“If Conservatives can’t run a council, they can’t be trusted to run the country”

[to coin a phrase from Simon Jupp]

Woking council has laid out a drastic package of cuts to local services after it in effect declared itself bankrupt this summer, revealing a £1.2bn deficit racked up from a risky investment spree overseen by its former Conservative administration.

Richard Partington www.theguardian.com 

Plans include scrapping funding for dozens of the town’s sports pavilions and toilets, the closure of a swimming pool, cutting resources for parks, the arts, and ending council backing for some community centres, annual concerts, and involvement in youth sporting events.

The troubled Surrey local authority also proposed scrapping millions of pounds in support for playgrounds and community care schemes for young, old and vulnerable residents in an attempt to balance the books. It will launch a consultation on the proposals next month.

In a document setting out a wide-ranging austerity programme, it also revealed plans to remove funding for choir and dance classes for residents with Parkinson’s disease, as well as grants for community transport for elderly and disabled people, and for a local charity helping domestic abuse survivors.

John Bond, a former independent councillor in the authority, said: “It’s horrendous. I think residents were unaware really quite how bad it would be. Who will want to come and live in Woking now?

“It’s going to affect everything, with the vulnerable suffering most. There is so much money owing, it’s going to go on for 10 or 20 years. The amounts are mind-boggling.”

The council also said it could not afford to complete a 1,200-home development at the Sheerwater estate, a regeneration scheme it was part way through building, and would seek “alternative options” to finish the project.

Council coordination and support for a summer concert series, annual celebrations for Diwali and Chinese new year, and the town’s involvement in the Surrey Youth Games will also cease.

As one of a growing number of English local authorities in financial distress, Woking issued a section 114 notice in June, signalling that it lacked the resources to balance its budget.

Birmingham city council, the largest local authority in the UK, became the latest to issue such a notice this week, blaming a £760m bill for equal pay claims, problems installing a new IT system and £1bn in government cuts over the past decade.

Rishi Sunak sought this week to capitalise on the Labour-run authority’s meltdown, telling the Commons: “They’ve bankrupted Birmingham, we can’t let them bankrupt Britain.”

However, councils from across the political divide are increasingly sounding the alarm over mounting financial pressures, after years of cuts to central government funding, soaring inflation, and rising demand amid the cost of living crisis.

Others to issue section 114 notices in the past couple of years include Conservative-run Northamptonshire and Thurrock, alongside Labour-run Slough and Nottingham. At least 26 English local authorities are thought to be at risk of issuing a section 114 notice within the next two years.

Woking’s troubles stem from a programme of commercial investments and regeneration schemes involving hotels and skyscrapers overseen by its former Tory administration, after piling up debts of £1.8bn – more than 100 times its annual £16m of core funding from council tax, government grants and other income.

The council’s Liberal Democrat leadership has blamed the party, which they ousted last year, for borrowing billions of pounds to fund risky schemes, including a complex of towers in the town centre – standing as the tallest buildings outside a big city in England – with a four-star Hilton hotel, public plazas, parking facilities and shops.

Ann-Marie Barker, the council leader, said: “These are dreadful proposals we don’t want to put forward. However, it’s important to note that it is historic debt levels we’re dealing with, on an unprecedented scale.”

Although acknowledging that Woking residents would “rightly be unhappy with what we’re going to do”, Barker said the Conservatives were responsible for running up its £1.2bn deficit. “We need to put our house in order to live within our means.”

Despite the efforts to find savings, the council documents, published before a key meeting next week setting out its medium-term financial plan, predicted Woking would still face an £11m shortfall in its budget for 2024-25. The council said it was also in talks with central government to explore a potential package of financial support.

Owl’s correspondent reports that two out of three sections of the new footbridge were lowered into place successfully yesterday, watched by many.

These will ultimately span a 70m breach which will be made in the 200 year old embankments gradually over the next couple of months to reconnect the estuary with its floodplain.

The last section is likely to be hoisted today.

A spectacle, apparently, not to be missed!

[Boris Johnson first made the promise of 40 new hospitals during the campaign to be elected in 2019.]

Some hospitals are so dilapidated that they regularly have to shut wards and operating theatres to safeguard patients’ safety, a senior NHS boss has admitted.

Denis Campbell www.theguardian.com 

Julian Kelly, NHS England’s deputy chief executive, made the statement when giving evidence to the House of Commons public accounts committee on Thursday.

He was being questioned about the progress of the government’s pledge to build 40 new hospitals by 2030. Kelly told MPs that some NHS facilities were in such disrepair that the health service had “examples all the time where hospitals are having to shut units, decant patients into other spaces, where we are losing theatres … which limits our capacity to treat patients”.

Kelly was referring to problems caused by hospitals being left structurally unsound either because they are made of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) or because their environment has deteriorated over recent years as the NHS’s capital budget has been squeezed.

“We have hospital teams which are managing these sort of issues day in and day out,” Kelly said. “And so we have examples of managing fire risk, flooding … a lot of this is because we know we’ve seen a big increase in backlog maintenance and we know there was a pause in investment in new hospital infrastructure.”

The cost of addressing the backlog of maintenance across the NHS estate in England has risen to a record £10.2bn, of which £1.8bn is needed for repairs of “high-risk” problems.

For example, the Queen Elizabeth hospital in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, had to mothball four of its operating theatres between September 2022 and May this year to allow “failsafing work” to take place across the site, to stop ceilings and walls from collapsing due to Raac.

Under the hospital’s ongoing “decant programme” some of its clinical services and wards are being moved into a temporary area while steel supports are inserted to reduce the risk of its roof falling down because of Raac, a hospital spokesperson said. The programme is 40% completed, she added.

