Liberal Democrat Budget Amendments - Proposing

Speech by Cllr Zoe Patrick, Leader of the Opposition delivered to Council on Tue 9th Feb 2010

I am pleased to present our Opposition budget amendments at Council today. I would like to thank Sue Scane and her team, and in particular her colleague, Katy, who spent many hours with us preparing this budget and thus ensuring we have a robust proposal to put before you. I would also like to express my gratitude to Stephanie for her hard work too.

Liberal Democrats still stand by the fact that this is an unfair system, which does not work; it penalises those who are elderly or on low incomes, and until there is total reform, we will continue to battle on with what we have got. But this does not go any way into helping those who are property rich but tax poor.

This year, we have before us just three budget proposals for discussion, one that will be agreed, and the other two which will be dismissed. And we will spend some good hours of today debating what we would all wish for, but knowing that we will have to settle for less. I must admit it was very tempting to do what Labour have done and to just throw our hands into the air and say why bother, why waste time on budget proposals which will not go through? However, in previous years, some of our suggestions have indeed been taken forward for subsequent years, so I can only hope that some of the suggestions we have on the table today will be taken up sometime in the future.

What Liberal Democrats are not accepting is the Tory assumption of a Cameron government after this year's general election. This creates a hole in their budget from 2011-2013 which puts pressure on the whole medium term plan.

What we offer the Council today is a real alternative budget, a budget which will really make a difference to the people of Oxfordshire and takes into account forward planning for our services in the future. This is a much more sustainable budget which recognises that there is no guarantee what will happen the other side of the General Election.

Our Council tax increase is below the Conservatives, but we are spending more on services and less on backroom functions, inessential jobs in the corporate core.

I will present to you our Opposition budget amendments herewith, which will deliver much more value for money.

Our budget concentrates on three key areas: children and young people, older people and the environment, including maintaining our roads and pavements.

Children & Young People

Our budget amendments increase the Children's budget by £680K. Our key spending areas are:

• £250K for expansion of Children's Centres.

• £155K for more outreach youth work in all of our districts

• £200K for respite care for children with disabilities

• In the Capital programme we include investment in a youth centre for Grove/Wantage

Social & Community Services

Our budget increases the Social and Community Services budget by £840K which includes

• £225K more for enhancing services at day centres

• £250K to provide services for carers, a much forgotten group

• £275K for additional respite care

• Postponing any changes to the fire cover until there has been additional discussion and consultation. We believe that so far people have not been persuaded that this is a good thing

Environment & Economy

We wish to continue to invest in the environment as high priority and in particular carbon reduction measures

• We invest £740K in environment and economy on top of the Cabinet's proposals

• We recognise how important road and pavement maintenance is to the public and invest an extra £500K each year. In addition we invest an additional £300K in the first year to help mitigate the worst of the winter potholes. This amounts to over £1 million to help our roads damaged by snow.

• We are not charging more money for people to park outside their homes in Oxford, but we are reintroducing parking charges for visitors to Oxford in the evenings and on Sundays.

• Recognising the importance of the environment, we will ensure some extra money is put into some energy saving measures. This includes small one-off amounts to pay for smart metres which can be loaned from libraries, fuel efficient driving courses, and some plugged in places for cars in market towns. We know that Oxford City Council have trialled driving courses on 300 staff and calculate that they have saved £69,000 a year reducing fuel bills and maintenance costs by 18%.

My shadow cabinet members will go into more detail on all these proposals, so I just outline them here.

We will help fund some of these services from extra saving measures that we want to introduce in their own right:

• Cutting backroom functions by reducing the number of staff and publications in media & communications and the policy unit. We wish to cut red tape and bureaucracy, and see little merit in ticking boxes and promoting 'spin' when people just expect delivery of their frontline services.

• We would increase the charges for skips, hoardings and scaffolding placed on the highway in order to encourage builders to remove obstacles to traffic quickly

• We would reintroduce charges for evening and Sunday parking in Oxford, and increase charges by 10% as they have not been increased since 2007. The aim is to reduce traffic and encourage the use of off-street parking (both Park and Ride and City centre). We believe that people coming into the city during the evening for a night at the theatre or for a meal will not miss a very small charge for the convenience of parking within a short distance of the venue.

• We see some scope for sharing senior management with other local authorities and wish to explore this further

But our message is clear -

• More spending on care for the frail, elderly and other vulnerable adults.

• More spending on children, including more investment in youth services

• More spending on roads, pavements and environmental projects

This is a real opportunity to use our budget to provide the services that people rely on. Let us put an end to the wastage in red-tape bureaucracy and backroom functions which are not necessary. Surely it won't be noticed if one piece of paper is not passed from one desk to another in the policy unit, but if an older person does not receive home help then that could be a matter of life and death. A front-line social worker is much more important and we can retain that service if we keep the level of council tax at 2.5% in future years, instead of trying to force a squeeze by not only inflicting us with the proposition of a Cameron government, but the consequent unpredictability and uncertainty which cannot be relied upon. One week Cameron claims he will be taking a tough line on public spending, then the next week he changes his mind and says he will not be quite so tough on public spending - well, which stance are we expected to believe when the Tory budget depends on extra spending from government on grants for local authorities.

Please support this budget today and give Oxfordshire residents much better value for money and more choice in how their money is being spent.