Holding to Account

At least once a year, usually around this time, every one of the Portfolio Holders in Medway Council's Cabinet comes before the Scrutiny Committee that scrutinises their portfolio. This is to give an account of what they have achieved during the past year and to answer questions from members of the committee. In a couple of cases, the one portfolio spreads across two committees so they are called to both.

One such is the Leader of the Council, Rodney Chambers (pictured here) whose portfolio covers both Regeneration and Democracy & Governance. Last night was his appointment with the Regeneration and Development Scrutiny Committee, and I was there as a substitute for an absent colleague.

It is no doubt tempting to ask a pre-arranged "friendly" question -- as Labour MPs so often (and rather obviously!) do at Prime Minister's Questions in Parliament. I don't believe in that, though, and prepare my own questions which are often quite challenging. The clue to this is how quickly and glibly the Portfolio Holder answers, especially at the start of his/her reply. When I ask a question, there is usually a lot of obvious thinking going on to formulate the answer. This happened last night, as usual...

As always at such events, I tried to think of something appropriate to ask, on this occasion bearing in mind that I was not a regular member of the committee. Thus I was able to answer a general question that could shed some light on why so much is happening now and did not do so before we took over running the council. I am sure that many people now living or working in Medway who were not here while places like Chatham began a long period of decline would find that interesting.

Indeed, I reasoned, as a relative newcomer here myself, it must seem strange that so much is going on at once, with disruption to places such as the aforementioned Chatham, whereas if this had been done earlier -- when traffic was not so heavy -- there would have been less pain. I commented that I was aware that all the preliminary work toward much of this (including Chatham and Rochester Riverside) was done by the early 'nineties -- and that would not have been conducted (at Council Tax-payers' expense) if there were no realistic prospect of taking those projects forward. This point was important as, with the change of political make-up of the former Rochester-upon-Medway City Council in 1991, these projects suddenly stalled.

I think the Leader was being rather generous in his reply, in that he did not blame the Labour administration of the period from 1991 to 2000 for sitting on all this while Chatham in particular fell into ever greater decay. He suggested that a city-sized council couldn't have afforded to invest in the necessary land assembly. I pointed out that the predecessor council had some £210 million is reserves in 1991 (most of which had gone by 2000, by the way!) but as Cllr Chambers came from the Gillingham half of the constituent parts of what became Medway Unitary Authority he couldn't verify this.

A second aspect to my question concerned the rate of progress we were making relative to other parts of the Thames Gateway region. Although all parts of the Gateway had already had substantial sums of capital investment funding made available to them, at around the same time as us, only we had made any real progress until very recently. Indeed, the Leader quoted the case of Thurrock in Essex who were setting up an Urban Development Corporation (UDC) to deal with their regeneration; but they had taken a year just to decide where the UDC would be housed. Similar tales apparently abound throughout the Gateway.

The Leader explained that the key difference is that we are leading, driving, and delivering our regeneration ourselves -- that's the Medway Renaissance Partnership, with us as the Administration of Medway Council being the lead partner. What has now become known as the "Medway Model" has been recognised elsewhere; and the Leader was able to tell the meeting that other councils were thinking of adopting it themselves. Indeed, Southend Council were due to visit us shortly for this very purpose.

Meanwhile, the Government Minister had recently visited and HERE is a short video made during that visit.

All fascinating stuff -- both the question and the response -- and I think it was well worth bringing this to public awareness right now. There was a press reporter in attendance throughout the meeting, but this part might not be considered worthy of reporting, so I have put it here for the benefit of anyone who might be interested.

As one would expect, the questions from the regular members of the committee were more to do with specific issues and details, and were also interesting in their own way, though most of it has already been aired in recent months so need not be reported here. It will probably appear in this Friday's local newspaper anyway...

Holding to Account

I mentioned a few days ago that Medway's Scrutiny Committees a currently going through our customary "end of term" exercise of holding the Executive to account, as it's termed. I was at Children's Services Scrutiny last night, and the latest Cabinet "victim" to sit in our equivalent of the Mastermind chair and be questioned was the portfolio holder for children's social care -- Councillor David Wildey.

Now, his is a fairly recently created position, and has existed for just eight months, so I felt he needed to justify this additional Cabinet post.

I had (as always) done my homework, and found that someone looking at the official information available from the council's website wouldn't give an impression of much being done by him. Indeed, there have been only four reports to Cabinet that have concerned his portfolio, and all four of those also included the (statutory) "Lead Member" for Children's Services, so do we really need a second portfolio?

I was first off the blocks, so put all of this to him, though not in precisely these terms: asking questions is of course done differently from reporting the sense and import here. David answered fairly well (although, as he will be the first to admit, he isn't the best person in the world at expressing himself clearly in situations such as this), as he did through his forty-minute stint.

By the end of this session, he had justified his job quite well, though it is of course still early days and next year's such event should be much more conclusive. I have a strong feeling that by then his position will have become rock solid. David's a good fellow, his heart is definitely in the right place, and he has that determination to make a success of what he is doing.

Something a little strange happened when the next questioner -- the Labour spokesman on the committee -- first commented (as he likes to do) on what I had asked. He referred to my "ringing endorsement" of the portfolio holder, in his typical sarcastic manner.

Later I came back to remark on that, and to explain that it was not my job to endorse Cabinet members. It was my job to challenge and scrutinise, though I wondered what some other members of this committee "sitting elsewhere in this room" (i.e. not my own side -- we know our jobs!) thought there were here to do. I informed the meeting that I already have something of a track record of challenging our portfolio holders at these events on other committees, so it wasn't something new or strange.

