Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
WAS there any better way to spend £900,000?
AT THIS evening's Haringey Cabinet meeting, we learnt that there is a multi-million pound overspend and the Council is to dig further into our Reserves.
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Some folks can't think of a better way to use the £86,000 (and the rest) spent on the identity rebranding … or the £300,000 of taxes passed to Chicken Town (to start a chicken restaurant).
Those folks are likely also to be stumped as to how £914,534 could possibly be better spent. That was the sum paid out on 30 Compromise Agreements (confidentiality clauses) for outgoing senior managers.
Rather than attack the message, those same people are also likely to attack the messenger, The Daily Mail, for yesterday's article.
Clive Carter
Haringey Councillor
Liberal Democrat Party
Tags for Forum Posts: 000, Confidentiality, The Daily Mail, £900
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Clive, you know precisely why there is a multi-million pound overspend in Haringey. It is because the government has slashed the amount of money given to local authorities to all services, including essential statutory ones. This reduction is due decisions made by the last government, of which your party were partners.
The Mail article you link to is filled with deliberate inaccuracies. For instance it says that a compromise agreement would prevent staff speaking out to prevent the Baby P death. As the payments are made after someone is made redundant (that is, no longer working for a local authority) it does no such thing and no compromise agreement prevents an individual reporting serious concerns like this. They are mainly for the employee to agree that they will not take the employers to an employment tribunal.
You know, and it was raised in the radio programme you recently linked to, that the money spent on Chicken Town was from Greater London Authority funding given specifically for the regeneration of Tottenham. Whether that was a good use of the money is debatable of course, but it could not be used for other spending.
Finally, I raised with you the issue of the overspend a couple of months ago, here on HoL, as it was an item at the same Scrutiny committee as the Finsbury Park events report.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Michael I think you're overlooking the three-quarter-plus trillion pound bank bailout under a previous government that crashed the public finances. The annual interest bill for this is in the order of billions, that few dare to mention.
Following the 2008 bail-out, any government of any persuasion would have to reduce spending. Labour apologists exhibit wilful blindness to this. Banking regulation was weak and it probably would have been at least as lax had there been a Conservative administration. I respect some of the points Jeremy Corbyn has made on this matter.
The debt is colossal and the interest bill is unsustainable. If it is good enough for senior Labour figures like Ed Balls to acknowledge and apologise, it ought to be good enough for Labour apologists to acknowledge.
Haringey's poor settlement is partly due to the big reserves they've built up.
The bill for the new logo and rebranding will eventually be much more than the £86,000 declared.
Do you think the £900,000 paid out in gagging clauses might have been better spent?
The radio interviewer repeatedly tried to get the Member to acknowledge there was Council cash in the Chicken Town donation. Part of it comes from the GLA and part from the Opportunity Investment Fund ("The fund is jointed provided by Haringey Council and the GLA").
Which still leaves the question begging: was there really no better way to use those funds (casually described as "the riot money") ?
There are still choices to be made in spending at Local Government level and in Haringey, not all those choices are wise.
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Yes, politics are all about choices, and the Conservative/Liberal Democrat government chose to slash local government funding by 50% over four years with even more to come under the present government. I would be very interested in hearing what the LibDem party in Haringey would do to balance the books and deal with the funding crisis if they were in power.
On the compromise agreement, I would suggest that you ask for a copy of the actual text of the standard agreement that Haringey use to find out if it is really what you claim it to be and then do some sums on how much they spent in dealing with unfair dismissal claims resulting from redundancy (both successful and unsuccessful ones, as an unsuccessful claim costs the council money too) pre and post the use of these agreements.
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As a PS Clive, the decision to decimate local government funding was made in the knowledge that the vast bulk of local government spending is on education and providing services to some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in this country. But at the same time as 50% of the budget was cut there was no lessening of the statutory duties required to be delivered delivered. All that is left to save money on is people (so redundancy) and none statutory services like parks
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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You do realise that once the government addresses its bottom line there is less money in the economy to go around? I appreciate that we're servicing a debt but plenty of "investors" seem to be willing to lend to the government at ridiculously low rates. The Quantitative Easing program has just given money to banks who have hoarded it to meet more strenuous capital requirements or lent it out at very low rates to people for buy-to-let mortgages. This was done by the Bank of England, not the government. Really what we need is helicopter money and what better way to distribute it than increase local government spending?
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Permalink Reply by Gordon T on
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Michael, and others, today's article documenting a fierce exchange of letters between the Conservative leader of Oxfordshire County Council and the *cough* MP for Witney, Oxfordshire contributes to this debate in some detail.
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The sad thing is that politicians of both stripes are just too proud to admit such a glaring mistake and nothing will be done about it. I mean, it's not as if DC's going to lose his seat over it.
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I expect better than this of you Clive: "Michael I think you're overlooking the three-quarter-plus trillion pound bank bailout under a previous government that crashed the public finances. The annual interest bill for this is in the order of billions, that few dare to mention."
As for "the interest bill is unsustainable", poppycock. In the short term investors are paying for the opportunity to loan our government money (Gilt quotes), you need to take into account inflation to make it below zero but it investors do. We should be borrowing more, if we get in trouble we can just devalue our currency, something we have yet to do.
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ANOTHER area of Council largesse that doesn't alway attract attention is the size of the salaries bill at the top end in this top-heavy administration.
The Taxpayers’ Alliance say (article, Tottenham Independent) that Haringey Council paid more staff six-figure sums than any other council in the country last year. And, that 68 members of staff on the council earned more than £100,000 in 2013/14.
The figures come weeks after a poverty report found Haringey to be one of the eight most impoverished boroughs in London.
Cllr Gail Engert, Haringey Lib Dem Leader of the Opposition, said: "It is shocking that so many of Haringey's staff have been paid so much. The money would be much better spent on services for the young and vulnerable.
"Local residents pay the fifth highest council tax in London and they rightly expect that money to be spent on services."
If Jeremy Corbyn and George Osborne each take a similar view about this chronic national problem, it's a sign that something ought to be done.
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But there aren't 68 members of staff earning in excess of £100,000 a year Clive. If you read to the end of the article there are 15 (the names and amounts are published on Haringey's website) What the Tax Payers Alliance have done, as they normally do, is not let the facts get in the way of a good story. They included the cost of redundancy which is of course one off, means these people will not be paid again and is not a salary. Whether these 15 people are worth the money is of course a legitimate thing to debate but at least can we have the correct facts?
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ON the basis of either set of figures, one could forgive an outsider for imagining this must be one of the richest boroughs on the country, rather than one which is short of money and that has just agreed to swingeing cuts to social services, that has significant areas of deprivation and that houses many vulnerable residents.
Everything reasonable should be done to minimise those cuts.
Unfortunately, much waste – the new logo being merely the most visible – has already occurred.
Tough decisions have had to be made but for a select few, there's always a trip to Cannes.
Excessive remuneration in municipal "Senior Management Teams" is not confined to this Borough and as a national racket, it can probably only be tackled by Central Government.
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It would be wrong for me as a Cllr. to go into detail about particular pay scales or individual employees, but the information is there and the aggregate figures are certainly there. In my opinion, as a country we cannot afford to continue paying the most richly rewarded managers at these levels. Action could – and should – be taken by either this government or a Corbyn-led government.
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