Homelessness applications in Brent could reach 8,200 this year - the highest ever as South Kilburn regeneration faces viability risk

The Quarter 3 Financial Report LINK going to Brent Cabinet on Monday repeats the Quarter 2 warning that the seriousness of the Council's financial position cannot be understated.  The £13m overspend if sustained will require a transfer from unallocated reserves. Any overspending not dealt with will transfer to 2024-25 requiring more cuts in spending as the ability to use reserves will be reduced.

The scale of the financial challenge for 2023-24 and 24-25 us sucj that in addition to work currently underway to implement savings in 2023-24 and toidentify new savings proposals for 2024-25 and 2025-26, the Council will need to implement further measures to control expnditure in order to address the underlying issues that the Council's net expenditure is significantyl greater that available sources of in-year funding.

The main financial pressure continues to be on housing where there is an overspend of £13.2m:

The forecast overspend of £13.2m is made up of the following pressures:

• £4.2m overspend associated with the cost of providing temporary accommodation

• £8.9m attributable to a loss of housing benefit subsidy from the Department of Work and Pensions as a result of the type of accommodation being used to house those that are homeless

• £0.6m is a result of additional Council Tax liability on empty properties that are being considered for temporary accommodation use

• (£0.4m) is a saving attributable to spending controls, mainly staffing related

 Homeless presentations at the Civic Centre  have increased by 38% compared to this time last year, households in temporary accommodation in Brent are up by 13% and people in Bed and Breakast hotels has inreased to 639 (377 families and 262 single people):

This is an increase of 16% when compared to the previous quarter. If demand continues at the same rate, the service will received a total of 8,200 applications this financial year, an average of 158 applications every week, which is the highest it has ever seen.

Adding to the housing financial pressure is housing benefit subsidy loss for payments made. Where a family occupies more than one room in a hotel and the rooms are not connected only one room will be eligible for subsidy.  The loss of subsidy is forecast to rise to £8.9m in 2023-24 (£3.7m in 2022-23). 

As previously reported the Council is consulting on ending the South Kilburn Promise (Landlord Offer) for new temporary accommodation households and the use of void properties on the South Kilburn Estate for temporary accommodation. At present the Council incurs a £0.6m charge on South Kilburn void properties.

The South Kilburn regeneration itself is threatened by a viability crisis:

Viability is a key challenge for the remaining developments within the South Kilburn programme. The Single Delivery Partner approach is being explored to help provide certainty for the programme and provide economies of scale for the delivery partner.

South Kilburn is due to deliver 2,400 homes of which 50% are supposed to be 'affordable'. The reports says the programme is about halfway through with 10 sites delivered or on site and 7 sites remaining to be delivered.

Given what has transpired in the Wembley Housing Zone Cecil Avenue development (see Philip Grant's article) we might expect some tenure changes increasing the proportion of private housing. 

If that becomes the case there will be a big question mark over whether South Kilburn council tenants promised a place in the new housing when their blocks were demolished, or are due to be demolished, will actually get one.

Elsewhere the Council has announced a decision  for the Corporate Director for Comminities and Regeneration to make an offer to Londonnewcastle to acquire the Falcon pub site, previously seen as a key site forming a gateway to South Kilburn.  Its acquisition along with the car park opposite led to the HS2 vent being controversially located within the estate next to a primary school.

There is just one sentence on the Bridge Park Regeneration which was featured recently on Wembley Matters LINK:

The Bridge Park Regeneration project is still in the early stages of developing options for delivery and is forecasting £0.8m of slippage.

That sounds rather like 'back to the drawing board'.

