Daily Cuts Briefing – Friday 30th July

Quick one this morning – just the headlines:

Nick Clegg is changing his mind on an almost daily basis these days. Having previously insisted that he swung behind the Tory deficit hawks after a post-election chat with Mervyn King (which King denies), he claimed last night that he actually changed his mind before the election – but didn’t bother to, y’know, tell the voters – http://bit.ly/aHu9V1

Michael Gove is made to look ridiculous yet again, as the ‘thousands’ of schools supposedly rushing to become academies turns out to be, er, 158 – http://bit.ly/a8j8HP

Council tax rises above a certain level are to be made subject to a veto by voters, according to Eric Pickles – http://bit.ly/c8CVqR

Iain Duncan Smith is to set out options for welfare reform that he says will simplify the current system and reduce benefit cuts for those who enter work – but Labour fear the measures could mean benefit cuts for those still out of work – http://bit.ly/9Yk1fW

And details are emerging of the cuts that will be made to the defence budget – http://bit.ly/dcO56O – while Trident continues to run into cash problems – http://bit.ly/cHSOvW

Speed camera cuts – the Swindon story

Endangered of Oxfordshire

The last week has seen considerable media speculation over the future of Britain’s speed camera network.

Central government cuts to local authority road safety budgets have led Oxfordshire County Council to pull funding for the Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership, which operates the county’s speed cameras.

The partnership says it cannot afford to operate the cameras as a consequence, and they are set to be switched off. Other councils are set to follow suit.

Road safety campaigners fear this could lead to an increase on deaths and collisions on the road. While national figures are inconclusive, the Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership points to a 38 percent drop in vehicle collisions since its cameras were installed.

Swindon Borough Council was the first local authority in the country to pull funding for speed cameras last year – not due to national funding cuts, but because it felt the cameras were unnecessary. The six cameras, located at four sites, were switched off last July.

Statistics collated by Wiltshire Police and supplied by the council indicate there has been no increase in accidents as a result.

Here are the road accident figures for Swindon’s speed camera sites, from August 2008 to April 2009 when the cameras were operating, and then from August 2009 to April 2010 when the cameras were switched off:

A420
2008/09 – 2 slight                                           2009/10 – 2 slight
A4312 Oxford Road
2008/09 – 3 slight                                           2009/10 – 1 serious, 2 slight
A346 Chiseldon
2008/09 – 2 slight                                           2009/10 – 1 serious, 2 slight
A4259 Queens Drive
2008/09 – 1 fatal, 1 serious, 6 slight                 2009/10 – 6 slight

In the above table, ‘serious’ means that at least one person involved in the accident suffered a serious injury.

As can be seen, when the cameras were working there were 13 slight accidents, one serious and one fatal accident across the sites (15 in total), and after they were switched off there were 12 slight accidents and two serious accidents (14 in total).

So, no increase in accidents.

There’s a health warning to these figures, though. First, due to the small number of cameras that were operating, the council believes it will take up to two years before meaningful conclusions can be drawn.

Furthermore, as Inspector Andy Moreton of the Wiltshire & Swindon Safety Camera Partnership (which operated Swindon’s speed cameras until they were turned off) pointed out, the cameras have been switched off, but they haven’t actually been removed. They are covered in orange bags – but the signs and prominent road markings warning of the presence of speed cameras remain, and they are still picked up by most satnav systems.

Inspect Moreton (who was not expressing an opinion on Swindon’s decision to switch off the cameras) added that the cameras were mostly located on primary routes into and out of Swindon – so there’s a good chance many of the road users may not be Swindon locals, and so won’t be familiar with the decision to switch off the cameras.

The cameras will eventually be taken down and removed, and presumably the road markings will go as well. Arguably, only then will we be able to draw reliable conclusions.

But Swindon made its decision based on local data showing that only six percent of road accidents were caused by speeding – essentially, a decision based on local road safety statistics.

