Madam Mayor, Fellow Councillors, Officers, Members of the Public and Media.
Tonight marks two ‘firsts’: the first meeting of the Council in the Hinckley Hub and your first full meeting as the Mayor of this Borough. I am sure that, despite the length and complexity of the agenda before us, you will ensure that business is conducted fairly, but also efficiently.
I think all Members will join me in welcoming the move to this new energy efficient building. Not only have Borough Council teams moved into the Hub, but both Adult Social Care and Children’s Services teams have relocated from their County Council bases and have been welcomed into the building. We also have family workers engaged in the locality-managed Supporting Leicestershire Families initiative and other agencies will be hot-desking as part of the Community Safety ‘Endeavour‘ programme. By the end of September, JobCentre Plus will have relocated to the Ground Floor and we will be nearing 100% occupancy. This will bring immediate financial savings to all the public bodies located in the Hub. The next step, of course, will be to begin to integrate those functions and teams around the people and communities on whom they can have the greatest impact, thereby improving further the overall efficiency and effectiveness of public services in Hinckley and Bosworth; Community Budgeting made a reality!
Can I thank those Officers who have been particularly involved in the effective delivery of this project – the Assets Team, led by Malcolm Evans, and the ICT Team (vital to any such project, but often forgotten), led by Paul Langham.
The Chief Executive and I attended the recent annual LGA Conference in Manchester, which was generally low-key; perhaps not surprisingly, given the announcements in the Spending review for 2015/16, made the previous week. Steve and I did pick up on a number of leads from the Exhibition, which we will follow up with Members in due course, on Community Covenant and various benchmarking tools. We heard also Lord Heseltine’s view of how the country might make progress on economic development and regeneration nationally and locally. Whilst there may be little disagreement with his prescription of the ‘Single Local Pot’, I think most of us will have a disagreement with his view of how that might be governed – via the unelected Local Enterprise Partnerships and with Districts subsumed within new County Unitaries. As you might imagine, there was some clear division in the audience when he made that latter point; but it is one he has made before and not one which is shared by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.
Speaking of whom, Mr Pickles was the centre of attention for Districts during the Conference, both for his main address on the Wednesday and for his appearance, with Brandon Lewis, at the District Councils’ Network Assembly on the Thursday. The reason for his ‘celebrity’ was his defence of the ‘hidden’ announcement the previous Thursday on New Homes Bonus and the use of up to 40% of it from 2015/16 to support Lord Heseltine’s ‘Single Pot’, much reduced from his recommended £70 billion to a figure of £2 billion! This announcement contradicts Mr Pickles’ clear statement at the Conference in 2012, where he pledged that Districts would continue to receive 80% of the ‘bonus’ for six years. Both of these promises have been shot down by the announcement in the Spending Review.
As Members are aware, whilst this Council is one of the few which reallocates some of this income (25%) to those Parishes and communities who accept housing growth in their areas, the rest of the income is used, legitimately within the rules, to support revenue expenditure across our services. Passporting up to 40% of our total ‘bonus’ will seriously affect our income projections, once the term of our current Medium Term Financial Strategy is completed. In 2013/14 alone the total ‘bonus’ for this Council is over £1 million. Whilst I am confident that our Officers, particularly in Finance, Planning and Housing, will address this issue, using the sound basis in the current MTFS, which Members will discuss later this evening, it is yet another example of the ‘smoke and mirrors’ tactics of a central Government, which again and again squeezes local authorities tighter than the rest of the public sector. Perhaps our biggest weakness, especially in this Council, is that again and again we absorb the pain and continue to meet all our objectives and the needs of our communities… but it is getting much harder!
I have mentioned growth already, and we continue to be active players in the City Deal discussions either side of the A5. The timetables, set nationally, for these negotiations are now in parallel – with final submissions to the ‘Ad Hoc Ministerial Group’ (AMG) being around October this year. Whilst the ‘pot’ available from 2015 might not be what we once envisaged, it will be up for grabs, and there is every indication that it will grow thereafter. So, we need to put this Council in the best position possible to ensure that we get our fair share (and more, if we can!) and being part of a City Deal will enhance that potential. I expect that I will be presenting more information on this initiative to Members over the summer.
Madam Mayor, I commend this statement to the Council.
Minutes:
In his position statement, the Leader referred to several current issues, including the move to Hinckley Hub, changes to the New Homes Bonus and the City Deal.