Amanda Pritchard, NHS England’s chief executive, told the MPs that hospital staff found it “really quite burdensome” to monitor Raac. Even enhanced monitoring of the concrete “does not, and can’t completely, eliminate the risk from Raac,” she said. The NHS is implementing a plan to eradicate all Raac from its estate by 2035.

Doncaster Royal infirmary is at risk of “enforced closure” because it is experiencing so many problems related to the fact that it is so old, the Health Service Journal reported this week. In May it was removed without explanation from the list of 40 new hospitals that are due to be rebuilt.

At the PAC hearing, Kelly and Shona Dunn, the Department of Health and Social Care’s second permanent secretary, confirmed that the promised 40 new hospitals would not be built by 2030.

Meanwhile, new research by the House of Commons library shows that the seven hospitals worst-affected by Raac have 1.9 million people in the populations they serve and employ 43,000 staff.

“It is frankly a national scandal that so many people live in areas with hospital buildings at risk of collapse”, said Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, which requested the analysis.

“Hard-working doctors and nurses were the heroes of the pandemic and deserve better than to work in unsafe conditions under roofs at risk of collapse.

“This feels like a disaster waiting to happen with the NHS”, he added.

“This is government money, and the government is asking us to do this. We have a duty to support Afghan people who supported our forces in the conflict.” Paul Arnott

Local Democracy Reporter eastdevonnews.co.uk

Homes will be provided in East Devon for refugees arriving in the county from Afghanistan, writes local democracy reporter Guy Henderson.

More arrivals, whose work to support British forces in Afghanistan means their lives are in peril, are expected to reach Devon in the coming months.

East Devon District Council has agreed to provide five homes at a cost of almost a million pounds. A further £750,000 will come from the Government.

Four of the homes will be specifically for refugee families.

Members of the council’s cabinet heard this week that once the homes are no longer needed by Afghan refugees, they will be available for people on local housing lists.

The Government’s department for levelling up, homes and communities has issued funds to help councils provide temporary accommodation for Afghan refugees who are currently living in hotels such as one in Exmouth.

A report to the committee said the government money is designed to help Afghan citizens who helped Britain during the conflict in their country. All local authorities have been encouraged to take part.

The report said that while there is currently no local refugee need for the new properties, more Afghan refugees are expected to arrive from other countries in the next few months. They would have priority for the four properties.

The report added: “It is not possible to say with certainty for how long the accommodation will be needed for its primary purpose. However, based on our experience of the bridging hotel, most families have looked to move to other areas, usually larger cities such as London or Birmingham.

“This would suggest that the length of time for any placement would likely be more temporary, perhaps less than a year.”

Liberal Democrat council leader Paul Arnott (Coly Valley) said: “Hopefully if the world calms down in the next five to 10 years and there aren’t refugees, this will be housing stock that can be used for other people.

“This is government money, and the government is asking us to do this. We have a duty to support Afghan people who supported our forces in the conflict.”

Paul Arnott 

Most of us will have sat in a room at some time where just about everyone present is moaning. Often with good cause. My approach to that has always been, give the moaners a hearing, throw a moan into the mix myself if needed, but don’t leave till you have spent just as much time suggesting solutions.

Here are two common moans. First, the country is not building enough new homes to meet the demand. Second, a combination of new building and poor practice in agriculture is causing devastating pollution in our streams and rivers.

A couple of years ago, these issues became linked. Natural England, the organisation entrusted with making sure we do not allow our environment to be irreversibly wrecked, reported that this pollution was getting worse, unsustainably so. The particular problem was discharging phosphates into rivers, 70% of which came from agriculture, but 30% from new build projects.

Just around Easter 2022, East Devon District Council received a letter from Natural England, instructing us to cease making any progress with giving planning consent in most of the Axe Valley. By which they also meant large parts of west Dorset and south Somerset which feed into the Axe lower down.

I found myself at a house a few weeks back in a village a few miles south of Crewkerne. The host told me he’d wanted to build a small structure in his garden but had been informed by Somerset County Council that there was no point even applying for permission while the ban was in place. It’s not just Axminster affected.

East Devon councillors have been made well aware that the construction industry is up in arms about this, saying that most of the phosphate pollution is caused by agriculture and not by them. “Most “being the operative word. They are still causing pollution.

Last week Michael Gove, who runs the government department overseeing development, made a typically confusing announcement. The country needs more homes, the ban on construction in some areas is blocking that, therefore he is lifting the ban on construction. Oh, and just to show that he has not forgotten that phosphates are a problem, he announced a £250 million fund to help farmers clean up their act, about a zero short of what is really needed.

And just to throw a bit of red meat to his right wing, he boasted that he can do this now because we are no longer in Europe, despite his and Mr Johnson’s multiple assertions that leaving the EU would not be allowed to diminish our environmental protection in future. Who now can be even mildly surprised that it was a lie then and a lie now?

Mr Gove’s party is of course massively dependant on funding and political support from the construction industry. He knows full well that by Christmas next year the Conservatives will be in opposition, so he’s doing one for his mates on the way out of the door. It stinks, literally so.

So, what’s the solution? I would suggest a National Housing Commission, cross-party, is set up as an emergency intervention to last at least a decade. Clause One is “don’t screw up the environment”, and there is no reason not to achieve this. Then it needs to look at the catastrophic loss of social housing stock and, commissioning through local councils who understand the need and the unique characteristics of their areas, get delivering, training up the local workforce in the process. The Tories have had every chance since 2010 to do that. A fresh new government needs to get this going from the get-go.