By contrast, council bosses are now basing their decisions on government funding cuts. We don’t yet know how likely it is this gamble will pay off. And neither do they.

Daily Cuts Briefing – Thursday 29th July

As the cull of local government jobs and services continues apace, Birmingham has announced it is to shed 430 posts, in addition to those already lost. The Press Association reports the GMB union’s warnings that the cuts will hit children’s services and Connexions as the council grapples with £6.1m of in-year cuts.

Longer term, Birmingham is looking to save £230m over the next four years. The GMB fears that could translate to 10,000 job cuts.

The King’s Fund healthcare think tank has warned that the government’s moves to hand NHS commissioning budgets to GPs could lead to a decline in funding for public health initiatives such as anti-smoking and anti-drinking campaigns.

Primary care trusts are currently responsible for running public health campaigns, but this power is to be transferred to local authorities, leading the King’s Fund to warn that GP commissioners could stop engaging in public health initiatives.

The Department for Education has reportedly told local authorities to freeze spending on new playgrounds, as it prepares to cut £65m from the Playbuilder budget next month. The cut will apparently mean 1,400 new playgrounds are cancelled nationwide. The Playbuilder grant has already been de-ringfenced, meaning local authorities can use the money how they wish – often meaning they use it to paper over cuts in other areas.

And finally, in a classic example of how some of us are more ‘in it together’ than others, the government has admitted that it spends more than £15m a year to send the children of diplomats and military officers to private schools such as Fettes, Winchester and Marlborough.

The logic – applied both by the current government and its predecessor – is that as these diplomats and officers spend time abroad, it is best for their children to go to boarding school rather than move abroad with their parents. And the perk continues even after the parents return to Britain, because it would not be in the child’s interest to have to change schools midway through their education. It’s about continuity, you see.

Continuity, of course, that is suddenly of no concern to ministers when their housing benefit changes will force families to leave their home and move to a different locality, taking their children with them.

Building an anti-cuts campaign in Lewisham

Regular readers will be familiar with the carnage set to be wrought upon Lewisham by Labour mayor Steve ‘Butcher’ Bullock.

£60m in spending cuts over four years, widespread job losses, reductions in children’s services, five libraries closing, and much more besides.

Last night saw the start of a local anti-cuts campaign. Initiated by local trade unions, the Lewisham Anti-Cuts Alliance held a meeting to work out how to fight the local attacks.

Some points and observations from the meeting:

• direct action will be needed, and campaigners may have to break the law in order to defeat the cuts
• wide agreement of the need to keep building the campaign throughout August, despite the tendency to label it a ‘dead month’
• support for the PCS union’s call for a national demonstration against the cuts on October 23^rd, which the TUC general council is apparently not keen on
• the campaign must be broad based and non-sectarian
• various speakers mentioned the need to promote an alternative to the cuts agenda
• attendance was about 30, mainly trade union activists and members of socialist parties, and there was hostility to the idea of working with Labour politicians
• despite the presence of different socialist groups, there was no evidence of sectarianism – open debate, but not sectarianism
• not many young people (even defined as those under 30) were in attendance

After the meeting four of us briefly debated whether it was better to refer to Lewisham’s esteemed mayor as Butcher Bullock, or simply liken his surname to a testicle. I can’t remember what we agreed.

Daily Cuts Briefing – Wednesday 28th July

Evidence has emerged of the severe impact government funding cuts are having on key youth services targeted at the most vulnerable young people.

An investigation by trade publication Children & Young People Now found that the Connexions service, which provides careers advice and guidance, particularly targeted towards those not in education, employment or training (NEET), was suffering cutbacks around the country after the government cut area based grants that help fund it.

A survey conducted by the magazine found that more than one in ten Connexions services face budget cuts of up to 50 percent, with one in seven warning they faced budget cuts of at least £2m. High street Connexions centres and guidance in schools are seen as being at particular risk.