Other 'slippages' where expenditure goes into next financial year or beyond are in the Public Realm and total £7.7m:

The Public Realm is forecasting a variance for the overall programme of £7.7m, the majority of this is being slipped into future years (£7.5m). There are circa 135 Public Realm live Capital projects. Some of the bigger re- profiling includes Highways, where there is a £2.6m budget slippage. The key projects in Highways are Wembley High Street [sic] and Church End, which have experienced delays due to ongoing contractor disputes with FM Conway (£1.5m), the hostile vehicle mitigation has slipped by (£0.4m) as the works are reactive, and Highway Structures (£0.4m) where a new consultant is being appointed to take the programme forward. The parks programme is forecasting slippage of £1.6m which has been pushed out partly due to the pitch improvement project (£0.4m). Delivery is dependent on Thames Water's agreement to increase the drainage system and discussions are ongoing. Healthy Streets has had some scheme delays resulting in a £1.1m slippage, including (£0.5m) slippage on North End Road. Landscaping is forecasting a slippage of £0.7m, primarily due to procurement challenges. The new waste bin trial has been scheduled for 2024/25 resulting in £1.5m being reprofiled into FY24/25. 

The dispute with FM Conway deserves further investigation.

There is more slippage in the  Housing General Fund:

At Q3, the Housing General Fund is forecast to spend £30.6m below the current year budget. This position is due to slippage, i.e. expenditure originally targeted this financial year now moved to future periods. This quarter is reporting significant slippage at: Church End, £8.0; Clock Cottages, £1.7m; Edgware Road, £6.8m and Fulton Road, £14.1m. The underlying theme for this level of slippage is the viability challenges due to changing regulatory requirements (additional staircases and fire safety measures) and a generally worsening economic environment

In her foreword to the Financial Report Cllr Shama Tatler writes:

It is important to recognise that over a decade of austerity on Local Government has reduced the ability of councils to withstand issues like the increased pressures on Temporary Accommodation. The impact of the disastrous mini-budget last year on interest rates and inflation has significantly impacted the supply of housing and on delivering council services. Brent will continue to take decisions to ensure a sustainable budget can be delivered while safeguarding key services.

It is also worth noting that Brent will receive the second lowest Local Government Finance Settlement in London for 2024/25. Despite the significant challenges Brent faces, the Government has not allocated any support for homelessness pressures. Pressures on Local Government finances are going to continue to be difficult as a result of the decisions of this Government. 

 

The full report lists all the measurea that have been or are being taken to tackle the financial shortfall and includes changes in services, attempts to reduce service costs via procurement measures, restructures and cuts in staffing. LINK

ESFA find 'failings & weaknesses' that breach the Academies Financial Handbook at Woodfield School



Whistle blowers who raised concerns about financial mismanagement at Woodfield School, an academy, have been vindicated by a report into a review by the Education Skills Funding Agency (ESFA).  The National Education Union had cited these issues as one among many reasons to oppose the academisation of the Village School and the formation on a Multi Academy Trust (MAT) with Woodfield.  Village School education workers have taken strike action against the academisation proposals. In addition to to the finance problems there have also been concerns over equality at the school and the treatment of BAME staff. LINK

The review found that Woodfield, with a current roll of only 157 pupils, had paid consultants £400,000 since 2013-14 for various HR and financial services. They also found breaches regarding procurement, related party transactions (when a governor or trust member sells servics to the school), governor regulations and register of interests.

The NEU had repeatedly requested Brent Council leader Muhammed Butt to meet with them to discuss their concerns about the school.

The Executive Summary states:

Multiple concerns were received on 24 April 2018 in relation to Woodfield School, (hereafter referred to as the trust), raising concerns about financial management and governance. As a result, ESFA commissioned a financial management and governance review of the trust which took place from 25 to 27 June 2018.  

The ESFA review identified a number of failings and weaknesses in financial management and governance arrangements that breach the Academies Financial Handbook (AFH) 2017, the accounts direction, the charities SORP and potentially tax legislation. These also validate the concerns raised. Key findings of the review have confirmed: 

•           in relation to procurement practises, non-compliance with the at cost requirements and the trust’s scheme of delegation (paragraphs 11 to 17 refer) 

•           failure to declare related party transactions with the former chair’s limited company in the audited accounts, as required by the accounts direction in relation to disclosure of material transactions with related parties and the Charities SORP relating to the disclosure of the remuneration and benefits received by charity trustees (paragraphs 18 to 21 refer) 

