Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Bust in the boonies: As central-government finances buckle, local coffers take the strain too
BRITAIN’S cupboard is looking pretty bare. After a binge of bail-outs, lifelines and fiscal stimuli, public borrowing is soaring. And if things look bad in Westminster, pain will be felt in town halls around the country. Councils get an average of three-quarters of their money from central-government grants, rising to 90% in poor areas. So “as national finances go, so go local finances,” reckons Adam Marshall of the Centre for Cities, a think-tank. For the past ten years that has been a good deal: grants went up by 39% in real terms in the decade from 1997, though more work came with it. Now, as belts tighten in London, town-hall tums must be sucked in too.
Read more at The Economist here.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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There will be less rubbish to clean up as people hang onto their old mattresses...
This was interesting:
EC Harris, a building consultancy, calculates that councils made around £9 billion from planning permissions in the year to March 2008. In the subsequent year they will have made only £2 billion-3 billion, Harris reckons.
So the council make money from granting planing permission, probably even retrospective planing permission and yet we're asking them to stop doing this... We're on a hiding to nothing.
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This was interesting too:
The crisis may have a lesson for Whitehall too: that councils need more power if they are to make bigger savings. Their central funding, much of which comes earmarked for particular projects, leaves them “fighting the recession with one hand behind their backs”, Mr Marshall argues. A big city such as Birmingham, where £7.5 billion of public money is spent each year by various central-government agencies, could recover more quickly if the council were allowed to divert resources into, say, youth unemployment, he suggests.
This is kind of what Mr Bernard Lietaer says in his book "The future of money". The council could pay it's staff in "Haringey money" that it would also accept to pay things like council tax. e.g. I pay a clerk £100 cash and 50HD. 50HD is worth £50 when you "buy" something from the council. You also need to make it worth a bit less every month to stop people hoarding it.
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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How much thinking did Centre for Cities, a think-tank have to do to come up with ... “as national finances go, so go local finances”.
Don't worry too much fellow citizens, the councils 'ave ways of making you join in the cost saving drive, (e.g. when you receive your card through the door regards the up & coming 'local democracy' feedback meeting for Harringay on 21st April, remember that it was delivered to you by volunteers in your neighbourhood, thereby saving the council from using the post office and being charged in the process). We'll be sweeping our own streets soon.
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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Perhaps if people did undertake to take care of their patch a little better and didn't always have things swept up for them, the money saved could be used for something more useful, like, say, play equipment in local parks or more money for schools rather than being spent on cleaning up after people's selfish behaviour.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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I AGREE that the public needs to take more responsbility over this. I have always beleived that if councils invested some thought and money into preventing litter in the first place, it might pay big dividends in future, in terms of savings of money on street cleaning. It also needs addressing on a London-wide and even a national basis.
What we have is an absence of long-term thinking. The authorities do not regard dropping litter seriously, although they might mouth it. To say that some London streets resemble pig-sties would be insulting to pigs. An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure ...
The street cleaners have huge task and its not suprising when the job is not done as fully as its supposed to be. The contract between the Haringey and Accord is overseen fitfully. For example, the contract with Accord states that the short stretch of shops in Quernmore Road N4 near Harringay railway station will be swept every weekday. Locals know this is honoured far more in the breach than the observance, despite many complaints. I suspect this example might exists
You can check the days/frequency of servicres for your particular road on Accord's website that Haringey has contracted for: Household Bin collection, street sweeping and Green Box collection.
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