Blog 23rd January 2017

Blog 23rd January 2017

Last week I presented an in-house training session on right to buy, capital receipts and 1-4-1 replacement of sold homes at a local authority in Eastern England. The session was well received. Delegates said that the information provided was very relevant, the quality of the presentation was excellent and the training met their needs fully. They described the session as: practical, thorough, useful and valuable. Specific comments that were made included:

In common with most local authorities, Cumbria County Council is experiencing significant budget pressures caused by reductions in government funding, restrictions on the Council’s ability to raise Council Tax and increasing need especially for Adult Social Care services. I therefore wrote in support of the Council’s proposal to raise Council Tax by the maximum increase allowed of 1.99% plus 2% to fund the additional costs of adult social care. However, I also commented on other options for Council Tax, Adult Social Care, Children’s Services, the Efficiency Strategy, the Reserves, the Capital Programme, Asset Management and inflation.

A copy of my response to the consultation by Cumbria County Council can be downloaded from HERE

Eden District Council’s budgets have been protected from the most severe reductions in local government funding ever since 2010 but in my view, they are not making best use of the resources available to them. In my response to their budget consultation I suggest that the Council consider:

• A more significant capital programme to address especially the economic development and housing objectives that it has identified, funded through surplus reserves, prudential borrowing and more effective asset management.
• Approving revenue budgets that do not contain ‘budget slack’, that aim to reduce reserves to an appropriate level and that focus resources on direct services.

A copy of my response to the consultation by Eden District Council can be downloaded from HERE

Following the government’s announcement that the Starter Homes scheme will go ahead, I had some correspondence with my Member of Parliament, Rory Stewart, that I included in my blog last week (see below). In this correspondence, Rory Stewart questioned the conclusions of research by Shelter that I had quoted.

Sara Mahmoud, an Economic Analyst at Shelter, has since responded by explaining their research and its conclusions as follows: