Shameful Coalition politicking continues ...

As a Cornwall Councillor, I am getting increasingly angry about how certain politicians in Cornwall continue to make ridiculous statements which they think will bolster their short-term political prospects.

Following the agreement of the Liberal Democrat budget amendment (also supported by the majority of Conservatives), the Council has produced a report which shows where the job cuts may fall and what services might be adversely affected.

But the Deputy Leader of the Lib Dem group on the unitary authority is attempting to rubbish the report, with yet more unfounded and shameful claims. These include the following: “There needs to be no cuts in services and no front line staff axed” and that: “There needs to be no loss to services, no cuts to localism and no cuts to the library service based on the budget passed by full council.”

What nonsense.

By contrast, about ten days ago Cornwall Council released information about how the Liberal Democrat “agency staff” budget amendment was “at best naïve and at worst nonsensical.“ Evidence was presented to show that the figures simply did not add up (see blog entry for 4th March). At that time, the Lib Dem response was one of silence.

Cornwall Council announces where Liberal Democrat / Conservative cuts may fall

Cornwall Council has published a statement which sets out the implications of the extra budgets voted through by the Liberal Democrats and their Conservative allies. It is all very disturbing and there will be both job cuts and a reduction in service provision.

Shown below are extracts from the statement, which explains where the cuts may fall:

Following the decision by the full Council to freeze the authority’s element of council tax, details of how the additional £4.672m savings will be delivered over the next twelve months will be reported to an extraordinary meeting of the Cabinet on Monday, 18 March.

The budget agreed by Members at the meeting of the full Council on 26 February is predicated on a reduction of £3.672m on spending on agency staff, with an additional £400,000 reduction in the budget of the Strategy, Localism and Communications Service and an additional £600,000 increased target for council tax collection.  However, as was made clear in the Section 151 officer’s comments at the meeting, it is not possible to reduce agency staff costs in the way that was envisaged by the original motion.

Following the budget setting meeting on 26 February individual directorates were allocated specific savings targets in line with the Council decision. The report sets out how these will be delivered and the resulting impact on services.

Adult Care and Support (£840,000 savings)

The directorate currently employs agency staff to cover staff sickness and leave in day centres and respite centres where a minimum level of staff is legally required, to cover key posts such as social workers where there have been recruitment delays and to provide flexibility when reshaping services to avoid the cost of redundancies.

The savings will be delivered by reducing the numbers of agency staff.  In some cases agency posts will be replaced by recruiting staff onto council contracts at lower rates.  Some posts will not be replaced and this may lead to short notice temporary closure of services such as day centres which rely on the flexibility of agency staff to cover sickness. 

Children, Schools and Families (£906,000 savings)

The directorate uses agency staff particularly within Children’s Social Work and children’s centres.  These include social workers, administrators, play workers, crèche assistances, interpreters, case co-ordinators and drivers.   There is already a system in place to train and develop social workers locally through the Council’s social work foundation so that as people graduate from that the Council can then use them to replace higher paid agency social workers.

The savings will be delivered by reviewing and reducing agency staff, extending recruitment times for vacancies and potentially making emergency savings through cuts to front line services, including early help and preventative services.

Shared Services (£358,000 savings)

This service includes face to face services such as libraries, one stop shops, mobile services and the telephone contact centre. 

Face to Face services use agency staff to cover staff sickness, leave and training - without this these services would not be able to remain open at all times due to minimum staffing levels. The contact centre only uses agency staff to cover increased demand due to specific short term events and these are funded by the service (s) concerned, not the contact centre.

£80,000 of the savings requirement will be delivered by enhanced savings through the Strategic Partnership. Approximately 60% of the remaining £278,000 will be delivered by reducing the operating and opening times of libraries and one stop shops and reducing the opening hours of the contact centre as quickly as possible.   Alongside these changes, in order to deliver the full savings requirement, there will also need to be a wider review of libraries, one stop shops and mobile services for consideration by the new Council. 

Environment (£387,000 savings)

The Directorate deliberately uses agency staff to provide flexibility during re organisation and to deliver important capital projects such as new roads.

The reduction in the number of staff will lead to delays in processing requests and applications for waste and parking services; a reduced ability to influence and deliver major highways and rail improvement schemes, and potential impact on English Heritage funded archaeological projects.

Chief Executive’s (£674,000 savings)

Although the directorate does not employ significant numbers of agency staff it has been allocated a savings target of £274,000 to cover the cost of support staff used to develop the Strategic Partnership.  It also has to deliver the £400,000 agreed in the budget.

£166,000 of these savings will be delivered by the People and Organisational Development service through a restructuring of two teams, resulting in the loss of four posts and a reduction in the council’s capacity to support organisational change.

The remaining £510,000 will come from the Strategy, Localism and Communications service.  This will be met by deleting 14 posts and stopping some specific activities, including the Council presence at the Royal Cornwall Show, the production of the staff magazine and reducing the spending on webcasting.

Legal, Democratic and Procurement service (£122,000 savings)

The service uses a small number of agency staff as necessary to provide temporary cover pending permanent appointments and cope with additional workloads and sickness and maternity cover.

