of the Iceland investments, what our expectations are of the amount likely to be recovered from the Icelandic investements, and in particularly, which of our deposits are likely to fall into the category of unsecured debt of the type that is currently trading at less than 10p in the £. If we have lost most of this money it will be very bad news indeed for local Council tax payers.

Lib Dems ignore Council Tax warnings

The Full Council meeting last Thursday agreed the budget and set the City Council part of Council Tax.

I have blogged before on the financial problems faced by the City Council this year, but argued that in the current economic situation the Council had to find significant cost savings, and do everything they could to keep down the burden of Council Tax.

To achieve these aims, the Council should be maximising the use of its resources, reviewing budgets starting from zero, and focusing on the core services that everyone relies on.

The Liberal Democrats ignored warnings from all opposition groups, and again put up their part of the Council tax by 4.5%, despite the recession and the lower expectations for inflation.

In doing so, they failed to make any serious attempts to make long term reductions in the core costs of providing services, have failed to consider the possible effects of the recession adequately, and general reserves are expected to plummet - the 'debt free' Council may even have to borrow to finance its capital spending program.

In short, the Lib Dems have failed to tackle the problems facing the Council, and agreed a 'hope for the best' budget that will add to the burden of Council Tax for years ahead.

Crunch Budget Decisions for City Council

It is crunch time for the City Council' s budget setting process, as the Lib Dem's Leader and Executive Councillors meet next week to agree the budget measures that will be put to the Full Council meeting in February.

There have been unprecedented pressures this year, including:
- the £620k at risk in the Folk Festival tickets fiasco that for budgeting purposes at least must be assumed lost
- £9m invested in Iceland, with no guarantee of repayment of the capital or interest
- a shortfall in funding from Government for the concessionary bus fares of approx £1.3m a year
- The credit crunch more generally, and its effect on all Council budgets.
- Loss of interest on the Council's reserves due to falling interest rates.

The top two are due to the poor financial management from the Lib Dems, but even without these there are clearly severe financial pressures. The interesting question now is how should this year's budget be handled.

Remarkably, the Lib Dems approach to date has been to stick their head in the sand and pretend there isn't a problem. For the first time in over a decade, the reports presented to the scrutiny committees in January did not identify sufficient savings to present a balanced budget - over £1m of savings still need to be found in the period to April 2010. Looking at the list of proposed savings to date (which curiously don't seem to be on the Council's website when you look at the meeting agendas), the only real savings are from service reviews completed some months ago, with the first draft budget leaving hundreds of thousands of cuts still to be found. But later amendments reflecting the Folk Festival fiasco and the City Council being told it must assume it won't be getting any interest on the Iceland money, and we are left with collosal amounts of savings to be found in a very short period of time.

We already know that the Lib Dems are planning to increase Council Tax by 4.5% every year, about the most they can get away with to avoid capping, despite the budget now assuming wage inflation much below this, and despite the hardship many people are feeling from the credit crunch. They were also expected to hit their minimum general reserves level of £1.5m in a couple of years anyway, although there is a case that in the current tough times (and one-off financial catastrophes) it is reasonable to go below their target minimum in the short term.

But the bottom line is that there are deep cuts that will need to be made (and not just one-year only fixes), and the ruling group seemed to have assumed that the Folk Festival fiasco and the Iceland deposits, which have been known about for ages weren't an issue. Lack of planning for this means cuts will now be made in a hurry, so will likely either be insufficient or highly damaging or both.

But even if they make then numbers work, there are some highly questionable assumptions involving ignoring the effects of the credit crunch on income - for example, they assume folk festival ticket prices can rise again, but still sell out (assuming they prove capable of collecting the money this year of course...), they pencil in much higher car parks revenue on the back of significant increases in charges, and don't seem to have considered the collapse in the value of recyclable materials, such as paper for recycling which is now apparantly worthless. All these issues could see lower income for the Council than they are currently expecting.

The Council doesn't seem to have even begun to consider the effects of the recession on its capital spending - a lot of which is delivered through s106 taxes on developers - this income stream looks to have all but disappeared as developers down tools, and when the property market returns to more reasonable levels, it is unclear if the Council will ever be able to levy these charges again at the same level.

In summary, in the good times, the Lib Dems failed to find the efficiency savings that have already been identified for this year (without admitting any cuts in service), causing Council Tax to be racked up unnecessarily, but in troubled times, their weak leadership and failure to tackle the problems early enough could prove disastrous.

Its at times like this when it is very frustrating to be the lone Conservative, rather than a group big enough to run the Council. Budgets should have been rebuilt from the bottom up, cutting out the waste, looking for more innovation in delivery of services and use of the Council's assets, and focusing on key basic services, sound financial management and keeping Council tax low - there are plenty of Conservative run Councils out there who manage to do just that.

