Four-year funding settlement for local government
Published on Tuesday, 3rd January 2017
The annual spending settlement for local government was released just before Christmas and it contains few surprises. Last year the government offered all local authorities a guaranteed level of funding for four years and the latest settlement is in line with those promises.
In order to access the four year guarantee, councils had to submit efficiency plans and had to request that they wanted a guaranteed deal. Almost all did this, with only five of England’s 300+ local authorities refusing the offer. The two known hold outs are Lancashire and Surrey County Councils, both of which are in particular trouble, with the former burning through reserves at an alarming rate and the latter reportedly contemplating a 16% council tax rise.
Portsmouth City Council was one of the overwhelming majority that signed up for a deal, with the decision taken by full council in the autumn. I try not to make these posting partisan, but it was really disappointing that the Liberal Democrats pushed for the council to refuse it, so they could claim to be against austerity. The reductions in funding for local government are universal and nowhere has the option of just opting out and it is simply false to claim otherwise. Labour also abstained, but thanks to support from UKIP, the vote was passed and the council has accepted the offer of a four-year settlement.
Now that the settlement has been published, it is possible to compare the actual figures for those councils that refused the deal with the offer they were made a year ago. The numbers are identical.
Guaranteed levels of income make planning considerably easier and also make it possible to operate with a lower level of reserves. There is still going to be further pain for local government, but having surety of what the numbers are going is helping Portsmouth City Council plan its finances on a two-year basis rather than the traditional one.
Tags: Budget
Request for funding for South Parade Pier
Published on Monday, 5th December 2016
The council charges an infrastructure tax on new development, a slice of which has to be spent in the area where the development takes place. The McCarthy and Stone building on the seafront means there is now a sizable pot of cash for this ward.
There has been a request for cash to provide a walkway around South Parade Pier. It’s a bit of a dilemma frankly and I would like to know what you think.
Tags: Pier
New housing to help the disabled
Published on Monday, 5th December 2016
The council is half way through a programme to provide new accommodation for people with learning disabilities. The new supported living units maximise independence by giving people their own homes. In some instances, live in carers are provided, while for others more targeted support is all that is required.
A repurposed building in Cosham now provides living space for eight people, while a new block of five flats has just opened in Portsea: Alexander McKee Court consists of five flats, one of which has widened doors to accommodate wheelchairs.
The standard of the new accommodation is excellent. This is an example of how it is possible to provide better services at lower cost. Two more new housing schemes are being worked on.
Tags: Adult Social Care
Consultation on changes to the health and care system
Published on Monday, 5th December 2016
The NHS is putting together plans that layout how the health and care sector will cope with rising demand, will embrace new technology and will move some way towards a community model of care, with less reliance on hospitals. Together the 44 Sustainability and Transformation Plans cover the whole of England and they will set the background for health decisions over the coming decade.
In this area, the local plan covers the whole of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, including both Portsmouth and Southampton. The City Council has had some input into its preparation, although it is still very much an NHS document.
In my role as chairman of the Health and Wellbeing Board, I have publicly asked for all partners to run consultations; my opposite number in Southampton has done something very similar and I hope both Hampshire and the Isle of Wight will also join in, so that this can cover the whole area.
The document is high level and mapping it to possible changes on the ground is not easy. Both it and a summary document are online, if you are interested. See here and here.
Tags: health
Generating income to offset budget reductions
Published on Monday, 5th December 2016
The council budget for 2017/8 has been published and will be put before the council on 13th December; it will then be adopted, albeit potentially in amended form.
This will be the seventh year in which grants from government have been sharply reduced. In Portsmouth the Revenue Support Grant, which was once the mainstay of local government finance, has fallen from £91.2 m in 2011/12 to £22.3m in 2017/8. There have been numerous changes to funding arrangements and responsibilities over the years and those two numbers cannot be compared directly, but the essential point that there is now far less money still stands.
The good news though is that the City Council is coping really well. This year’s savings programme, while not without pain, does not include the sort of stark service reductions we have seen in the recent past. Additional commercial income, greater efficiency and cost sharing with other authorities have gone a long way to close the £9m gap, leaving most frontline services in tact. No major facilities are closing and in many areas the service delivered should improve. My own portfolio of social care is a case in point. We have done a lot of work to improve processes and waiting times should reduce sharply as a result.
Generating millions in commercial income is not the norm in local government and there are numerous examples of councils on the edge as a result, Lancashire being a particular example. Despite reducing its museums budget to just £100,000 and closing over 20 libraries, it is burning through its reserves at such a rate that it is prophesying bankruptcy in two years time (or four even if it can transform itself into the lowest spending council in the country). Meanwhile just down the road in Southampton, the council there is looking at moving to fortnightly bin collections. I am sure they are not doing that lightly, but eventually there are no further options.
Here in Portsmouth, the administration’s commercialisation strategy is bearing fruit. Additional property deals will generate £1m, sharing management with Gosport £500,000, changes in debt management £1.3m and by commissioning some public health services jointly with Hampshire and by using the third sector more, £500,000. This has got a long way left to run and further benefits from thinking commercially are in the pipeline for 2018/9.
