County Councillors short listed for awards

It was my pleasure to nominate a numbers of our councillors for the 2012 LGiU and CCLA C’llr Achievement Awards. This year there was a large increase in the number of entries for the awards, so it was a reflection on the calibre of our councillors that they have been short listed.

COMMUNITY CHAMPION OF THE YEAR
Sir Peter Brown (Cambridgeshire County Council)

SCRUTINEER OF THE YEAR AWARD
Samantha Hoy (Cambridgeshire County Council)

ONLINE COUNCILLOR OF THE YEAR AWARD
Steve Tierney (Cambridgeshire County Council)

BRUCE-LOCKHART MEMBER SCHOLARSHIP
Shona Johnstone (Cambridgeshire County Council)

The full short list can be found here:

http://blog.lgiu.org.uk/2012/01/cllr-achievement-awards-2012-shortlist-annouced/

The winners in each category will be announced at a ceremony in Westminster City Hall on 27th February, 2012. Several high profile speakers are expected to attend, including Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles (confirmed).

Shared Services to expand – Norwich

Cabinet tomorrow will consider expanding the scope of LGSS to provide finance, IT and Revenue and Benefits services for Norwich City Council. Northamptonshire CC’s Cabinet will consider the proposal in February.

The LGSS Joint Committee, which I chair, met on Friday afternoon and has made a positive recommendation to both Cabinets about the deal.

Expanding LGSS is expected to generate additional savings through economies of scale and to add capacity and capability.

I know that Norwich City are very excited by the deal which will bring greater expertise to them. LGSS continues to lead the way, nationaly, in sharing back office functions. Great work by the team.

Superfast broadband – we are off and running

We have published something called the ‘prior information notice’ along with Peterborough City Council to try and secure private sector investment in broadband services across the two Councils’ areas.

The notice makes clear that there may be £6.75M available from Broadband Delivery UK and around £23M from the two Councils but the project to delivery broadband to a minimum of 90% of premises is envisaged to cost between £70M – £100M.

This is the start of the journey to see our ambition of making this county “open for business” become a reality. Very exciting.

Last year the Lib Dems wanted to put up council tax 3.4%

2011-alternative-budget Lib demLets see what the Lib Dems will say this year about a council tax rise. Last year in the Lib Dem alternative budget they wanted to raise council tax by 3.4%, we held it at 0%.

So, I wonder what they will do this year? They could not really speak out for a 0% rise for risk of being accused of flip floping around in the never ending search for votes(surely not I hear you say).

They never want to support anything we do so I guess 2.95% is out of the question.

I am guessing the only alternative they have is to press on with the 3.4% rise that they so passionately wanted last year.

Lets wait and see. Breaking news – rumour has it they are going to flip flop again.

Bookmakers update:

Flip flop to 0% 2/1
Stick with existing Lib Dem policy of 3.4% 33/1
Support 2.95% 100/1

Budget proposals

25/01/2012
Budget proposals

The Council today published its Integrated Plan (IP) for the five years starting in April 2012. The papers are now available on our website.

The Council’s priorities are at the heart of the spending plans. They are:

Developing Cambridgeshire’s economy
Helping people live independent and healthy lives
Supporting and protecting vulnerable people.

This year’s budget proposals continue to be driven by the financial pressures on public services and radical changes across the County Council, but also by a much greater focus on investing in services, infrastructure and our future economic and social well-being.

My Cabinet has listened to the public and produced proposals to increase spending in adult social care, invest in improving roads, transport and broadband, provide more school places as well as boosting enterprise and growth.

Following a public consultation it is also proposed to raise Council Tax by 2.95 per cent to protect vital front line services and avoid a multi-million pound funding gap in the future.

By proposing raising council tax and not taking the one off payment offered by Government, the Cabinet believes extra money can be invested in front-line services. It also helps avoid a financial black hole of around £30m pounds over the next five years that the Council would have to fill in future years when the Government funding would not be available.

The proposals would mean an increase of £30.87 a year for a Band D household.

Investment and savings

The proposals include capital investment totalling £610m over the next five years to make sure Cambridgeshire is open for business and to support prosperity, education, jobs and economic growth. The proposals also include £43m in savings this year, which follow Government cuts of almost 25 per cent to the Council’s revenue grant over the last two years.

The proposals also confirmed the planned reduction of around 154 full time equivalent posts from the County Council, as announced to colleagues in November 2011. Between January 2011 and January 2012, the County Council’s workforce has shrunk by 381 full-time equivalent posts.

We’ll be investing £33m in the road network, in the coming year, with a total of £90m of new capital investment in roads over the next 5 years, increasing spending by over £6m on supporting vulnerable people in Adult Social Care and investing £77m in additional school places.

In the service areas, the key proposals and headlines are:

Children’s Services – In Children’s Services, the challenges and opportunities include demand growth, the impacts of academies, locality working, prevention work, children’s centres, transformation such as social work for families and opportunities to trade services. Savings and efficiencies of £10m are identified, with the longer term view including the expansion of support for vulnerable families, early years provision and schools building.

Environment Services – In Environment Services, challenges and opportunities include growing innovative service-delivery models such as transport franchises, improved partnership working, and making sure that infrastructure projects such as Chesterton Station and superfast broadband produce the right outcomes and returns on investment. Savings and efficiencies of £3.4m are identified, with the longer term view focused on making sure the county’s significant growth potential is realised.

