Conservative budget - insincere and opaque (Oxfordshire Liberal Democrats)

Oxfordshire Liberal Democrats <info@oxfordshirelibdems.org.uk>

Conservative budget - insincere and opaque

February 10, 2009 12:06 PM
By Cllr Janet Godden in County Council

My criticisms of the Conservative budget are first that it lacks sincerity, and second it lacks transparency.

It lacks sincerity in declining to recognise any difference between 'cash releasing efficiency savings' and service reductions. If there really are genuine cash-releasing efficiency savings still to be made then the cabinet is much at fault for not having made them before. If the cabinet is simply paying lip service to the diktats of the Labour government and of Lord Gershon, this must be about the only time it has not made a song and dance about the fact.

If someone's annual budget requirement increases from £110k to £120k but he is only given £115k, the result is that he has a £5k shortfall in real terms. And what he does is not 'save', but pares and prunes and cuts, while those who hold the purse strings boast of having given him an extra £5. That is exactly like the situation within this council.

The Liberal Democrat Group realises that there is not enough cash to go round and that the Council cannot spend money that it does not have. We have had no alternative but to accept some of the service reductions into our own budget; but the difference is that we do not try to pretend that they are not reductions either in service or equally important service quality. Some of them shriek from the page: 'Review large packages of home support'; 'Further review of high cost replacements'; 'Further reduction in the contract uplift to Adult social care contracts'. Unavoidable some of them may be, but don't let's call them savings. Incidentally it's surprising how rarely the word 'quality' comes up in the Leader's introduction to this budget.

Lack of transparency is around the absence of proper impact statements showing the specific effects on individual services of all these reductions alias savings. These were provided two years ago and very useful they were too. Last year we were told that they were too difficult for us to understand and we should not bother our heads with the impact, just look at the saving in cash.

There is still a lack of transparency around Shared Services. This year Social and Community Services faces a raid of £443k from Shared Services, with set against it an equivalent sum for extra income generation resulting from more timely assessments. Which is what Shared Services was supposed to be doing all along. I think we want our money back from last year. This group asked last year for more clarity around the shared services budget and business plan. We asked again this year. It is a very large area not to be accountable to members through the budget process.

Insincere and opaque. I cannot vote for the Conservative budget.