•           the trust engaged the services of two consultants, one from 2013/14 and the other from 2014/15 to July 2018. One of which held the role of chief financial officer (CFO) off-payroll, between 1 December 2015 and 26 June 2018, as well as being appointed as the chair of trustees and a member of the resources committee (paragraphs 22 to 24 and 31 to 34 refer) 

•           the trust have not reported their current governance arrangements and structure on their website and Get Information about Schools (GIAS) (paragraphs 25 to 30 refer) 

•           the trust’s register of interests has not been kept up to date (paragraphs 35 and 36 refer) 

It is likely that the MAT proposal will be delayed until the ESFA are satisfied that the issues have been dealt with or perhaps the whole MAT project will be abandoned.

The full report is available below - click bottom right for a full-size version:

Chief Finance Officer's Briefing Note on RSG Four Year Funding Settlement

Following postings on this blog and thr Brent Conservative Group's attempt to get the issue debated, Conrad Hall, Brent Council's Chief Finance Officer has issued this briefing note:

Four year funding settlement

1.     As part of last year's local government finance settlement DCLG allowed local authorities to fix their revenue support grant (RSG) settlement until 2019/20 and set a deadline of 14 October by when local authorities had to decide whether or not to accept the offer.  After this date any councils which have not responded would be considered to have rejected the offer.

2.     To accept the offer councils merely need to write to DCLG confirming their decision and submit an efficiency plan.  There is little or no guidance on the efficiency plan, except that it should be brief, no more than four pages.  Most councils that have accepted the offer to date merely seem to have submitted their existing MTFS or a version of it, which has been acceptable.

3.     The option to fix RSG through to 2019/20 has therefore been known about for almost a year.  It has been referenced in update reports on the budget and financial position during this period.  The budget report to council on 22 February 2016, for example, set out what was known at that time and commented that "officers have assumed that funding from 2017/18 to 2019/20 will be as set out in the draft four year settlement".

4.     It is therefore clear that the financial strategy already agreed was based on an assumption that the option to fix RSG would be accepted.  Of course, Members could decide otherwise.

5.     However, the arguments for fixing the settlement are as strong now as they were seven months ago when the current budget was set.  Certainty in financial planning is always advantageous and it is undoubtedly the case that the local government sector has persistently argued for longer-term funding settlements than the single year normally allocated by DCLG.  Arguably this makes it rather perverse then to reject an offer to provide that very certainty.

6.     Given this, the argument to reject the settlement only makes logical sense if one believes that more resources might be allocated in later years than currently planned, and that councils that had fixed their settlements would therefore lose out.  For this to stack up one must believe that government's net revenue spending will increase over the next three years and that at least some of that additional expenditure would be allocated to local government, rather than say to the NHS or to fund tax cuts.

7.     Neither of these appears likely.  Furthermore, one would also have to believe that additional resources allocated to local government would flow through to London for Brent to benefit by rejecting the fix.  As other changes to aspects of the overall funding system are tending to move resources away from London this would be an optimistic assumption.

8.     Of course, accepting the fix guarantees that RSG will continue to fall sharply until 2019/20.  However, the decision is about whether to guarantee future funding levels and accepting the fix does not imply agreement with the actual amount allocated.  It is merely a pragmatic way of managing a very challenging financial settlement by reducing future volatility and risk.

9.     Legally, Parliament cannot bind a future Parliament, and so DCLG retains the right to vary future settlements even for those councils that accept the fix.  However, officials have made it clear that they would be very reluctant to do so and it is reasonable to assume that the fix would be honoured in any but the most extreme economic circumstances.

10.  Within London officers know of no councils rejecting the opportunity to fix RSG.  Decision making has usually been managed at Cabinet.  A few councils have formally taken the decision at a council meeting or as a delegated decision.  Where the matter has been decided at Council officers understand that there has apparently been no significant debate, on the item.

