Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Latest council cuts proposed - YOUR ESSENTIAL SERVICES AFFECTED
Haringey Efficiency And Savings Programme - New proposals to Scrutiny Committee
(see document attached). Note, these are proposals yet to be voted through. The full council cabinet meeting will consider these proposals on February 8th.
Thank you to Councillor Alan Stanton for directing us to this document, released on the council website Friday 21st January.
Some items from the document are highlighted below. Feel free to highlight others.
---------------------------------------
Item 61 (page 5)
Children's Network
The Children Centre service will be reduced and services targeted to most vulnerable families. Will result in reduction to number of centres designated as providing the core children's centre offer.
-----------------------------
Item 75 (page 7)
Decommissioning of Neighbourhood Management Service
Close 'Neighbourhood Management' service, transferring key functions to other services within the Council.
-----------------------------
Item 59 (page 5)
After School Clubs
Resources from 'extended services' grant to be delegated to schools within their budgets. Intention is to secure new ways of providing this service through schools, other council providers, partners and a range of alternative providers.
-----------------------------
item 43 (page 4)
Commercial Leasing of Parks Based Facilities
Proposal to develop commercial leisure provision in parks in partnership with private sector/third sector operators. Noted that this 'will attract some opposition to Commercialisation'
--------------------------------
Item 58 (page 5)
Parks maintenance reduced
Parks staffing 'efficiences' will lead to a 50% reduction in Parks and Open Spaces maintenance regimes. Nineteen staff will go.
----------------------------
Item 70 (page 6)
Restructure Planning Service
Proposal will mean London Borough of Haringey's Planning Service will be 'one of the smallest in London'.
All work will need to be focused and prioritised. 'It will not be possible to deal with all desired planning policy, projects, regeneration and requests by public & councillors.
-------------------------
Items 79 & 80 (page 7)
Cessation of 'Victim Support for young people' & 'Independent Domestic Violence Advocate roles'
No further funding available.
Tags for Forum Posts: Haringey People, public spending cuts
- Attachments:
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
-
Yes well, Ian Willimore has been telling us it's going to be shit for a while now. You got further than I did through that document.
-
Permalink Reply by MrsBaldwin on
-
I too have been reading this document with interest (despite the best attempts of the Council to stop me doing so by posting it sideways!)
On Children's Services and Surestart, which I am particularly interested in as my son attends a Surestart nursery in the borough:
"Early Years and Childcare - This currently enables us to support and deliver 18 children's centres and our statutory obligations regarding quality and access. The children's centre programme, management , administration and commissioning of services will be reduced and services targeted to the most vulnerable families. The Family Information Service will also be integrated into the new early years structure.
"This will result in a reduction to the number of centres designated as providing the core children's centre offer; those that are resourced to provide the full core offer will be targeted at those areas of most need in line with the original programme intentions."
There are also some numbers:
In £'000s
2011/12 - £5236
2112/13 - £1, 283
No figure at all in the 2013/14 column
This may mean a huge drop in funding and various closures, redundancies etc between 2011 and 2012, although I need to check I have understood the spreadsheet right.
I am planning to ask the Council this week what they think all this will mean in practice and will post anything interesting here.
-
Permalink Reply by Hugh on
-
Mrs B, I've uploaded a rotated version for you. Hope that's easier to read.
-
-
Thanks - very kind!
I'm studying a print out on my kitchen table..
-
-
Hmm.
Well my immediate thoughts from reading the whole document once are:
I can't see much in the way of shared services with other LBs-type proposals. There is one at 74 (shared economic development service with LB Waltham Forest).
Think it would be worth exploring sharing communications, HR, finance/accounts, call centre and some other corporate functions with another borough. Perhaps they did this already? Anyone know?
-
-
And just one further thought from me:
If others have good ideas about where savings could be made eg corporate services rather than frontline services maybe we could package them up and give them to the Council ahead of the debate, rather like 'here are the collected suggestions from Harringay Online'? I don't know if there is actually a mechanism for doing this sort of thing - maybe someone who is a bit more au fait with the inner workings of the council could tell me?
-
Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
-
By "inner workings of the Council" I assume you mean the decision-making processes at the higher echelons of the organisation. If so, I can offer only the sketchiest idea about how these might work. (And in some parts of the Council this may be a mystery even to staff who work there.)
But I do know something about teams. And about the so-called 'frontline' / 'back-office' divisions. So I'd suggest considerable scepticism about cuts in the latter being less damaging.
Having imposed this artificial division as a cost-cutting measure, politicians (of all parties) now seem happy to denigrate back-office staff and see them all sacked. It's a bit like a restaurant keeping its best waiters but sacking all the 'backroom' cooks and cleaners, And then dispensing with the services of its 'corporate' bits - like the accountant and lawyer; its waste collection, and people who occasionally come to decorate, design its website etc.
-
-
Mrs Baldwin, you raise a very important point. It would be very helpful if, as far as possible, not just some detail, but the thinking behind the proposals is made public. You may want to add this suggestion to your request to the Council.
(P.S. I save PDF files, then use View>Rotate to turn them clockwise or anti-clockwise as needed.)
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)
-
-
Alan - re back office vs frontline savings.
I *know* there are savings that can be made this way without significantly impacting overall service levels ... because I am the director of a corporate services function in a public body as the day job.
I've no great love for Tory cuts I can tell you.
But I can't back nursery cuts against retaining a corporate function when it *seems*, on first read of the cuts document that there hasn't been a full consideration of a shared services approach. Why on earth couldn't Haringey merge its HR with Hackney's or Islington's, for example?
If the council is trying to keep the unions happy by not taking a shared services approach, so be it. But I'd like to know, if that is the case.
-
Permalink Reply by matt on
-
Savings within Corporate Resources are proposed; see items 13 - 24. For example, Head of CR gets no Executive Assistant (£52,000). It has been a vacant post for the last year anyway.
Re Children's Centres, I can't see how they propose to save £6.5 million without closing some. I'm sure Liz will be looking for clarification re the Ladder Children's Centre.
-
Permalink Reply by Liz on
-
It may come to closing down children's centres but the core offer tends to mean daycare to children under 3 ( not offered at LCC ), services to families with disabled children, who are being hammered by these cuts in a way that makes a few quid on a parking permit look quite tame, services to children with SEN or language needs and various services that promote children's health - like the services for the elderly, it is unclear whether the voluntary sector is expected to step in or whether they will simply disappear and not replaced.
There is a user group meeting this week at the LCC (open to all users of the centre) I will try to get there and find out more.
© 2024 Created by Hugh.
Powered by
