We voted against the budget this year and here is why

When we think back to last year, we had a severe issue with the non-delivery of savings for last year’s budget which meant we had an in-year deficit of £11m, which took a lot of time and effort to close.

So when we consider that against the even more precarious level of high-risk savings in this year’s budget, what kind of in-year deficit could we be facing later in the year?

We also have a serious issue with how some of the savings from the 24/25 budget have been delivered.

There was the cut to the grant for the Dementia Resource Centre; most members of the FSWG, a cross party working group setup to advise the administration on their budget, had assumed that the saving agreed related to the relocation of the centre and the disposal of the property currently being used rather than a grant cut.

We have had two changes to policy regarding the Householder’s Waste Facility, firstly around limiting DIY waste and more recently the online permit scheme for only householders from the PCC area.

The budget line stated, “We are proposing to introduce a scheme to limit access to the Household Recycling Centre (HRC) to Peterborough residents only.” What this didn’t mention was it was decided to also restrict households to only one car permit. Where was the Cabinet or Cabinet Member's Decision on this? Apparently, it didn’t need one.

It just seems that the governance of this council is being pared down leaving little opportunity to make legitimate challenges, especially where the wording is light on detail and bears little resemblance to the emerging policy.

With these all taken into account it is disconcerting to think what we were actually being asked to sign up for on this budget? What cleverly worded sections are hiding policies we haven’t discussed?

We are also very worried about the delivery promised on the 25/26 budget. There are a lot of budget savings that show the same savings for the next three years, this essentially means there is no lead into these savings they are happening from the start of the financial year, does the council have the capacity to deliver these all in the next two months? Certainly, previous years would suggest it hasn’t.

A clear example of this is the management structure review looking to save £2m. Surely even if the review was to be done and dusted in April, redundancies cost money there doesn’t seem to be a provision for this.

We are encouraged by the changes in the budget savings outlined for Leisure Heritage and Library Services – keeping open the Lido, the blanket closure of the majority of libraries to just three has also been postponed, the closure of cafes has been halted, the transfer of leisure facilities to associated schools to run has been paused. The budget states that keeping the Lido open will mean a saving of only £100k can be realised and not the figure of £400k in the budget consultation document, However its seems all the other changes will be cost-neutraI as there is no other change to this line in the budget, I mean really?

The capital programme set out a plan for spending over the next four years of around £200m of which £68m is coming from PCC, the rest from grants and other third-party contributions, but it is heavily loaded to next year of more than half of the total amount. Again do we have the capacity to deliver this size of expenditure? Remember that delayering exercise stripping out £2m in management is going to leave us with even less capacity.

Asset disposals – we have had a review of community assets going on in various guises since 2013. We continue to keep the guillotine hovering over beloved local community hubs and libraries, the disposal of which unlocks big savings in maintenance but is chicken feed when it comes to potential capital receipts, certainly not when compared with the Hilton hotel and TK Maxx buildings.

Our buildings are quite literally falling apart and their value is far below their potential. We simply can’t continue to cut out the heart of our communities.

We need a bold plan to revitalise and repurpose these buildings to meet the needs of our city and rural areas. If we are to hand over these assets to community groups to run we can’t wash our hands. We need to stand alongside them to help them steer through the pitfalls ahead.

So in conclusion there were simply too many holes in this budget and a suspicion of what the actual delivery of savings will look like given this year’s experience. We didn’t vote for the budget as our conscience wouldn’t not allow us to support it.

At the start of the budget meeting I predicted that the Conservatives would be voting in favour of the budget given that both the Conservative Group Leader and the Conservative Chair of the FSWG had co-signed the Budget Consultation document alongside the Labour leader and cancelling the last meeting of the FSWG, as “there should be no more questions to answer”. I was correct with regard to the Leader and the Chair of the FSWG, but it seems the Conservative group were less convinced with only one other voting in favour and two voting against.

The budget was approved in the end by just 3 votes with 21 votes for 18 against and 11 abstentions.