Well, it has always been obvious that the Labour Group have only one end in mind, and one purpose, and that is to try to make us look bad so that (they hope, rather forlornly I suspect) we shall lose support and lose our overall majority on the Council one day. Not much chance of that! Their's is the group in terminal decline...

Thus their policy is to disregard their own Government's requirement that Scrutiny be essentially non-party political. They have never, since Day One of Scrutiny in Medway (more than six years ago) stopped being as party political as they can get away with, especially when there are members of the public and/or journalists or other media present.

We have learned to live with it, and are generally sharp enough to deal effectively with their worst excesses when necessary. It doesn't really matter, though, as they merely show themselves up most of the time. I have had lifelong Labour supporters tell me in private just how appalled they have been at Labour Councillors' behaviour they have witnessed, especially (but not exclusively) at Scrutiny meetings. It is little wonder that the Labour Group shrinks in numbers at every local election here, and even between elections.

As for my colleagues and me: we definitely know our job, and play it cleanly every time. I think the Medway public appreciates that far more than the Labour Group realise. Yes, sometimes we have to take the opposition's blows right on the chin, but we're big and able enough to do so and come bouncing back every time. We'll do what we do properly, because in the final analysis that is the best way to serve the people of Medway. Labour do what they do because it is the best way for them to serve their own ends and thus themselves, which seems to be what their Party is all about, as recent months have shown (cf. Peter Hain et al).

I definitely prefer our way!

Budget Scrutiny, Part Deux

As the Budget Scrutiny exercise reaches its conclusion this coming week, the true extent of the revenue funding shortfall is worth stating publicly. In fact, it is already clear from last month's documents that went to Scrutiny at the start of this part of the budget-setting process.

I already knew the amount we were having taken away from us, as I had calculated it beforehand, using official information and a knowledge of the way the system is fiddled by the Government to subsidise (and, indeed, bail out) the many hugely overspending Labour councils.

I have stated, at the last Council meeting of 2007, that I had worked out that this was some £26 to £28 million pounds, no less. It was gratifying to have that figure confirmed in the report that came to Scrutiny several weeks later.

In that report (snapshot of the relevant table is at the left) the two key figures for the final settlement from central Government were the two deductions. What happens is that the need is calculated via a formula. Now, that tends to come out with the right result, more or less. Then, the Government apply a so-called "relative resource amount" which allows them to rob Peter to pay Paul, as the old saying has it.

This is considered by the Government to be necessary because (perhaps not all that surprisingly) there just isn't enough money to pay all the actual council needs throughout the country, including the huge excesses needed to get lots of Labour-run councils out of the holes they have dug for themselves. In most such cases, it appears that they don't stop digging because they know they will be bailed out, year after year, as long as there is a Labour government at Westminster. Thus there is no incentive to mend their ways, and the same situation occurs every year, without fail, and we and other properly-run (non-Labour) councils are penalised.

Here in Medway, the Relative Resource Amount for 2008-2009 is therefore a deduction of no less than a whopping £22,194,000.

Is this the end of the story? No: there is a second fiddle factor involved, also a deduction in Medway's case. That is the infamous "floor damping", which has now been increased to £5,396,000. Add these two figures together and guess what? Yes, almost £28 million is being taken away from the amount that the Government's own formula clearly states Medway needs -- not wants, needs! It is personally gratifying to me to find that my own result (arrived at via a different approach) is almost identical to the outcome of the above calculation. This is nearly always a solid endorsement of one's own stance, when an independent assessment arrives at virtually the same conclusion via a different route.

Thus we can now all know exactly why the situation here is so very difficult, even with our lean and efficient council operation, which has again been praised by independent auditors just this past week. Even so, by applying some tough measures, the budget deficit as of now is only a few million pounds (only, he says!) and this will have to be eliminated by the end of this month, as it is illegal to set an unbalanced budget.

The budget we do set at that time will definitely be more robust than in previous years, as such innovations as the new three-year settlement have made it possible to plan better and to eliminate the (admittedly very few) uncertainties in, say, the current year's budget. All of this will be a truly remarkable achievement under almost impossible conditions.

Who said miracles never happen?

Budget Scrutiny

Yes, it's our Directorate's turn to have its part of next (financial) year's budget proposals come before Scrutiny, later today.

This is always something of a non-event, as the sheer size of the budget shortfall (because of central Government's gerrymandering of local authority funding every year) means that it is never possible for our Cabinet to put even a nearly finished budget proposal out to the Scrutiny Committees -- it is always a "work in progress".

This would not be the case if we had a proper settlement and by this stage were effectively finished, short of a few fine-tuning tweaks and last-minute updates, which would be minor. That would be my preferred scenario, as I believe that Scrutiny has a part to play in budgetary development -- but only when it is allowed to do so.

With settlement announcements coming later every year (although at least they have tended to be near what was predicted in advance by the council's senior finance officers) and the latest unfunded wheezes yet to be properly costed, such a desirable and helpful situation never occurs, and is becoming less likely with every passing year.

This is a real shame: I for one want to make Scrutiny worthwhile (and I have a considerable track record in this quest -- far more than any Opposition Member, for a start!) and this is one area where this system could be made to be of genuine benefit.

Not that I am a fan of the Cabinet-and-Scrutiny system that was inflicted upon us -- I still believe that it is fatally flawed in concept and in application -- but I do remember my obligations to the people "out there", far more to any ideology or even political party, so I'll fight hard to make it work regardless, perhaps simply in spite of those who forced it upon us.

So, this coming evening I shall do my best, with inadequate material, and we shall also have the Finance Portfolio Holder there to grill on this and other aspects of his portfolio. I shall be bringing this and other matters to be answered.