Councillor Richard Livingstone, Cabinet member for finance, resources and community safety
Minutes:
Councillor Richard Livingstone, cabinet member for finance, resources and community safety, introduced this item saying that the new budget was the second year of the 3-year budget framework which was agreed in 2011. The council was facing continuous and large scale cuts of the grant received from central government, and that Southwark was more affected by this than other local authorities in the country, as it received a higher percentage of its budget in the central government grant.
The final decision on the budget 2012/13 would be taken at the Council Assembly meeting on 29 February 2012, with the proposal being agreed by Cabinet on 7 February. Residents could view the proposals on the Southwark website. There would be no new cuts, but some changes had been made in the proposals: the cost of meals on wheels would decrease, adult/social care cuts would be less severe than originally proposed, a community restoration fund had been put in place for business most severely affected by the disturbances, and the council had put in place a youth initiative and would continue the youth fund to give young people opportunities to stay in post-16 education. Healthy free school meals would be introduced for primary years 2, 3 and 4 to add to the existing programme for year 1. Council tax would be frozen, and all council staff (including agency staff) would be paid a London living wage. This would be achieved by taking some funds from the council’s reserves.
Responding to a question from the floor, Councillor Livingstone explained that abolishing the council tax would have to be done at national level, but that the council had increased its collection rate by taking the service back in-house since April 2011. He went on to explain that the housing call centre was paid for from a separate account, and that the efficiencies made there could not be used for the council’s main budget. The council was, however, in negotiations with the company who provided the service to improve this. Furthermore, the council was saving £1m in pay for senior managers in the coming year. The budget situation involved making a lot of difficult choices.
The chair thanked Councillor Livingstone for attending.