Regular readers of A Thousand Cuts will be familiar with the procession of cuts to Connexions services across the country:

• East Sussex
• Nottingham
• Lewisham
• Havering

And now it emerges that the ‘Big Society’ council of Windsor and Maidenhead is planning to cut its Connexions budget by £375,000.

More background on the TUC’s Touchstone blog, and a Facebook group campaigning to defend the Connexions service.

Meanwhile, there was a (rare) flurry of interest at the House of Commons’ Education Select Committee as the head of the agency set up to oversee the national schoolbuilding programme said that Michael Gove’s team ignored warnings to check the list of affected schemes before it was published.

Education Secretary Gove infamously had to publish five different versions of the list, showing how school redevelopment projects were affected by his decision to cancel the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme, after initial versions were riddled with errors.

Gove tried to put the blame on Partnerships for Schools (PfS), the quango that runs the BSF programme, but PfS chief executive Tim Byles told MPs yesterday: “We advised the Department that it would be wise to validate this information with each local authority, prior to publication, due to the inherent risk of errors. This advice was not followed and a number of errors arose.”

Byles accepted the blame for one error – where schools in Sandwell were wrongly told their schemes would go ahead – but warned that a number of local authorities and construction firms are preparing to sue the government over losses incurred by the decision to axe BSF.

Finally, a think tank has recommended scaling back renewal of Britain’s nuclear deterrent in order to reduce costs.

The Royal United Services Institute – which generally takes a pro-military stance – said that in renewing Trident, the government should consider dropping the requirement to always have a nuclear sub on patrol at sea.

Trident renewal – viewed by critics as an expensive Cold War anachronism – is currently facing budget pressures as the Ministry of Defence faces potential 10-20 percent budget cuts.

The Tory council making vulnerable people pay for the coalition’s cuts

Adult care is a highly pressured area of local government spending at the best of times, with councils racking up overspends even as public spending grew. Now this unfashionable area of public spending is increasingly taking a hit.

Adult care services look after the most vulnerable adults in our society – the disabled, the elderly, those with learning difficulties, mental health problems, or drug and alcohol addiction.

So take a bow, London Borough of Havering. With its Conservative-run council trying to save £19m over the next three years – and possibly £50m over five years – adult care users are being told to chip in.

Council bosses reckon that they can save up to £850k a year by raising charges for non-residential care. The 60 percent of service users who currently don’t pay for care due to their low income still won’t pay under the new plans – but the remainder will have their charges hiked, increasing the total amount contributed by service users by around a half.

The increased charges were approved at a recent council cabinet meeting (item 8 here) and will now go out to consultation. They include:

• scrapping the subsidy of Meals on Wheels and charging meals at cost price (unless care related)
• means testing for day care charges – the council predicts that 26 percent of service users will see their costs rise from £1.34 to £26 per session, while another 14 percent will see their costs rise from £1.34 to £40 per session, nearly halving the council subsidy
• raising the maximum amount that 23 service users pay towards their cost of care from the current cap of £230 per week to a new cap of £320 per week
• ending payment of 26 service users’ telephone line rental, costing each of them around £180 a year
• capping the maximum disability related expenses covered by the council to £71.40 per person per week, affecting around 300 service users
• remove the allowance for privately purchased respite care and day care services (those deemed necessary in social workers’ assessments will still be paid for by the council)
• remove the allowance for personal care (assistance provided by a carer such as getting out of bed, washing, making meals etc) unless required as part of the care plan

Allowances for certain disability related expenses – special dietary needs, hairdressing, clothing – are going up slightly, but the overall effect is that service users who have more money despite their difficulties will have to fork out up to £4,600 extra each year.

And that’s not all – Havering plans to save an additional £1.25m from its adult social care budget through a ‘further review of adult social care services to ensure services are fair, personalised, appropriate and delivered in the most cost effective manner’. Time will tell whether or not that’s a cover for cuts.