Huge Pressure on Council Tax

At last night's full Council meeting at the Guildhall, I warned of huge pressures on next year's budgets at the City Council, and urged Liberal Democrat Councillors to start taking their role in scrutinising the Council's budget setting process more seriously.

In theory backbench Liberal Democrat Councillors should be scrutinising the decisions of their Executive Councillors. In practice I am struggling to think of a time when I can recall any Lib Dem speak in an open meeting to question the decisions about to be taken or fail to vote for an Executive Councillor's recommendation. Contrary to the 'not really a party politician' impression they like to give to the public, they appear to be heavily whipped, and speak only to criticise what opposition Councillors say.

This year, that approach has some serious risks - the Council's finances look to be in very poor shape indeed, for three reasons.

Firstly, there has been a catastrophic failure of risk management, as £9m is frozen in Iceland. The key people responsible for safeguarding the Council's (and therefore the taxpayers) financial assets seem to be asleep on the job, and we need a much greater emphasis on financial risk management.

Secondly, there are known pressures on the budget this year unlike those for many years. Money stuck in Iceland, coupled with falls in interest rates will seriously reduce interest income, and the Government's concessionary bus fares funding fiasco also leaves a £1.3m hole in the budget. The government grant increase will be dwarfed by these factors.

Finally, I don't think the Council has yet grasped the seriousness of the recession currently happening, and the effect it will have on Council income. Every area of the budget needs review. There will obviously be pressure on Council tax and housing benefits, and more difficulty collecting Council tax. But the impact could be much more wide ranging , from the pressures on organisations like the Citizens Advice Bureau that rely on significant Council funding, to income from charges that are already at or near the level of market resistance this year, like the price of city centre car parking and the cost of Folk Festival tickets. It will be no good the Council reporting back in a year's time that they've failed to meet their budget because these factors haven't been considered fully.

If the Council does keep to its planned (and already very high) 4.9% Council tax rise despite the huge pressures on income and costs this year, then there is likely to be some very damaging expenditure cuts, and/or a raid on reserves. If this doesn't seem to be the case, the question will be why did the Liberal Democrats allow Council tax to get so high, if it was so easy to make these savings now, they should have been made earlier. Either way, the Council needs to seriously raise its game in terms of financial scrutiny.

Great News on Council Tax

There have been some great announcements from the Conservatives over the last couple of days - perhaps the most headline grabbing is a Council Tax freeze for two years. If Councils can keep tax rises down to 2.5%, if the Conservatives win the next election they will fund a further cut to keep Council tax frozen for at least two years. The Conservatives have been working on this pledge for some time, involving Conservative Council leaders, with help from the Institute of Fiscal Studies and a large accountancy firm, so it is properly costed. The central funding will come from cutting advertising and consultancy spending, both of which have rocketed under Labour, and give very poor value in many cases for taxpayers funds. For local Councils, the decade of state interference and 'government by target' will be rolled back, giving Councils much better scope for controlling Council tax.

I was at a briefing meeting for Conservative Councillors earlier today with the shadow ministers responsible for all areas of local government. It sounds like there is a real commitment to giving power back to local people, and there will be more exciting announcements over the next days and weeks. The next general election must be held by June 2010 - it can't come soon enough.

Gordon Brown Stuffs Cambridge City on Free Bus Passes

Gordon Brown announced with much fanfare his new policy of nationwide free concessionary bus fares. From 01 April 2008, anyone over 60 or who is disabled, qualifies for a national bus pass which will allow free off-peak local travel anywhere in England. Gordon Brown also claimed that the scheme would be completely funded by the Government Nationally.

Sadly, Council tax payers in Cambridge City are about to discover just how worthless reassurances like this from the Prime Minister are - we are going to be well and truly stuffed.

At a briefing meeting last week ahead of the Strategy Scrutiny committee, we discussed the City Council's 'Medium Term Strategy' - its five year financial forecast that aims to keep the Council on a firm financial footing by looking at the challenges and opportunities ahead. Amongst these was an updated forecast for what the cost of Gordon Brown's 'free' concessionary bus fares would be to Cambridge City - the estimate has risen from £660k to approx £1.3 million pounds - that is the difference between what the City Council expects to pay Stagecoach and what the City Council expects to receive from the Government - a policy forced on the City by the Government, with costs over which the Council has little control.

