The Labour Group Leader reacts to the news that Swindon Borough Council has budgeted to spend £11.5m to pay-off the interest payments on its debts in the 2012/13 financial year. This is an increase of £1.5m from the 2011/12 Council budget.

The Council’s existing debt is £80m, however it is expected that this will increase in the 2012/13 financial year, with the Council already committing to borrowing £15m on the Union Square development.

When the Conservative Group took overall control of Swindon Borough Council from Labour in 2004, the Council had a surplus of £6.6m.

While Swindon Borough Council has a debt of £80m, Southampton City Council has a debt of £33m and Bath & North-East Somerset Council has a debt of only £13.9m

I believe it is utterly disgraceful that this Tory administration has racked up debts of £80m after inheriting balanced books from Labour. This has resulted in the Council having to pay £11.5m in interest payments next year. This money could have been given back to Swindon’s Council taxpayers or could have been used to virtually avoid making cuts at all next year.

Under Labour Swindon Council had a surplus of £6.6m
Under the Conservatives Swindon Council now has a debt of £80m
resulting in interest payments of £11.5m, next year

This administration is completely out of control and it is Council-tax payers who are paying the price, paying £11.5m next year just servicing the interest payments on the Council’s debt. And what concerns me more is that with the commitment this administration has made to borrow £15m to build a car park at Union Square, the interest payments Swindon’s Council-tax payers are paying now looks set to only increase in future years.

At the next Full Council Meeting the Labour Group will be calling on the Conservative administration to explain how they got the Council in to this mess and how they plan to get the Council out of it. My worry is that they have no such plan and are content in allowing Council-taxpayers to pay off their massive debts.

Only a new and reforming Labour administration will be able to bring a culture of responsibility back to managing the Council’s finances. And we would do this firstly by establishing a credible plan on how the Council will reduce its £80m debt and help stop the current injustice that Council-taxpayers are having to pay for the Tories profligate spending.

Councillor Jim Grant
Swindon Labour Group Leader

At the end of this week the Leader of the Swindon Labour Group called on Swindon Council’s Leader and Deputy Leader to resign over their involvement in the Wi-Fi project.  In this exclusive blog the Swindon Labour Group Leader explains why he took this decision.

On Friday’s BBC Radio Swindon “Drive Time” programme I called on both Swindon Borough Council’s Leader and Deputy Leader to resign from their Cabinet positions due to their involvement over Wi-Fi.

Although there have been bitter disputes with the Leader of the Council over his highly interpretive use of Swindon Borough Council’s written constitution to get the £400,000 loan to Digital City made without informing Councillors or Council-taxpayers’, there are ultimately three reasons why Swindon Council’s leader and deputy leader should resign from their senior positions within the Council.

Firstly, I believe both Councillors Bluh and Perkins are culpable because they have both failed to recover even a penny of the £400,000 loan to Digital City, despite the company being contracted to pay back all of the money to the Council by October this year.

Secondly, I have called for this because both Councillors Bluh and Perkins have consistently failed to explain to Swindon taxpayers where their £400,000 has gone. This destroys all credibility the council has to say to taxpayers about how their council is being open and transparent in using their money.

And thirdly, I have called for this because the council’s reputation is being harmed at a national level, with the wi-fi failure being covered in the national press, including the Guardian newspaper.

The Leader of Swindon Council ultimately has to take the rap for this as it was his unilateral decision to agree to loan Digital City £400,000 of Council-taxpayers’ money, with Council members and even most Cabinet members not even being informed of the project.

However, the Deputy Leader of the Council does have to take much of the responsibility for Digital City not paying back any of the £400K Council-taxpayer loan since it is he is acting on behalf of the Council as a Director of Digital City.

Now I understand that some will suggest my resignation calls are politically motivated and that if Swindon council-taxpayers’ want Councillors Bluh and Perkins out they can exercise their right to vote them out. However this is beyond political parties. This is about two men who have taken actions unilaterally in the name, and on behalf of, the Council which have lost £400,000 of Council-taxpayers’ money.

And because it is these two councillors, and only these two councillors, who have made such mistakes, I believe it is them who have to go.

Councillor Jim Grant
Leader of the Labour Group

Earlier this month the Kings Fund published a report (available here) on Social Enterprises in the state-funded health and Social Care sector. The Labour Group Leader, Councillor Jim Grant, believes the recommendations from the report need to be taken seriously by Swindon Borough Council.

The report published by the Kings Fund on Social Enterprises in the state-funded health and social care sector could not be timelier for Swindon Borough Council. With Swindon’s adult social care social enterprise set to be fully functional by October this year this report gives the Council an opportunity to reflect on whether its social enterprise is as good as it can be.

This report was based on conversations the Kings Fund took with leaders of health and social care social enterprises across England and its three main recommendations are:

• Calls for longer-term contracts public contracts for Social Enterprises in order to provide “effective and sustainable” business models for social enterprises
• Ensuring that the leaders of the social enterprise have the necessary business competencies to manage the risks
• And ensuring that external stakeholders are engaged in the decision-making of the organisation, as well as staff

Reading through the report, I see much that Swindon Borough Council’s Social Enterprise can learn from it, especially the report’s main recommendations. Now is the time to review whether the Social Enterprise meets all the recommendations of the report. Failure to do this before the Social Enterprise becomes fully operational would be a disservice to the organisation’s staff and service users.

Ensuring that staff are not engaged in the decision-making of the organisation at the expense of the service users On another issue I read with great interest the Federation of Small Businesses’ assessment that Swindon is failing to retain its top young talent within the town. The FSB have said something that I think we all knew however has never really hit home.

The solutions for the Council to retain our top young talent are not simple and cannot be solved in the short-term. However if the Council fails to address this then it could have significant implications to Swindon’s long-term sustainability and I welcome the debate the Swindon FSB have started.

Councillor Jim Grant

Swindon Labour Group Leader

Labour Group Leader, Jim Grant, calls on a new administration to take control of Swindon Council in order to deliver value for money to Swindon Council-tax Payers’.

Since May’s Local Elections I have been, along with my fellow Labour colleagues, knocking on doors around the town. One of the things I have been trying to find out when doing this is what people most want from their Council. The answer that consistently came back from my question was simple and straightforward. Local residents want a Council that demonstrates value for money from their Council-taxes. What’s more, residents don’t believe they are currently getting value for money from their Council-taxes.

Local residents’ criticism could not be more demonstrable than at Tuesday’s Audit Committee Meeting which I attended, where members of the Conservative Group on the committee voted down Councillor Des Moffatt’s (Lab, Western) request to have a full audit of every single penny of the £400,000 of Council-tax payers’ money loaned to Digital City (the Wi-Fi company).

The Conservative Group’s £400K loan to Digital City and the failure of Digital City to start paying Council-tax payers’ any of that loan back, has become a shining example of why local residents don’t feel their money is being well-spent. That is why it seems nonsensical that the Conservative Group wouldn’t be prepared to support a full audit of the £400K loan in order to understand where that loan went and to find out lessons for the future, particularly as the Council Leader has said that he intends to do more of these kinds of deals in the future.

I think the public are looking for an administration who acts differently. They are looking for an administration that treats every single penny of their money with the respect it deserves, rather than an administration who relishes making dangerous decisions which risks Council-tax payers’ money on fantasy projects.

If I am elected as Leader of the Council following May’s 2012 elections, this will be my top priority.

Cllr Jim Grant
Labour Group Leader

FACTS ON VAT:

As Nick Clegg warned before the election the VAT changes are a bombshell for all of us.  Costs on average per year will be:

• £125 for a single pensioner
• £275 for a pensioner couple
• £225 for a one parent family
• £450 for a couple with children

Add that to the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development’s estimate that the 20% VAT rate will cost 250,000 jobs over 5 years.

And the fact that both Clegg and Osborne in April said they wouldn’t increase VAT.  Can you believe a Tory-led Government?

FACTS ON THE SWINDON BUDGET

Despite the Tories and Liberals on Swindon Council saying that the budget settlement from the Government was “better than expected”, with cuts of only 2.4% – it was actually a 19% reduction over 2 years in the main Government ‘formula’ support (£61.2m in 10-11 to £49.5 in 12-13).  Whereas some neighbouring counties have lost only 1 or 2%!

And remember what has already happened in Swindon – cuts of £5.3m in adult social care and £968,000 in children’s services .  Together  with threatened job losses of 10,000 to 12,000, including up to 350 in Wiltshire police.

And let’s remember the other Tory changes since May: wages have been frozen, retirement age has risen, pensions are being attacked, the tuition fee cap has tripled and Education Maintenance Allowance has been scrapped.  Bankers are left unscathed while ordinary people pay the bill!!

What to do about it ? – join the Labour Party (see the link opposite – there’s an offer for the under 27s) or send a message of support to swindonlabour@gmail.com.

When eventually the dust settles on the Wi-fiasco the simple lesson we may learn is ‘do not make decisions in isolation’. We learnt at the Scrutiny meeting April 8th that Rod Bluh did not take the Wi-fi project to Cabinet because he could not trust his cabinet colleagues.

These are the people he hand picked and appointed to look after your interests. What message does that send? He was concerned that Cabinet Members may leak details to others. Leaks are usually the escape route for concerns that individuals are afraid to address formally. Although in this case some of the Wi-fi leaks were the result of Tory infighting.