A Havering council spokesman said: “We are proposing changes to our fairer charging policy to help offset the costs of services the council is not legally obliged to provide, but realises the importance of and is determined to keep going.

“Where charges are changed, we will ensure nobody pays more unless they can afford to.”

The increased charges will go towards the council’s plans to cut £19m in spending over the next three years. In the words of the council’s press release, most of the rest of the £19m in savings will be achieved through efficiency savings and new technology:

• £3.5 million per year by transforming internal bureaucracy – centralising support functions and introducing new technology to replace paperwork
• £2.7 million per year by transforming customer services, including new technology to standardise customer contact, improve self-service and help deal with more queries at the first contact
• Around £4 million per year through better targeted and more efficient adult social care arrangements (from a current budget of £51 million)
• £1 million per year reduction in government-funded support to schools
• £850,000 per year through reviewing and rationalising the use of council buildings
• £585,000 through better targeted and more responsive street cleansing and a review of waste contracts

But dig into the detail of the actual council budget reports (item 5), and it’s clear that it’s the most vulnerable who will be footing the bill.

Aside from adult care, children’s services are taking a hit from the cuts to area based grants – a 25 percent cut in the council’s Children’s Fund, and another 25 percent cut in funding for the Connexions service, which supports young people with career and education guidance, in particular those not in education, employment or training (NEET).

The three-year cuts programme also includes reductions to school transport, while youth services – information, advice and guidance, counselling services, Connexions and a teenage pregnancy service – will move from universal to targeted provision.

Other funding pots in Havering facing significant in-year cuts include start-up costs for extended schools (which run programmes for school children before and after the regular school day), and positive activities for young people, which funds summer holiday activities around the borough.

Of course, if any of those ‘transformation’ and technology savings fail to materialise as planned, expect more frontline services to be cut to make up the shortfall.

And just to top it all off, 100 jobs are expected to go.

Council leader Michael White insists that the cuts are necessary due to the coming reduction in government grants. “This means targeting limited resources where they are needed most, helping people to help themselves and supporting those who cannot help themselves.”

But schoolchildren, NEETs, the elderly, disabled and mentally ill would fall within most people’s definition of where resources are needed most.

The correct word is not ‘transformation’, Havering. The correct word is ‘decimation’.

Daily Cuts Briefing – Tuesday 27th July

The National Housing Federation today warned that more than half a million people could be added to housing waiting lists if government budget cuts go ahead.

The campaign group, which represents not-for-profit housing associations, said that if affordable housing budgets were cut by 40 percent – the figure flagged recently by ministers – then 570,000 people would be added to waiting lists for affordable homes.

Waiting lists already stand at a record 4.5m, with one million children living in overcrowded homes. Housebuilding fell to a post-war record low last year.

The federation added that 40 percent budget cuts would mean 280,000 construction industry jobs would either be lost or not created by 2020.

Elsewhere, Home Secretary Theresa May announced plans to increase the number of voluntary police officers from 15,000 to 67,000, in a move seen as designed to compensate to cuts in full-time police officers. No word yet on how the recruitment process will be funded.

Tony Hayward is quitting as chief executive of stricken oil giant BP with a £1m payoff and £10m pension pot, despite the company posting a huge $17bn loss and seeing its reputation hit an all-time low over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The huge payoff makes a mockery of the government’s obsession with ‘gold plated’ public sector pensions – which on an individual basis are microscopic by comparison – and also rubbishes the notion that the private sector is a paragon of meritocratic efficiency, with large salaries for the best people.

If the best people are like Tony Hayward, what are the worst people like?

Finally, the bonfire of the quangos goes on, with various health and cultural bodies axed, including the Film Council.

Daily Cuts Briefing – Monday 26th July

The big news over the weekend was the Sunday Telegraph’s investigation into frontline NHS service cuts.

The newspaper found that, far from the public eye, hospitals and primary care trusts across the country are planning to reduce services to save money as the NHS’ £20bn in ‘efficiency savings’ begin to bite.

