Northamptonshire County Council — House of Lords, 2018-03-27
Topic: Government Operations
Kathryn Pinnock (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I draw Members’ attention to my registered interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a councillor in the borough of Kirklees in West Yorkshire I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I share his comments that the failures in the governance of Northamptonshire in no way reflect on the many staff who clearly continue to provide services to the public to the best of their ability. Nor do they reflect on the majority of councillors, who, according to the evidence in the best value inspection report, were denied information and were thus not able to undertake their responsibilities as might have been expected As a consequence of the inspection, the Government have decided that commissioners should be appointed to take direct control of the council's financial management. This will undoubtedly result in the commissioners proposing that some of the very difficult cuts to services that many other councils have already made will now be made without proper democratic involvement. That is a terrible indictment of the senior officers and senior members of the council who failed to grasp that, like it or not, cuts in income of the scale experienced by local government inevitably lead to significant cuts in services Northamptonshire County Council’s response to cuts in funding was to adopt a full outsourcing and commissioning model. For all the reasons expounded in the inspection report—it makes tragic reading—this failed abysmally. The residents of Northamptonshire have been ill served by some of the senior directors of the council, but it is the residents who will suffer the consequences of the failure to get a grip on constantly reducing budgets and to deal with difficult decisions in a timely manner That leads me to comment on the financial pressures that local government is facing. As has been said many times in this House and the other place, local government budgets have been reduced by about 40% across the board, and will have decreased by 50%—by half, in other words—by 2020, in two years’ time. This is at the same time as demand for services for vulnerable older people and vulnerable children is increasing at a significant rate. The Local Government Association estimates a shortfall of billions of pounds by 2020 for local government to deliver the statutory services that it is required to However, I want to point out that failure to deal with challenging financial budgets is not confined to local government. Carillion is a good example of what happens in the private sector when budgetary situations are not grasped. Many councils are just about managing, and it seems that some will just about manage for only another 18 months or so. There are statutory services to be provided, and for some this will soon not be possible. This brings me to some questions for the Minister. Does his department really appreciate the difficult financial situation that many councils face? For instance, is there an analysis in his department of those councils that may be on the brink of being unable to fulfil statutory functions? I assume that there is such an analysis; maybe he will be able to tell us what planning has been done to meet that eventuality. I ask this so that other councils are not allowed to fall into the same difficulties that Northamptonshire has done, though for very different reasons In the case of Northamptonshire, the Government determined that there would be a reorganisation of the county council and district council model into a unitary model. I hope whichever model is chosen succeeds, because residents in that county deserve it to succeed. However, I doubt that will sort out the problem; as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, has said, if the financial situation is not resolved, simply moving geographical pieces for governance around the county will not solve it. Perhaps the Government will be able to spell out in the fair funding review which services they expect local authorities to deliver and which are not to be a priority. Until that is clarified, councils will continue to find their responsibilities and funding availability stretched beyond their ability to fulfil their duties.