Adult Social Care – In Adult Social Care, challenges and opportunities include the growth in demand especially among older people aged over 85, changes in the healthcare system, expanding prevention work and reablement, transformation in services like day care and improving operational information. Savings and efficiencies of £26 million are identified, with the longer-term view focused on service modernisation, closer working with partners and the prevention agenda.

Corporate Services/LGSS – For Corporate Services and LGSS, challenges and opportunities include meeting the needs of front-line services, supporting innovation and entrepreneurship, good governance and providing exceptional added-value services. Savings and efficiencies of £3.8m are identified, with the longer term view involving focused on using resources effectively through maximising the contact centre’s role, better procurement, reducing management costs and expanding LGSS.

The changes over the past year and during the next have been a difficult challenge across the organisation. But I have been hugely impressed with how people and teams have supported one another.

What happens next?

Cabinet will discuss the IP proposals on Tuesday 31 January, before they are debated and formally approved by Full Council on Tuesday 21 February.

Where have all the people gone?

In November 2011 the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published indicative population estimates based on a revised method for estimating long term immigration.

This has resulted in the population estimate for Cambridgeshire for mid 2010 being revised down by some 15000, mainly due to the reduction in the population of Cambridge City. Can this be true? It seems that it is the method that is disputed.

Officers met with ONS in Jan to discuss our concerns. This can affect our funding at the County but more significantly has a huge impact on Cambridge City finances.

I have written a joint letter, with the Leader of Cambridge City Council, to ministers to see if this can be corrected.

Budget

The Cabinet Paper setting out the Council’s budget Plan proposals is now being printed ready for release tomorrow. This is not a light document having over 500 pages.

Tomorrow morning my Cabinet and I will be briefing all County Councillors on our budget proposals. This is different to previous years when officers have briefed members. It seems right if we are making the judgements we should give the briefings.

The papers will be made public in the afternoon following a staff briefing some time around 2pm. Most of today has been focused, so far, on ensuring our readiness for tomorrow.

Cabinet meets on the 31st and will need to decide what they want to recommend to a full Council Meeting.

Judgement

A Conservative was walking along a knife edge cliff with a labour councillor and a Lib Dem councillor. He was asked which one would he would push off first? The obvious answer was the Lib Dem. Wrong. Business before pleasure so Labour first.

Chief Exec and Leader in prison

Not a heading I would want to see very often!!!!

Yesterday Mark and I went to meet the new Governor and some of his senior team at Littlehey Prison and Youth Offender Institute near Grafham Water. We managed to get in, avoid breaking any of the rules and get out again without incedent. Good news for us at least.

We discussed how we are thinking much more about place and the people of Cambridgeshire rather than our own organisations.

It was good to learn more about their work with inmates to prevent reoffending. We had a look around their workshops at the things they do to help equip prisoners with skills to help them secure work on release. I was concerned that a college from out of county were supporting this activity rather than one of our fine establishments. I have followed up on this.

The conversation with Stewart – who gets out on Friday – about his experience in the welding and fabrication workshop was inspirational.

The Governor is keen to expand the prison’s and YOI’s external links and to play a part as a community leader. We will be linking to ensure we work well with Littlehey in our Family Intervention Project if a family member is in the prison or YOI. There were a number of other ideas too that we’ll pick up.

Cabinet today

What a great start to Cabinet today. We had a petition from Megan Carnie who was concerned about the speed of traffic in her local area. What was amazing was she was only 13 yet spoke confidently and clearly. When I spoke to her and her dad before the meeting started she told me she was nervous but if that was the case she carried it all off wonderfully. As a result of the petition the cabinet member responsible will be visiting the area to see the issue for himself. Young people engaging in this way should be encouraged and supported.

We discussed RECAP (waste) and approved the partnership charter with other authorities. We also considered a speed limit review on the A1301. It was clear that listening to local people was making a difference.

Next up was the Heavy Commercial Vehicle strategy. This is a difficult issue because on one hand we want HCV activity as it supports business and economic wellbeing but on the other hand all our villages are concerned that lorries are affecting the quality of life. This strategy is intended to give a set of tools to local communities to evaluate the impact so that they are fully involved. It also helps to take the emotion out of the decision making process by enabling us to focus on evidence based impacts. Good, if a little negative, contribution from Lib Dem transport spokesman Cllr Van de Ven. Good work in a difficult area.

And then politics briefly took over. The Lib Dem leader Cllr Bourke, spoke to the next item, Cambridge Park and Ride Operations. I know Cllr Bourke does his homework but he has yet to understand minority group politics is about influencing. Instead he thinks making huge political statements at Cabinet might attract media interest. This simplistic view on life cuts no ice with anyone at Cabinet, politicians or press. Sensible comments get a sensible reply.

Next up was a fantastic paper on mental health in older people. This is a top priority for this council. Prevention, prevention, prevention is the way forward. Budget cuts and demographics are working against us but this Cabinet are determined to invest in prevention. How we find the finance will be subject to another blog later.

A finance report on progress against targets was interesting. It showed a small underspend predicted for the end of the year. From my perspective year end is but one point in the bigger 5 year plan and we have a lot more to save yet. Cllr Sadiq (Labour) thought we ought to spend it all before year end. Isn’t that how Labour got us into all this trouble nationally?

The meeting finished discussing local energy investments and a new bus stop in St Ives.

All in all a good cabinet.