At a meeting of the Heston and Cranford Area Committee (Monitoring) held on Thursday, 24 February 2005 at 6:30 pm at Civic Centre, Lampton Road, Hounslow. Present: Councillor Dhillon,G (Vice Chair) Councillors Chaudhary, Gill,M, Gill,S, Lal, Sangha and Vaught. Gursh Gill Apologies for Absence Councillors Bath, Gill,SCS, Hughes,E, Kad and Mann. 9. Apologies for absence, declarations of interest or any other communications from Members With the permission of the Chair, Gursh Gill, Co-optee, presented a petition from residents about the phone masts at the junction of the Great West Road and Vicarage Farm Road. Residents were objecting to the masts on the grounds that the emissions from the masts could damage the health of residents, particularly children and the elderly. They felt that the masts should not be located in a residential area. 10. Budget Information - 2005/06 The Chair welcomed Councillor Ellar, Leader of the Council and Councillor Sharma, Deputy Leader to the meeting. Councillor Ellar explained that 30% of the total budget came from Council Tax and 70% from a Government Grant. The Council was in a vulnerable position if the Government Grant was insufficient. The London Borough of Hounslow had received a poor settlement this year. £9.55M extra money corresponded to a 4.95% increase in grant. The Council needed to spend less to avoid large increases in Council Tax. The Council had made savings of more than £50m over the last few years and had performed well, as confirmed by the Corporate Performance Assessment (CPA) ranking of ‘good’ from the Audit Commission. Top marks had been awarded for managing resources. However, the settlement for all the neighbouring boroughs was higher. For example, Hillingdon had received an increase of 8.1%. Had Hounslow been awarded the outer London average settlement, which was an increase of ½%, it would have made £1M difference to the Budget. The reason for the lesser grant related to a difference of view with the Office of National Statistics about falling population. Hounslow had challenged this view as incorrect and was engaged in discussion with the Office of National Statistics about the Council’s methodology. Other authorities had raised the issue. However, although there would be an increase in grant if the Council’s methodology were accepted, this would not affect the forthcoming financial year.
The Government position was to be tough on local authorities, with a strict regime of inspection and audit. Authorities had been warned of the risk of capping. The guideline given by the Minister for Local Government was that increases should be under 5% and authorities breaching this would be capped and not allowed to set their own Council Tax. The Council was required to passport 100% of the Schools’ Budget directly to schools, which meant that they were obliged to give a substantial part of the Government increase directly to schools, leaving only £1.59M available for all other services. The Budget breakdown for 2004/2005 showed 52.2% went on Education, followed by 22.2% on Social Services. Hence two service areas spent ¾ of the overall budget. Priorities had been drawn from the consultation with the Residents’ Panel of 2000 residents from across the community. Environmental issues, Highways, Community Safety and Education were all areas of concern. This information was fed back and used to inform decisions to try to meet these concerns in the Budget. In addition, changes in Children’s Services imposed new duties for the local authority to provide integrated Children’s Services. For 2005/2006, there were limited options to keep within a maximum increase of 5%. Without cuts, the Council would need to set the Council Tax at 9.6%. Savings of £3-4M would be required to stay within the 5%. It had been decided that only one option would be offered, with the reasons explaining why. Councillor Ellar and Councillor Sharma provided the following information in response to questions: a) The increase in Council Tax would be just below 5%. The addition of the precept levied by the Mayor for GLA services would bring the total increase to between 5 – 5.1%. b) The list of priorities, in response to the findings from the Resident’s Panel were: � The condition of the street scene � Community safety C � The needs of young people � New duties to integrate children’s services � Improving educational attainment � Continuing costs of Social Care Services. The largest increase in spend, outside of education, would be street scene and street cleaning. There was a commitment to increase funding for youth services, which currently received a substantial amount of funding from the voluntary sector. c) There would be no cuts to front-line services and officers had been asked to specifically identify savings that would not impact on the public. Redundancies may be needed to make the savings, but these would be very low and possibly non- existent. d) Improvements to the transportation of Asian children to school from home rather than pick-up points had not been a consideration in the setting of Budget. However, Councillor Ellar was willing to support representations to the Director of Lifelong Learning, Leisure and Cultural Services and the Lead Member, over improvements in the service.
e) Non-domestic rates were paid by businesses into a central pot, which was then redistributed to Local Authorities at a percentage rate. The Government had considered allowing Local Authorities to keep additional revenue if there was a disproportionate increase in the number of businesses in the Borough. This had not happened in Hounslow yet, but there could be extra resources available if the non- domestic rate increased for next year. f) It was anticipated that the new conference facility for the Civic Centre would begin to make a profit after 3 years, but no assumption about income from the facility had been included in the Business Plan. g) The Council shared concerns over an increase in Council Tax for people on fixed incomes. The Council could not offer subsidies unless there was a change in Government policy, but was trying to encourage people on low incomes to claim benefits available to them. It was expected that the Government would carry out a review because of public pressure over this issue. The Chair thanked Councillor Ellar and Councillor Sharma for their presentation. The meeting finished at 7:24 pm.
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