Conrad Hall

Chief Finance Officer

Brent Council has £95.5m in LOBO loans and does not intend to withdraw at present

Michael Pavey, deputy leader of Brent Council and lead member for finance has confirmed that Brent Council has £95.5m in LOBO (Lender Option, Borrower Option) loans which have been the subject of much criticism. LINK

Cllr Pavey says that the loans were taken out prior to 2010 and none since. He states:

The council has no plans to take out further LOBO loans.

If opportunities arise to withdraw from these loans in a financially advantageous way, the council will look at this very seriously. But our current estimate is that the lowest-cost option to Brent residents is to allow the loans to mature in the usual way.

Please be assured that I'm keeping an eye on this. Cllr Filson also took a close interest in this matter when he was chair of scrutiny. Obviously sadly he is no longer here to give his opinions, but I think it's fair to say that he was supportive of our current position - though critical of our predecessors for investing in the first place.

MPs, Council leaders and others have come together to request that the Treasury Select Committee look into the matter LINK:

We are writing in response to coverage of Lender Option, Borrower option (LOBO) loans sold to local authorities and housing associations – exposed by Channel 4 Dispatches and recently covered by the Evening Standard, The Independent and Financial Times (9-12 March), where banks are reported to have made up-front trading profits of £1.5 billion.

We believe it is important to understand how 250 local authorities came to take out at least £15 billion in LOBO loans, containing embedded derivatives. Since the 1989 Hammersmith and Fulham swaps case, the use of derivatives by UK local government has been potentially unlawful.

LOBO loans are described by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) [April 2015] Bulletin as “inherently risky” products. 

We note that this is the third time in eight years there have been calls for a Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) inquiry into brokers and treasury management advisors (TMAs) to local government, the last occasions being during the 2008/09 Icelandic banking collapse when councils lost £1bn on deposit, and in July 2015 following the Channel 4 Dispatches expose of LOBO loans in “How Councils Blow Your Millions.”

On each occasion, calls for the FSA/ FCA to investigate the conduct of regulated treasury advisory firms it supervises, including Capita and ICAP were ignored, with DCLG accusing the FSA in 2009 of: “deliberate obfuscation [119].”

As councillors, MPs, citizens and civil society organisations, we wish to lend our voice to calls from MPs John Mann and Clive Betts for an inquiry into LOBO loans, and the conflicts of interest between Banks, Brokers, and Advisors who promoted them, by the Treasury Select Committee (TSC) and The FCA, and demand a financial system that operates in the interests of society.

At the heart of this matter is the assertion by regulators, acting under FSMA 2000 that local authorities are “sophisticated” investors, able to transact safely with global investment banks and brokers selling derivatives products, including LOBOs.

A string of municipal swaps and derivatives mis-selling legal cases across Italy, France, Germany, Portugal and Belgium are testament to the fact that local authorities were not in a position to safely use complex products like derivatives, and could not be accurately described as “sophisticated” investors with full understanding of derivatives risks.

Banks pitched highly complex, opaque and risky products such as ‘inverse floaters’ and ‘range LOBOs’ which were inappropriate for the needs of local authorities. In the case of Newham council, this has had a significant adverse financial impact on its position. 

The Communities and Local Government Committee inquiry into local government bank loans heard testimony from Abhishek Sachdev (CEO Vedanta Hedging) and Rob Carver (a former LOBO loan trader with Barclays) that even FTSE 200 Treasurers would be unable to accurately price LOBO loans. 

Unlike professional investors such as hedge funds, local authorities did not understand the inherent risks with LOBO loans, being reliant upon external treasury management advisers (TMAs) – who received undeclared income streams in the form of commissions from brokers when councils borrowed from banks.

Brokers held themselves out as offering best execution services for local authorities and prior to 2009, failed to disclose relationships with treasury advisers and banks.

It should be remembered that local authority finance is entirely unregulated, and that ultimately, it is local taxpayers picking up the tab when councils are mis-sold risky financial products. 

With the closure of the Local Government Audit Commission in 2015, severe cuts to town hall budgets since 2010, and plans outlined in the Devolution for Cities agenda granting additional financial powers to local authorities, it has never been more important to stamp out market abuse along the financial advisory chain to town halls.