Whilst Rod used semantics to refute the point I made about his lack of trust in his Cabinet this probably was the reason for the mess that followed. Very few would say the Cabinet System is perfect however it can stop foolish decision making and dictatorial behaviour. Wise minds helped to develop the Cabinet System to speed up decision making and to prevent the abuse of public trust. To avoid the Cabinet System is a mistake, ‘poor decisions get exposed’.

Connecting People Connecting Places has an objective of listening to public concerns and addressing these concerns. This episode has re-enforced my view that the public can detect when something is wrong and public diligence has shown that the scrutiny process can be used to expose failures of good governance. However it has been hard work to overcome the tide of political interest. Some public questions were only answered after decisions had been made. Follow up questions were not possible because people were not armed with the relevant information. Thank god for ‘Talkswindon’ keeping the public informed. This failure to answer questions prior decision making is something I will follow up with the Borough Solicitor.

My dissatisfaction with the Wi-fi decision making process is well known. What has disappointed me is that many of the Tory back bench members who have previously demonstrated they are capable of doing the right thing did not stand up and do the right thing on Wi-fi. They have lacked the courage to do the right thing and only one councillor from the opposition saw that the way the decision was made was the core problem. It is ‘black box’ politics; present a decision that has to be accepted without involvement or demonstration of value. This type of decision making is designed to disenfranchise democracy. It is the types of decision making that creates suspicion of motive and whilst Rod was concerned about people doubting his integrity he failed to recognise he was the architect of the challenge. It is clear to many but not the Tories that you can not just go ahead and make ‘deals’ on your own or just with an inner circle.

The Swindon Advertiser has reported that Rod has made an agreement with the Labour Group leader, Derique Montaut, to refer the Wi-fiasco to external enquiry. The referral to an external auditor was already in place, before Rod sought to make an agreement with the Derique, however the change in approach is welcome. I suspect this was a way of limiting further damage to the Tories. However I can not stand by and allow assertions regarding officer time, damaging publicity, costs to the tax payer etc to go unchallenged. THESE ARE ALL THE RESULT OF POOR DECISION MAKING AND THE AVOIDANCE OF THE CABINET SYSTEM.

Even now Tories have sought to displace responsibility for their actions. Those present at Scrutiny on April 19th saw the attempt to shift the responsibility for incurred of costs to the delays caused by democratic challenge. Members of the public present must have been dismayed by the lack of responsibility shown by the decision makers. As I stated at the meeting the External Auditor will state whether the Wi-fiasco was the result of poor paper work administration or some other reason. Even without the result of the investigation I hope this will be last we see of ‘Black Box’ politics. I know now many will be on their guard to stop the by-passing of democratic process.

Cllr Bob Wright, Central

This is my best recollection of what I said at the Council’s special cabinet meeting on 31/3/2010 on the WiFi project that the Swindon Tories have got themselves mired in.

Following a preamble, where I criticized the accuracy of the agenda item report proposing a further draw- down of the loan of £450K to Digital City,  I responded to Councillor Bluh’s criticism of the Labour group’s alleged failure to define the reasons why we thought the process of making a loan to Digital City was outwith proper procedure.  I reminded Councillor Bluh that I had made the following points during the first scrutiny meeting on December 15th 2009.

1. The resolution used to authorise delegated powers to officers relates to regeneration of the Town Centre and dates from 2008.  It is an abuse of process to use this resolution to justify making a loan to Digital City since the resolution dealt with Treasury Management and enables the Council to pump-prime redevelopment in the town centre,  should the opportunity present – at the then start of the economic downturn.
2. CIPFA rules (CIPFA being the government backed rules by which officials engaged in public finance operate) stipulate that credit ratings should be obtained before any loans are made.  This was not done.
3. There are only three ways to make a decision on financial matters not catered for in the budget, these being (a) proper delegated officer authority, (b) by lead member/s decision note (circulated to opposition shadow lead members and ward members if appropriate) and (c) a cabinet decision on a prepared report.
4. What had happened here is that in exercising delegated authority the paid staff of the Council had sought political cover by getting the leader of the Council and the lead member for resources to sign off on a briefing note.

I went on to say:  ”That is the past, what is before you tonight is the officers seeking political cover before exercising a delegated power.  My colleagues are all of the opinion that WiFi should be supported as a concept. I do not share that view,  I believe you are being asked to throw good money after bad. The claim that there are good results on performance ignores the most important performance indicator:  paying customers for the scheme are nowhere near the target.  The jury is still out on whether this will work.   Please reconsider your intentions.”

Following input from Councillor Bluh, I replied for the record that, “I believe that the paid staff of the Council, including Hitesh Patel, sought to defend the position of Swindon Borough Council given the political instructions they were under.”

At the end of the debate Councillor Bluh implied that we and others sought to maker the issue political.  However he had orchestrated the politicization by inviting a national figure of the Conservative party to launch the scheme, flanked by the two Tory Swindon Parliamentary Candidates.

Des Moffatt,  Councillor Western