If you look after the pennies, the pounds will look after themselves… and that couldn’t be more important for those in public office when you are spending someone else’s (local residents’) money.
On Wednesday, 5 February the budget of Bedford Borough Council will be decided upon at Full Council. Bedford Borough Council’s annual budget is £177 million.
Some of this comes from government grants, but around £125 million of it comes from council tax, paid by you the local residents.
We have already seen what the minority Conservative administration (with one independent) has proposed for the Budget when it was agreed a fortnight ago by the Mayor’s Executive.
In summary: We are all facing a council tax rise of 5% and yet we are facing cuts to essential services such as Libraries, Telecare provision, street cleaning and maintenance. And borrowing levels that – by 2031 – mean 8% of the council’s budget will go on financing the debt alone.
In fact, things are now so serious that the Council’s own finance officers have warned: “In the event that budget pressures cannot be contained in 2024/2025 and 2025/26 it is likely that the financial position would be unsustainable.”
Last week this dire financial situation was even used by the Mayor to avoid democratic scrutiny of a decision to auction off four public properties.
So it doesn’t look like the pennies or pounds are being looked after at all.
And it is already having an impact on services.
As an indication of how rocky things are, we have consistently warned the Mayor that reserves can only be spent once, but this Conservative administration has spent £26m of reserves in just two years.
And now alarm bells are ringing as financial experts are being brought in to assess the council’s deteriorating financial health. The Mayor needs to think again about his approach to spending taxpayers’ money before it’s too late.
They have not made good use of taxpayers’ hard-earned money, buying up property they don’t need at more than the independent fair valuation and wasting money refurbishing Oasis just to close it.
Public money should be spent on services which will benefit the residents of Bedford Borough. It shouldn’t be squandered on pet projects or wasted on purchases which turn out to be overvalued.
Liberal Democrats and other Councillors are trying to stop this irresponsible spending and we have had some success. We have forced a reduction in overall council borrowing but levels are still far too high.
We have – alongside Bedford Independent and others – secured a U-turn on plans to charge for evening and weekend parking and on the plans to scrap the River Festival. The Council have also been forced to drop plans to scrap school crossing patrol funding.
However, there is already a serious impact on the services residents expect to see and things are getting worse. The Conservative Government left the nation’s finances in a mess and it looks like the same may be happening to our Borough now.
We will continue to put positive options forward in the face of the wasteful actions we are seeing from the Mayor.
This is a monthly guest column provided by Cllr Henry Vann,
leader of the Bedford Borough Liberal Democrat Group.
It is published unedited and does not reflect the
views of the Bedford Independent.
