Trafford’s annual budget meeting is traditionally the biggest set-piece event of the council year. It typically stages a buoyant ruling party, setting out delivery of its priorities, against the harping of a grieving opposition party. This year, however, felt decidedly different in mood.
This was a difficult budget. Trafford has had to be granted a borrowing facility in order for its finance officer to sign the budget off as ‘robust’. We’ve also been allowed to increase council tax a little more than our neighbouring councils. Whilst that’s a tricky position, it does feel to me as though Trafford is being allowed to begin navigating a course back to sustainability after having been cut adrift by the previous government, whereby an already frugal council was denied the ability to steer clear of rocks.
So, I think I’m probably somewhat more optimistic than the majority of councillors speaking in the budget debate on Monday evening.
A good thing that has emerged from Trafford’s current financial plight is that there is more openness about how Trafford spends council tax payers’ money. We are still short of total clarity, but there’s been a definite positive shift. That transparency will be a prerequisite for pulling out of this. We have to take the public with us.
I’d really like us to complain less about how Trafford is somehow singled out by central government for unfair settlements. If we say it’s unfair then we’ve got to design a formula that gives Trafford more compared to a more deprived borough like Knowsley, a borough regularly cited in council documents. The simple fact is that Governments of both the left and right expect comparatively affluent boroughs to use local residents for income. Whilst the design of council tax has internal flaws, even with reform, Trafford will still be left needing to levy its citizens. So, whatever the form of that local taxation, keeping it low will carry the same risks the next time a government sets limits on how much it can be increased. I don’t believe Local Government Finance reform is going to be our salvation. This issue will return again next year.
Given the preponderance of adult social service demands in depleting the council’s finances, it was surprising only Liberal Democrat councillor Simon Lepori raised the delay in its reform as an issue. He made a good point. It was a shame his party chose, as it usually does, to pick a completely irrelevant diversionary proposal as its budget amendment. The opposition parties struggled. There was no alternative budget proposal and that Lib Dem amendment was effectively about independence for Timperley.
Although the budget passed, the work to keep costs down will have to be a daily obsession for the council. Tom Ross gave the speech of the night and it’s clear he gets this. We need to maintain the transparency and that includes the stress that we’re still next to bottom of the council tax charts.