CIPFA and the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) both assert that it should be the FCA, not councils, which investigate and regulate the conduct of financial consultants and advisors. to councils.

We call upon the Treasury Select Committee to conduct an inquiry, and to ensure the FCA is given appropriate powers/ forced to investigate and regulate the conduct of treasury management advisors (TMAs) and financial consultants to local government.

How the hell did they get away with it? Michael Rosen explains

I thought this Facebook post by Michael Rosen would be of interest to readers:

How the hell did they get away with it?

Call me naive or stupid but when the financial crash came I will admit here and now that I thought that because, for the first time in my lifetime, that 

a) the workings of capitalism had been laid bare in a way that they had never been before,
b) as people found that their standard of living was being cut and c) as people found that their hard-won and precious public services and welfare was being cut too, people would be outraged in ways that we had never seen before.

I confess I imagined that people would perhaps occupy their places of work, or their public services institutions - hospitals, schools, social services offices in order to defend them. I imagined that people across public and private industries would find that they had common interests in defending their standard of living. After all, I reasoned, as never before, the nakedness of capital (finance) screwing up all on its own, with no excuses that they had been driven into a corner by 'high wage demands' or 'trade unions holding them to ransom' and the like, would make it clear to us all that there is a difference between money and wealth - money being the stuff that rich people play with in order to keep themselves rich and wealth being the stuff that we need and make to keep ourselves safe and warm and productive.

But how wrong could I have been? And why or how has it turned out that I was so wrong?

1. It has been possible for very powerful people - politicians and news media - to repeat over and over again that the 'mess' or the 'crisis' was caused by one political party which happened to be in power at the time of the most severe point in that crisis - namely the Labour Party of GB, even though the crash was (and still is) global and was caused by financiers taking risks that were…er…too risky.

2. It has been possible to keep the illusion going that the 'remedies' put in place to put things back together, are fair and just - even though they are nothing but a simple system of redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. The richest 1000 people increased their wealth last year by over £40 billion while the poorest have seen their income (or standard of living) cut. The proportion of money earned by waged people in relation to money acquired by owners of capital has shifted and is shifting in favour of capital.

3. Interventions like £350 billion of quantitative easing ('printing money') have enriched the rich with hardly a murmur from those with the megaphones whose social duty was to tell us about it.

4. A constant burble over the last five years about the 'deficit' and 'balancing the books' and 'paying our way' has been like a mass education force telling us that
a) the deficit must be reduced or we will all go to hell in a handcart
b) the people in power are dramatically reducing it and this is improving our lives
c) we must re-elect them so that they can go on doing what they've been doing to reduce it further.

It has made very little difference that some people to repeat that a deficit can be productive in any economic system if it is used to invest in producing things we need, that demolishing public services has had a double effect of harming thousands of people's lives whilst handing over what remains of the services to subsidiaries of the super-rich.

It has made very little difference that some people have pointed out that the deficit is at levels we were told at the outset were unsustainable or impossible.

It has made very little difference that some people have pointed out that low income (engineered by the government) has two results:
a) people don't earn enough to pay enough taxes to lower the deficit and
b) people will borrow money to supplement their income…which is part of why the whole thing unravelled last time.

5. The 'economy' will recover.

The nineteenth century bearded chap pointed out that in a recession prices will eventually fall to a level at which the people who own and control capital will think once again that it's a good time to invest and produce and distribute. In the meantime, their cycle of boom and bust involves making the lives of the mass of people worse. This period of worsening standards of living can never be given back. They happen, they endure. The damage is done to people's minds and bodies and to the ways in which we hang together. Rich people - even the few who take a small hit in a recession - don't experience this. They have a bit less than a lot. The poor have less than very little. Even though people know this and feel this, it is possible to keep them from despair and anger by constantly suggesting that

a) it would be even worse if you let back in those terrible people who 'caused it' last time,
b) it's going to be better for you next year…er…when we cut £12 billion from services that you need and rely on…(not!)

