04 Nov 2024
There will be changes in the way SADC approaches tough budget decisions in the wake of the Harpenden on-street parking row, leader Paul de Kort has revealed.
The new approach will see proposals on raising revenue or cutting costs for the coming year put forward at a much earlier stage.
At the moment the council has a very small window to make decisions on what is going to be funded or cut – a period between when they learn the local government finance settlement for the coming year in mid to late December, and when the budget has to be approved in the third week of February to set Council Tax.
Paul explained: “At the last council meeting there was a proposal from the Conservatives that we put the next budget out to consultation, but it’s just not practical.
“But this year, not purely because of parking, but because of all of these pressures, we’re going out now in the next cycle of committees and presenting all of our proposals. We’re asking any committee member, who would be representative of all of the opposition parties, to either say they would do the same or crucially give alternatives, whether that be revenue-raising or cost-cutting.
“Understandably officers are cautious because we don’t know exactly what the numbers are. But the view I would take is let’s see it all in a big space, and although it won’t be formally done, let’s rank [these proposals], let’s at least hear what the options are.”
He stressed that there was consultation of sorts already in place.
“You get elected councillors at district level who are seeing the pressures through the year. It’s not as if the £2.5 million was a surprise, or that councillors of all stripes weren’t saying, ‘Why don’t we cut that a bit more?’ ‘Why don’t we spend so much on that?’ Or the opposite, ‘I don’t want that to happen’. They did say that about some things.
“I mean, we decided last year not to shut all the public toilets, we decided to keep the CCTV provision, because people felt safer with it, we kept the fly-tipping enforcement, which is enhanced rather than the absolute minimum that we’d have to do.
“I just think sometimes when you’re running an authority, in this case a council, you just have to be a bit more adult. Daisy [Cooper] said it about a year ago, I think, in your paper, they don’t just want to be opposition for opposition’s sake.
“Propose something and say what you’d do differently. If any councillor of any persuasion, but maybe particularly a Conservative in Harpenden, wants to say, ‘I tell you what, that was a big mistake and we don’t want to charge for these bays, so we’re putting this idea forward’, then everyone can listen. Journalists, everyone, and the public can ask questions.
“Not some vague arm waving about how maybe in the past they had some extra reserves, which they didn’t. You know this story about the reserves that the Conservatives built up from £18 million to £31, 32 million? The suggestion is that we’ve depleted all reserves. What do you think the figure was for March 2024? £33 million.
“It’s because they’re not counting the right things. There’s all sorts of things in there, which is what they talk about, which aren’t reserves available to us because they’re earmarked for capital projects, so they weren’t comparing apples with apples.”
But did he have any regrets about the way he had handled the issue of on-street parking charges.
“Obviously, I’m a Harpenden district councillor, but I’m also the leader, and Harpenden is just over 20 per cent of the total district.
“So there is a fairness angle on this, in that it was part of a set of budget measures, cost cuts and reduced service provision to make up the £2.5 million shortfall for the year. So it wasn’t as if introducing Harpenden parking charges was the one thing that was done, there were loads of things like that.
“I do regret the position that all councils have been put in. We’ve been cut to the bone, and I know various opposition councillors want to say that’s not the case, but objectively it is. And it was very clear when the budget was set that the opposition had nothing to offer, they couldn’t provide an alternative.”