Reading this post you might think that it can be dismissed as a party political rant - certainly Labour suggested the Council keeps quiet and lobbies the Government for more funding in the background. People certainly get more immune to Government claims and reassurances that turn out to be worthless. So we need to be absolutely clear here - this is an absolute scandal of massive proportions. To put it into context - this extra money that the Council needs to find accounts for 20% of the City Council part of Council Tax bills, just to fund another of Gordon Brown's broken promises.

I was elected on a pledge to put the Council Tax payer first - I have and will continue to argue that in the current economic climate our Councils need to tighten their belts like everyone else, make some challenging savings and cut or at least keep down rises in Council tax. The tragedy of this news is that the Council will have to find the challenging savings, but will still need to put up Council tax by an inflation busting 4.5% year on year, which is deeply depressing for those struggling with ever greater bills of all types. I still think we can and should find a way to restrict Council Tax costs that are rising out of control, but the first task is for the Council to lobby the Government and let them know the scale of the damage they have inflicted to City Council budgets. This story isn't going to go away any time soon.

City Council Annual Meeting

Yesterday was the City Council's annual meeting - and at this point of the year the group leaders make their annual statements, including the Liberal Democrats statement and the Labour statement about their priorities for the year ahead.

As I am not technically a group leader, I was only allowed to speak more briefly during the debate, and set out the areas Conservatives in the City would like to see some changes - see below.

Interestingly, the Green and independent have decided to form a group - and they made it very clear I wasn't welcome to join! Forming a group gives them various benefits, such as better access to briefings from officials, and the right to make an annual statement - in other words, for single Councillors such as myself and the Green Councillor from parties who field candidates across the City, being in a group could help me promote a City wide vision from our respective parties - not unreasonable when Conservatives secured 25% of the votes across Cambridge City this May. I had proposed a completely non-political grouping of the 3 individual Councillors, purely to secure the administrative benefits. By rejecting this, the Independent and Green have decided to form a political grouping, united by at least the policy of being anti-Conservative. I can think of many Conservatives in Castle work who will be surprised to discover the independent they voted for has actually made a point of being anti-Conservative from the start. But for the annual meeting, this grouping gave the Green party Councillor the opportunity to make an annual statement, but apart from attempted justification of why she had joined a group with an independent, there was nothing mentioned about the Green Party vision for Cambridge, or what they would like to do, given the opportunity. I have to say this was slightly surprising - it will be interesting to see how this confusingly named Green-Independent political group on the Council will develop.

Anyway, here is the Conservative Annual Statement Response - focussing on the key two themes I was elected on, namely putting the Council tax payer first, and insisting on high quality and transport infrastructure in new developments.

"Its good to be back, but I know I have a huge sense of responsibility, both to the residents of Coleridge who have elected me to be here, and to the 25% of voters in Cambridge City who voted Conservative and are desperate for a Conservative voice on the Council.

As such, I would like to respond to the Leaders annual statement by highlighting the changes Conservatives would like to see to the City Council’s priorities.

My first comment is about a major omission. People are finally realising that they are paying more and more in tax, and have not received anything like commensurate improvements in public services. As the 10p tax row has shown, particularly those on low incomes are now really suffering from the tax and squander policies of the government.

Nothing in either the Liberal Democrat or Labour Annual Statements will give any comfort to hard pressed Council tax payers that the City Council will be providing relief any time soon from the hugely increased tax burdens they face at a difficult time.

Successful Conservative administrations such as at Hammersmith and Fulham have proved that Conservatives can make a real difference to the tax burden, actually lowering Council tax by 3% for the second year running, and now is the time for this Council to play its part and try to stop future City Council tax rises above the rate of inflation.

Conservatives would like to see a bottom up revue of all Council spending, to reduce costs, consider alternative forms of service provision, and make sure outcomes justify the money spent. As David Cameron said this week ‘politicians are just shockingly casual about public money and how it's spent.’

It is difficult in the short period of time to identify savings, but here are a few suggestions.

This Council could do worse than to start by looking at scrapping the poorly attended Area Committees, with unwilling and inexperienced Councillors being asked to consider planning applications late into the night – or at the very least remove planning decisions from these meetings and reduce their frequency.

When I was last a Councillor, I was suggesting that we should prioritise using information technology and our website to reduce the costs of communicating with residents and all other stakeholders, a plea turned down at the time. So it is good to see that 6 years later this has now made it into the ruling group’s priorities – there must be other ways of using technology to improve efficiency.

Climate change has suddenly appeared high on the Council’s priorities. As convinced as I am of the need for action, I am convinced that the real progress can only be made at a national or international level. Whilst there may be some value in considering about how climate change might affect us in Cambridge, spending locally to try actually reducing climate change must be subject to serious scrutiny to measure the outcomes compared to the cost to local taxpayers.

Through these measures and more, we need to remember who is paying the bills and put the Council Tax payer first.

The biggest issue facing Cambridge today is planning for the growth agenda. I find it difficult to avoid using the word Stalinist to describe our planning system. Central government dictates to local authorities how many houses must be built and where, along with all manner of other social engineering through planning policy guidance. Local Councils chip in with their own set of demands, not least the rush to grab as many allocation rights to property as they can, subsidised by those who can least afford it – hard working families in lower paid private sector jobs. The result is all too often hideous new development, with insufficient transport, fought tooth and nail by current residents, like those in Coleridge faced with the East Cambridge development who just see loss of green space and transport chaos on Perne Road, Cherry Hinton Road and Newmarket Road, with no upsides whatsoever. People want their local representatives to stand up to this system.

I have high hopes that the change of government, now less than 2 years away will give more power to local residents to genuinely control how new development is planned, so that developers and the local Councils must start appealing to what people actually want. In the meantime, this Council must do all it can to ensure planning policies result in high quality developments, with distinctive design, green open spaces and highest environmental standards. An above all, we must ensure sufficient transport infrastructure is in place.

And on this issue, we have seen a complete lack of leadership from the Liberal Democrat administration. They failed to oppose Guided Bus, and this Council told the audit commission it was working well with the County Council to deliver a mass transport system in the County. Yet they have sought to undermine the scheme at a local level, to the detriment of a constructive working relationship with the County Council. Stop sitting on the fence, you should either have opposed the Guided Bus and offered an alternative, or publicly support it now to help make it work.

There is a similar lack of leadership shown on the issue of congestion charging. If, as appears likely, you are in favour in principle of congestion charging, then have the courage of your convictions and tell people what you really think.

A Conservative Council would put quality of developments and sufficient transport infrastructure at the heart of its planning policies.

On other issues, I look with dismay at this Council’s performance on recycling since I was last a member – as neighbouring Conservative controlled Huntingtonshire and Peterborough have moved ahead. Residents are demanding more user friendly and efficient recycling system for the City, and we should be delivering on this.

At a very local level, residents see litter on the streets, and cars parked on the verges – the Council’s performance needs to improve on these issues.

Problems with anti-social behaviour blight many parts of the City. CCTV and bans on new licenced premises can help, but there must be limits to the use of such draconian measures affecting everyone. We need to be much better at recording specific incidents and responding to them, with zero tolerance of people causing problems, and reminding people of their personal and social responsibilities.

In summary, Conservatives will be scrutinising spending at this Council, looking for cost savings and putting the taxpayer first. We want to see the Council spend less time writing strategies, meeting targets for targets sake, and jumping on the latest bandwagons. We should concentrate on delivering basic services well and at the lowest possible cost for Cambridge residents of today, and for Cambridge residents of the future, we must get growth and development right."

Council Tax

I received my Council Tax bill through the post this morning for the year ending April 2009. I've know for a while what was coming - again Cambridgeshire has been stuffed by an inadequate government grant, and the total bill has risen 4.9% - it shows just how out of touch Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling are when they say they will hit their 2% inflation target.

The County Council have raised Council tax by the maximum 5%, and the City Council by 4.5% (although the latter has more discretionary spending, and it looks like they have again been eating into reserves, although it is very difficult to tell from the accompanying booklet - I'm only an accountant, local government finance is still a black art of inpenetrable grant funding and fantasy accounting like the housing revenue account where the numbers can bear little relation to the economic reality)

The number at the bottom of the bill is now eye-watering. and incredibly even more money comes in from central government grants, under a formula which local politicians have no say over, so the total spending is huge. The trouble is, the governent continually underfunds Cambridgeshire (e.g. not adequately taking into account population growth when calculating grants), and then wants to try controlling how the money is spent, with a stream of directives and targets.

But Councillors can make a difference to bills locally. I know from experience as a Cambridge City Councillor in 2000-2004, a lot of time is spent in local government writing strategy documents and the like to tick boxes and meet government targets. I also know that Labour and Lib Dem Councillors will spend almost all their time considering service users. We need to focus back some attention on the Council tax payers, many of which are going to be struggling to pay the latest bills sent out. As a Councillor, I will fight for the Council tax payer - Consevative Councils have a track record of better quality services at lower costs, and they do it by continually looking for innovative solutions to problems (Like plans from Conservative controlled Essex County Council to run local post offices), or like Hammesmith and Fulham Council in London when the Conservatives took over after years of Labour mismanagement, just finding the waste that allows Council Tax to be reduced. Cambridge City Council desperately needs a Conservative voice to start standing up for the local Council Tax payers.