Among the cuts reported by the paper:

• Restrictions on some of the most basic and common operations, including hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery and orthodontic procedures.
• Plans to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds from budgets for the terminally ill, with dying cancer patients to be told to manage their own symptoms if their condition worsens at evenings or weekends.
• The closure of nursing homes for the elderly.
• A reduction in acute hospital beds, including those for the mentally ill, with targets to discourage GPs from sending patients to hospitals and reduce the number of people using accident and emergency departments.

This, of course, from the same Conservatives who promised to protect the NHS budget and to avoid cuts to frontline services.

Not that Labour was much better. While the Telegraph ran an essentially anti-Tory investigation, the Guardian reported Health Secretary Andrew Lansley revealing the truth about failures in Labour’s health policy.

One of the hallmarks of New Labour was its creeping backdoor privatisation driven of the NHS. A key initiative was the commissioning of privately-run ‘independent sector treatment centres’ (ISTCs) to carry out certain procedures, often in an attempt to meet hospital waiting time targets.

However, very often these private sector operators were paid vast sums of money for operations that were never carried out – and this weekend Lansley said that up to £300m was wasted paying for operations that were either cheaper to conduct within the NHS, or were never carried out at all.

Not that the coalition government has been thrown off its policy of ‘denationalising’ the NHS – Lansley simply said that under the new government, the private sector will have to compete on a level playing field.

But as Paul Evans, director of campaign group the NHS Support Federation, told the Guardian, the ISTCs revelations reveal the “murky world of a market-led health service, where deals can be made between companies using public money and we don’t see the contracts until the money has already been spent.”

The Sunday Times reported that government cuts to road safety budgets could lead to local authorities scrapping their entire speed camera networks, after Oxfordshire County Council moved last week to pull funding. Other councils are expected to follow – although suggestions that the entire national network is under threat are fanciful. Swindon scrapped speed cameras last year; the council claims there has been no increase in road accidents since then.

And finally, there’s a good chance you’ve already seen news of the massive leak of US data on the war in Afghanistan, secured by Wikileaks and published by (among others) the Guardian.

Suffice to say, in these times of austerity – remember how much this war costs.

A Thousand Cuts on Friday:

Nights of the long knives loom in Labour London
Government’s own report admits housing benefit cuts will force people out of Central London

Government’s own report admits housing benefit cuts will force people out of Central London

The government has admitted that its planned cuts to housing benefit entitlement may make it harder for claimants to find housing and could force families to move further from where they work.

Last month’s Budget introduced a cap on the level of Local Housing Allowance (LHA) paid to claimants, and cut the level of LHA to the 30^th percentile of rents in each area, rather than the median – reducing the number of properties that claimants will be able to afford.

Today the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) published its equality impact assessment into the changes, which admitted that the cuts would hit some families hard.

The report said: “The Government recognises that some households, particularly in very high cost areas, may have to move as a consequence of these measures. In London, some households may need to move from central London to outer London Boroughs or neighbouring local authorities which are not impacted by the overall caps.

“There could also be knock-on impacts for outer London boroughs that could be faced with an increased number of new Housing Benefit customers needing access to additional services such as schools and health care.”

The report also warned that some claimants may struggle to find suitable accommodation due to the reduction in the number of affordable properties under the new, lower LHA rates. However, the report added that the department expects around a third of properties to still be affordable, except in more expensive areas where the cap will kick in.

Claimants who are in employment may have to move further from where they work. “There could also be negative impacts for Housing Benefit customers who are working if they have to move to an area where they need to extend their commute to their place of work,” the report said. “This impact may be more pronounced in inner London than elsewhere … However, a more positive impact is that moving to more affordable accommodation could encourage households to take up employment.”

The Budget also ended payment of LHA for five-bedroom properties, and today’s report warned that this move could cause overcrowding for a small number of families. Currently 7,338 households receive benefits at the five bedroom rate, out of over one million claimants.