The savings will be delivered by deleting four posts across the service and reducing the overtime budget for Elections. 

Information Services (£488,000 savings)

The service uses agency staff to bring in specific expertise when the authority does not have the skills or knowledge in house and to fill gaps when permanent staff are hard to recruit.

£400,000 of the savings will be delivered through enhanced savings through the Strategic Partnership, with the remaining savings coming from the renegotiation of contracts.

Finance (£320,000 savings)

While the service has used a number of agency and interim staff over the past few months while carrying out a comprehensive redesign of the service to deliver £650,000 savings and to support the implementation of the Strategic partnership and ERP projects, these projects are now at an end, with the majority of these agency staff due to leave the authority by the end of April.  This means that the savings will have to be made by reducing the number of permanent staff by around 12 posts.

As the service has a number of statutory duties, including budgetary and financial control and the financial closure of accounts the savings cannot be made in these areas.  This means the cuts will have to be made in Financial Strategy and Business Partnership team, which provides financial advice to directorates for major service change, and in Internal Audit and Risk Management.  This will result in the provision of minimum statutory cover and the loss of preventative work in fraud and audit, which, in the long term, will cost money and may impact on the Council’s value for money assessment made by the External Auditor.

While the authority’s overall budget is set by Full Council, it is the responsibility of the Corporate Directors to decide how to implement the savings targets allocated to their specific areas. 

'Short-sighted' budget puts Cornish jobs at risk – Morning Star

The Morning Star newspaper has covered the recent council tax budget vote / debacle, under the above heading. It was as follows:

Cornwall Council's "fag packet" budget puts services for the vulnerable and hundreds of jobs at risk, Unison warned today.

The union's regional organiser Stuart Roden slammed Tory and Lib Dem councillors for backtracking on "a sensible and realistic budget which would have protected front-line services" at last week's council meeting.

He said the decision to hand residents a council tax freeze at the expense of around 135 jobs and public services was down to "party political interference and blatant electioneering."

Opposition Mebyon Kernow Councillor Dick Cole called the budget "short-sighted" when the council faces a funding cut of £546 million over four years.

Unison also criticised the "rushed" decision by leaders of Cornwall Council to sell off IT services and transfer staff to BT.

Mr Roden said: "These type of deals have failed up and down the country. Most have ended in acrimony, contractual dispute and failure."

More on Lib Dem / Tory cuts

The Cornish Guardian has just published my last article for the time being. As I will be standing for re-election to Cornwall Council on 2nd May, I am not allowed a newspaper column during this period because of electoral law. The article is as follows:

There continues to be a significant fall-out from the recent budget vote at Cornwall Council.

Senior Lib Dems, supported by their Conservative allies, are arguing that their budget “cuts” amendment will magic up £3.672 million “in savings” by cutting “consultants and agency staff.”

And even though they were told that their budget proposal would lead to, at least, 135 job losses, certain councillors are still arguing that their proposal “will actually boost job numbers, not cut them.”

The Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats on the Council has even claimed that “agency staff are expensive - sometimes costing the council as much as double the rate of workers on contracts.” He has also claimed that “the bulk of the savings should be made by transferring agency workers onto contract. Same staff, same work, savings for the council.”

The MP for St Austell and Newquay has even got in on the act, claiming that the cuts will “result in more council jobs, not less.”

Without going into the rights and wrongs of temporary staffing, the Council has released information to show that the above claims do not add up and are just plain wrong. 

In a letter to members, the Leader of the Council has pointed out “the facts are that, while costs vary, in most cases it costs roughly the same to employ an agency worker as it does to employ a permanent member of staff when all the costs are taken into account.” He added that “the suggestion that we can actually create jobs by transferring agency workers to become permanent members of staff is at best naïve and at worst nonsensical.”

He also informed members that “work is currently taking place on identifying how these cuts can be made and a report setting out the implications for individual services will be published as quickly as possible so that staff who may be at risk of redundancy have the earliest possible notice and members of the public using these services can start making alternative arrangements.”

It is a worrying time. And I hope that those Liberal Democrat and Conservative councillors who voted for the budget cuts will admit that they have got it wrong, and apologise to those staff members who may lose their jobs and those local residents who may find that their local services are under threat.

“Mebyon Kernow – The Cornish UKIP?”

Nathan Hollow from the political lobbying and media relations company PLMR has today published an interesting blog entitled “Mebyon Kernow – The Cornish UKIP?” It is well worth a read.

Nathan is a Liberal Democrat who worked as intern in the parliamentary office of Andrew George MP.  He was also responsible for the strategic management of the AV referendum campaign across Cornwall for the Liberal Democrats.

It is not every day that someone refers me as a “charismatic leader who appeals to the masses” – thanks for that Nathan. He also notes that I have “been an outspoken critic of the unpopular Conservative-Independent coalition which runs the Council,” and he suggests that MK could pick up increased support because of disillusionment with the Westminster Coalition parties.

The full blog can be read at: http://www.plmr.co.uk/blog/comments/mebyon-kernow-the-cornish-ukip