Staff and the Copeland Council Consultation

It became apparent on Friday, after a public meeting organised by the local Labour MP (Jamie Reed) that a number of staff within Copeland Council are unsure whether they are able to take part in the ongoing budget consultation.

Over the weekend I contacted the Chief Executive of Copeland Council, Paul Walker, to ask the following:

At the meeting held by Jamie Reed on Friday evening, an issue was raised regarding staff and our budget consultation.  It appears that staff believe they are not able to respond for fear of consequences in the workplace.  Could you please clarify what staff have been told regarding the consultation?  Are they able to respond?  If so, can all staff be reminded of their right to do so?

The response on Monday was swift and confirmed that staff are able to take part.  This is the response from Mr Walker:

Yes staff are able to respond and more than welcome to fill in the consultation. I have attached a copy of the October Team Brief confirming this.

We have continued with our web page future staff consultation, which has copies of all the staff presentation, minutes of meetings with trade unions etc. and also have dedicated email address for staff to access for feedback and comments, which is held by our Human Resources team

I will check the number of responses received tomorrow – I also want to make sure that we continually promote the opportunity with all staff across the organisation.

The relevant section of the team briefing is here (click to expand to full size):

 

At the moment responses are a bit on the low side, at around the 100 mark last week.  I will continue to ensure staff and the public are encouraged to respond to the budget consultation.

 



Where did all the money go?

This is the text of my piece in the Whitehaven News two weeks ago:

The local government cuts – by Copeland councillor Stephen Haraldsen (Hillcrest ward, Conservative)

COPELAND Council’s budget consultation has raised many questions, but one in particular needs to be answered: “Where did all the money go?”

 

People rightly want to know why the cut in Copeland Council’s government funding is so large. I hope I can shed some light on this here.

Local government cuts have been ‘front loaded’ to get the pain over with quickly, so it seems very harsh, but you can’t look at Copeland’s budget in isolation. The majority of council services we use day-to-day are provided not by the Borough, but by the County Council – schools, roads, social care, libraries, sure start, waste disposal and many more. It doesn’t seem such a large cut when you look at the Borough and the County together and see the full picture.

How the government calculates funding to councils is complicated, and is based on the things that councils do and the unique problems each faces. Inequality is an issue that we are sadly all too familiar with in Copeland, where we have some shocking levels of deprivation. The government seeks to protect those least well off when calculating council funding, but because most funding which addresses deprivation goes to the County Council, their funding take less of a cut than Copeland’s. The principle that those most in need get the most help means borough councils take a bigger hit so we can protect our schools, sure start centres and so on. The councils with the greatest deprivation still have the most per head to spend.

I know people look to shire councils in the south and think they’re getting preferential treatment, but they’re not. It’s not political, fewer than half of the ten most cut councils are Labour controlled. Those shire councils are seeing smaller cuts because they don’t get as much from the government to start with, and over the last fifteen years their funding rose more slowly than their urban and northern counterparts.

These aren’t tory cuts, they’re necessary cuts, and even Labour’s leader Ed Miliband recognises this harsh truth. Booed at a trade union rally this weekend for saying that a Labour government wouldn’t reverse any of the cuts he knows, as does Mr Reed our MP, there is no credible alternative. We can’t risk ending up like Greece.

We’ve been wasteful, shown by Copeland Council managing to save £3 million over the last two years without any detrimental impact on services. If that was possible now, why not years ago? It’s casual waste like that and reckless spending across government which led us as a country to where we are now.

Britain is poorly, drunk for years on a toxic combination of an economic boom that Gordon Brown daftly promised he’d sustain forever, reckless borrowing both by Government and households, and no budget discipline. When that all came crashing down, it was left to this coalition government to administer the treatment, and we’re making good progress. The deficit is already down by a quarter, unemployment falling, youth unemployment down, inflation falling and borrowing figures down more than expected too. Yes the treatment is painful, but that’s because the patient was so very near the edge.

As a victim of redundancy myself in 2010, I know how painful it can be. No one wants to be in the position we find ourselves in, with difficult choices to make, hard truths to face, and a bright future which seems further and further away. Prosperity doesn’t just come from Westminster or the council chambers, it comes from us all. We can do great things when we pull together.

Barack Obama steals David Cameron’s speech

The re-election of Barack Obama has and will be analysed in great detail by many people.  Regarding the outcome, I’m largely ambivalent given that the republicans control the House of Representatives and the democrats control the Senate, whoever won would have faced political gridlock on Capitol Hill.  One positive might be that the social conservative element of the Republican Party might start to lose control and allow others more in tune with the swing voters to rise.  I’ll leave that sort of analysis to folks who know better (and those who don’t).

For me, who actually won the American presidency is unimportant in one major respect; ultimately their head of state should be the Queen.  More interesting and relevant for us in the UK was the victory speech Barack Obama made, and the great resemblance it bore to the speech David Cameron made at the Conservative Party conference last month.

The theme the President went with in his speech was simple – if you want to work hard and get on, no matter who you are or where you’re from, you can in the United States of America and he’s there to help.  Perhaps he was watching the speech from Birmingham that the Prime Minister made when he said that Conservatives don’t care where you’re from, it’s where you’re going and that we’re not the party of the better off, we’re the party of the want to be better off.

Some commentators are welcoming the re-election of President Obama as being good news for the Prime Minister and the Conservatives.  I think it’s a stretch to compare the two, but if the ‘hard-work for just reward’ theme gets you re-elected, the Conservatives should be well placed to win in 2015, as long as the message can be got across to the electorate convincingly.