Tonight Citizens Advice housing policy officer Liz Phelps said the report proved the government’s housing benefit cuts would increase poverty and homelessness:

“The government’s own assessment confirms many of our worst fears about the impact these cuts to housing benefit will have, and the dangers of rushing through fundamental changes on this scale without consultation or any pilot schemes to test the effects.

“There can be no doubt that the combined effect of these cuts will lead to a sharp increase in rent arrears and homelessness, with the potential to spark a housing crisis in places such as London where the cuts will have the biggest impact. Among those worst affected will be some of the most vulnerable households and people doing low paid but vital work in the capital. Only seven per cent of rents in central London will be affordable within the new housing benefit limits.

“Worryingly, the government’s impact assessment skates over some potentially major effects of the changes. Rent arrears and evictions are likely to rise sharply once the changes come into force, yet there is little consideration of the impact on local councils, whose homelessness services will be under enormous increased pressure, with reduced scope to find housing solutions in the private rented sector because of the cuts – and all this at a time when local authorities themselves will be facing budget cuts.

“Nor is there any assessment of the impact on the private rented market. The Minister has expressed the hope that the cuts will result in a reduction in rent levels, but no information has been provided to support this view.”

Citizens Advice’s full statement can be read here.

The report said that the DWP would carry out further assessments into the economic impact of the changes, focusing on the impact on local authority housing departments, mobility, homelessness and overcrowding.

Nights of the long knives loom in Labour London

While many councils continue to work their way through the consequences of the coalition government’s in-year cuts, the prospect of 25 or even 33 percent funding cuts over the next five years is leading to some ominous budget planning in town halls.

We’ve already seen Lewisham mayor Steve ‘Butcher’ Bullock line up swingeing across the board cuts in order to save more than £60m by 2014. Now other London councils are sharpening their knives for severe cuts in the coming years.

Waltham Forest council has warned that it will need to cut £15m per year for 2011/12 and 2012/13. This is on top of the £2.6m in-year cuts to area based grants, while the council is also trying to reduce a £5m overspend racked up primarily in adult care and children’s services. Council officials are currently working on the details of both the in-year and mid-term cutbacks.

Meanwhile, Lambeth council has set itself a savings target of £62m over three years. Lambeth Unison reports that the council has already imposed more than 450 job cuts – 215 in children’s services, up to 70 in adult services, and 125 in housing.

Again, officials are still working on the detail of the in-year cuts – but the council has said it will have to sell off £100m of property. Most of the council’s £2.3bn portfolio consists of council dwellings, roads and schools, although bosses will presumably try and avoid selling these off as far as possible.

And then there’s Southwark, which warns of cutting £76m over four years should the government reduce core funding by a third in its spending review this autumn. The council’s finance cabinet member Richard Livingstone himself said such a severe cutback would be “catastrophic”.

As it stands, Southwark is already coping with £5.1m of in-year cuts – cue the now familiar reductions to the Connexions youth service and extended schools, which provide activities before and after the school day.

Lambeth, Lewisham, Waltham Forest and Southwark – these are all Labour-run councils coping with Tory-Lib Dem slashernomics. Putting to one side how much Labour would have cut from local government had it won the election, they must all now decide what kind of fight they will put up.

Attitudes vary. Butcher Bullock has made it quite clear he has no interest in taking on the government, rushing to bring out three lists of cuts in his rush to appease the Exchequer.

Southwark, by (partial) contrast, is holding a consultation process in and amongst the community before deciding what to cut, and like many Labour councils, has written to the government expressing anger over the funding squeeze.

But cuts of 25 percent or 33 percent are not really mere cuts – they represent an existential threat to the very  nature and role of local government, and to the public sector as a whole. If the cuts are implemented, British local government will be decimated beyond all recognition.

Labour council leaders need to work out if this is a process they will play a full part in – or if they are willing to formulate a strategy for stopping it in its tracks.