Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Big savings needed in Haringey. Where should the savings come from?
Now the party's truly over. I've been talking for a while now about the need for local authorities to save something like 20-25% from their budgets. This evening Panorama took up the theme. It's now out there. For Haringey that'll mean savings of something like £80-100m in savings. That's huge! We're facing the biggest cuts since the 1970s. Handled badly, it will be an emergency.
So what do we think? What would we choose? We can sit back and let the Council take decisions or we can share the responsibility and contribute our views. Probably about as exciting as doing your expenses, but something we should probably be doing.
Here's how Haringey's spending is split right now:
So discuss. For more details on Haringey's finances, see this area on their website.
Some rules. Only constructive discussion allowed. If you want to party-politic or bash the Council, please go to another discussion. I'm opening this discussion for constructive discussion only. Break those rules and ya get nuked!
So what do we think? What would we choose? We can sit back and let the Council take decisions or we can share the responsibility and contribute our views. Probably about as exciting as doing your expenses, but something we should probably be doing.
Here's how Haringey's spending is split right now:
So discuss. For more details on Haringey's finances, see this area on their website.
Some rules. Only constructive discussion allowed. If you want to party-politic or bash the Council, please go to another discussion. I'm opening this discussion for constructive discussion only. Break those rules and ya get nuked!
Tags for Forum Posts: cuts, public spending cuts
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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1. Rubbish collection is surely something that should be looked at more closely. We must be charged for how much we throw out. 4.5% is just too much.
2. Make the entire borough a CPZ, that should bring in a wee bit. At the moment drivers in Tottenham are subsidising residents in Muswell Hill and Crouch End over CPZ charges.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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It's impossible to make realistic suggestions without much more detail of what they are spending money on and that doesn't seem to be in the website.. As an example, to take the biggest area of spend - Children and Young People - ( and I'm not suggesting that this is an area that necessarily should be cut ), without knowing what they are spending the money on we can't identify where savings could be made. If we knew that they were spending a lot of money on outings to Thorpe Park we might suggest that this was not very cost-effective. But without this detail we're stymied.
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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Of course, local politicians wouldn't approve.. but what about organising refuse collection on a cross-borough London-wide basis? A TfL type organisation for Litter and Refuse?
Surely it would be cheaper to do it that way? Less managers and more street cleaners?
Why should transport be run as a London-wide system but refuse/ litter clearance run locally..?
If I were an Enfield resident, I could easily dump stuff in Haringey and let the residents there pay for it's disposal.. and I bet many do and v.v.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Some interesting ideas there Stephen.
Creating consortia to carry out common services (waste collection, local transport services etc) has the potential to deliver really meaningful savings (getting more use from expensive vehicles with less idle time in depots). What about other areas like meals in the home, libraries, infrastructure planning issues? I'm sure there are more areas that can be looked at if politicians were able to be creative and brave.
The problem in the past has always been getting the boroughs to cooperate with each other but now that a large group of north London neighbouring authorities are Labour AND that they are all facing the same huge cuts makes this a real possibility.
On the down side it would mean that people in each borough would have less influence on the provision of services and setting of local spending priorities.
I'm sure that these conversations are already going on behind the scenes but perhaps our councillors could let us know how they view the idea.
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PS - to put the savings needed into context, an average inner London borough spends around one billion pounds each year.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Michael, can I suggest some caution here. The promise of efficiency savings from consortia and shared services may turn out to be as illusory as the vast savings which were supposed to flow from Call Centres, ICT, outsourcing and privatisation.
When savings are made there's often a downside: lower pay for already low-paid staff; and more casual and 'grey' economy working. Wickes on Seven Sister's Road isn't the only place where the "Lump" system operates. At the same time, huge salaries are paid to interim and temporary managers a few of whom get travel and hotel bills paid.
But the worst aspect is that systemic waste is often built into the new arrangements. And becomes much harder to detect and prevent. Although some examples are legendary - like the complication and expense of getting someone from a private contractors to change a light-bulb.
So yes, we do need to talk to and cooperate with other boroughs about how they plan to tackle the Government cuts. But the last thing we need when trying to save money is to relinquish control of spending to an arm's length consortium or agency. As Heather Brooke points out: "Other people's money is remarkably easy to spend". *
To be more positive, I assume that - without mentioning it explicitly - Hugh has raised the issue of Participatory Budgeting. As times are hard, I'm assuming that fact-finding trips to Porto Alegre are off the menu. In which case a good place to start may be these people in Manchester.
As for "conversations going on behind the scenes"? Maybe there are. But nobody has mentioned them to me.
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)
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* I'm half-way through Heather Brookes' very challenging The Silent State. You'll find many ideas which the Coalition Government seems to have accepted and are taking action on. (HoL members can get a 10% discount on it at the Big Green bookshop, Wood Green. )
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My apologies. I should have written "outside Wickes" . I wasn't suggesting that the firm itself uses "Lump Labour" - casual daily workers paid in cash.
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Permalink Reply by Caroline on
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I can't remember the details but there was consultation a few years ago on whether the responsibility for waste should transfer to the GLA. The Boroughs lobbied very hard against it and the idea was dropped.
I agree that there are substantial savings to be made. Looking at it simplistically you would think that merely having the same rubbish and recycling bins being used across London would bring massive economies of scale and improve performance as a London wide recycling scheme could lead to better public understanding of what can be recycled and how to recycle.
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Permalink Reply by RuthE on
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It would be interesting to have a more thorough breakdown of what exactly the money is spent on in each category especially the section 'other' at 7% much bigger than refuse collection at a mere 4.5%.
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Permalink Reply by Maddy on
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I completely agree that rubbish collection and street cleaning should be London-wide. Why should you be able to recycle some things in some boroughs but not in others (paint, for example, for which Barnet have a special collection point at the dump, whereas in Haringey you have to call some toxic waste collection number that never answer.)?
I once read that plastic recycling was so slow to get going because individual councils could not afford to store the stuff collected, as it takes up a lot of space and could only be sold on in huge quantities - this seemed like a case for inter-borough co-operation.
Personally I'm a bit anti local government as a concept - it seems to create inefficiency and waste, and not streamlined services for a big city like London.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Maddy, at the risk of being struck-off, I have to say I agree with your post. Everybody in Haringey is obliged to go along with the status quo, but some of us stand back and look at, not how it is (local government, I mean) but rather as it could be.
I also suspect there is waste and inefficiency in the current set-up. Some of the inefficiency stems from duplication and artificial competition between neighbouring Boroughs. Our Borough was set up in 1965 as an experiment in grand-scale social engineering ... that has failed. I have long thought that it is too small for some purposes and too big for other purposes. It's the wrong size and shape and needs to be downsized in some ways and up-scaled in other ways ...
Just a small reminder re scale: the government deficit is said to be £156,000,000,000.
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