Tags: budget
Prison land deal will make city just a little more attractive
Published on Saturday, 29th October 2016
Back in the summer, the council granted permission for the conversion of the former Kingston Prison into flats along with the construction of some new build units in the grounds; now it has concluded a land deal to improve the landscaping.
The triangle of land facing the roundabout is a mixture of grassland, trees and bushes. There are some problems locally with anti-social behaviour and it being used by local youths.
The council has agreed a long lease for the land to the developer of the prison for its use as a landscaped area. They have every incentive to make it look really nice - a high quality entrance area will make it easier for them to sell their flats - and the eventual end occupants of the flats will have a similar incentive to keep the entrance to their homes looking its best.
While the £7500 this will raise for the council is neither here nor there in the big scheme of things, this is an example of how the council can improve our area without spending more money. The landscaped area will not be enclosed and on-going public access is assured.
Tags: Planning
Limiting the numbers of Houses in Multiple Occupation
Published on Saturday, 29th October
I recently seconded a motion at Full Council that sought to further limit the growth in number of new Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs).
Portsmouth City Council already has the tightest restrictions in England on new shared houses: extra HMOs are only allowed where the proportion of such uses within a 50m radius is less than 10%. In most of the country no restrictions apply, while some university towns have a similar approach to Portsmouth, but with percentage cap in the 20-30% range.
Over the next couple of years, the council will be reviewing its local plan with a view to adoption in 2019. It will now consider making changes to the HMO policy at that time, possibly by adding a street frontage rule, so that as well as a limit on the number in a given radius, a limit could apply to individual streets as well.
Across Britain as a whole, demand for shared housing is continuing to rise, largely because the growth in the housing stock is not keeping pace with the growth in the country’s population. However locally all the new student accommodation under construction means more shared accommodation may not be needed in Portsmouth.
Tags: Planning
Last wartime landing craft coming to Portsmouth
Published on Saturday, 29th October 2016
Of the 800 LCT landing craft used in D-Day, fewer than ten are believed to survive and of those just one is in the UK – LCT7074. Ignored and forgotten for 70 years, this final remaining landing craft had been left semi-derelict and sunk in a Merseyside harbour, but thanks to a grant to the National Museum of the Royal Navy, it was raised in 2014 and is now being restored.
When complete, it will be put on display not far from the tank outside the D-Day Museum. It is hoped this happen by 2019.
You can read more about LCT7074 at http://www.ddaymuseum.co.uk/d-day-news/details/saving-landing-craft-lct-7074
Tags: Local History, Seafront
Helping the traders in Commercial Road
Published on Friday, 6th October 2016
Work is about to start on a series of minor improvements to Commercial Road aimed at supporting the retail centre until something finally happens at the Northern Quarter.
The £300,000 scheme reflects what shop managers have told the council will most help their businesses survive. The budget frankly isn’t very much and won’t buy radical changes, but it is still better to do something than nothing.
The street furniture will be rearranged to create some wider open spaces, there will be some very limited tree planting, the public art by the Cascades entrance will be removed – frankly the general feeling is that it’s not very good anyway – and there will also be some new, high quality natural stone paving at both ends of Commercial Road to mark the entrance and exit to the pedestrian area.
I have been very involved with this project and I pushed for it to be a part of the 2015/6 budget. The driver for doing this is that any new retail space is years away. Even if the Local Enterprise Partnership agrees to help fund a new road scheme, a combination of a slowdown in business investment, the planning cycle and construction times mean the earliest a new centre could open is in five years time – and that is optimistic. Until then we have to make the best of what we’ve already got.
This money is a one-off, so apparent alternatives such as subsidising retail space or parking charges, actually aren’t alternatives at all. Spending the money over say 10 years would leave so little as to have no effect at all.
Tags: City Centre, Northern Quarter
New student tower for city centre is good news
Published on Friday, 6th October 2016
There has been another application for a new high rise student tower. This time it’s for a 19-storey block for the corner of Commercial Road and Stanhope Street that would replace the Co-operative bank building diagonally opposite the station. There would be a new retail unit on the ground floor.
The 256 rooms this building would contain would lessen the demand for shared student houses by perhaps 60 or 70. Having more potential customers nearby will also help shore up the Commercial Road retail area, which is important given that any new shopping centre for the Tricorn site is at least five years from opening.
There is a myth out there that were it not for these student towers somehow a lot of new council housing would be being built instead. That’s obviously untrue – all these schemes are in the private sector and the council simply cannot afford to build social housing beyond that already planned.
The alternative to these student schemes is empty sites and no development at all. That would mean fewer construction jobs and more students living in residential areas. From the council’s perspective, this development also means a little more money in the pot from the infrastructure tax to fund flood defences and school places. It’s in the city’s interest that this scheme goes ahead.
If you want to comment, the planning reference number is 16/01537/FUL.
Tags: Planning, City Centre