6. Another useful way to distract people from the core fact that money is being transferred from the poor to the rich in the name of 'balancing the books' is to encourage or allow a story to be told over and over again about 'immigrants'. The truth of the matter is that the great cycles of boom and bust are not caused by a few hundred thousand people swapping countries. More often than not, it's a symptom and not a cause. If politicians were honest, helpful people they would spend a great deal of time explaining to us the benefits and drawbacks of the system they believe in - capitalism.

They love gassing on about all the benefits of innovation, competition and the like but hardly ever explain what 'bust' is all about. An honest advocate of capitalism might spend time explaining to us that, yes, it's a system that does demand that at times the poorest have to be poorer so that capitalists can go on making profits, because that's how the system works. Hello, they would say, we compete with each other, we try to cut costs, even as we have to invest loads of dosh in order to stay modern.

But no, instead, they allow or encourage all sorts of half-truths and lies to circulate in order to 'explain' why times are tough for millions of people. So, in one bust you'll see the bust explained by the fact that the workers have all been greedy and lazy, their pay too high, their holidays too long, their pensions too big. Another time, this story will be modified by saying that the hospitals, schools, social services cost too much. And another time the story is that the problem is what's going on abroad somewhere so the only solution is to go and bomb and kill hundreds of thousands of 'foreigners'. And another time, it's because 'we' are being 'swamped' by 'foreigners'.

These are all very potent lies to cover up for the fact that what makes people poor is employers paying working people less. And if they were honest, they would say that, yes, that IS what they do, and it's what they need to do in order for them to stay rich (i.e. make profits). But they don't.

7. So, in some ways, a time of reflection. As I write this, I suppose there is every chance that the Tories will win a few more seats than Labour. This may well mean that there will be another coalition - though it might be one that does not have a full majority. This means that there are certain kinds of legislation that could be defeated by the rest - unless Labour do that classic thing of saying that they are being 'statesmanlike' and supporting legislation which they don't agree with and which damage the majority of the people's standards of living. This will happen if, in the case of a Labour defeat, Miliband is replaced by someone from the Blairite rump.

Cuts may have greatest impact on the most vulnerable says Brent Council budget report

Brent Council spending

There was a short Twitter exchange during last night's Council Meeting on the possibility of raising Council Tax with some arguing that by freezing Council Tax for five years the Council had undermined its own revenue base.  Others said that the amount raised beneath the 2% limit was so small as to hardly compensate for the loss of government grant made to Councils who freeze the tax. In terms of the amount raised as a proportion of the £54m cuts required it was piffling.

Former Labour councillor, and Brent Executive member, James Powney discusses this on his blog today. LINK

In Green Party circles the idea of a 'progressive' Council Tax has engaged people in debate LINK

Meanwhile here in Brent full reports have been published for each  potential area for cuts or revenue raising possibilities. In some cases there are soft and hard options given. The latter being ceasing service delivery.  The report to the cabinet makes clear that no decisions are required of the Cabinet at this stage except to go out for consultation on the proposals.

These are the links to the various reports:

• Chief Finance Officer's report budget-report, item 4. PDF 214 KB
• Appendix 1 Savings budget-app1, item 4. HTM 1 KB
• Adult Social Care 1-asc, item 4. PDF 299 KB
• Children and  Young People 2-cyp, item 4. PDF 266 KB
• Environment 3-env, item 4. PDF 399 KB
• Regeneration and Growth 4-rg, item 4. PDF 462 KB
• Assistant Chief Executive 5-ace, item 4. PDF 238 KB
• Public Health 6-ph, item 4. PDF 118 KB
• Finance and IT 7-fin-it, item 4. PDF 124 KB
• Human Resources 8-hr, item 4. PDF 120 KB
• Budget Savings by theme budget-app1-pdf-format, item 4. PDF 214 KB

The main report states:

There is a risk that the collective savings will have a significant impact on those vulnerable people who are the greatest users of council services.

Overall, the groups most at risk of being impacted are older people, disabled people, children and people from black ethnic backgrounds.

There would also be a low impact on women, people who do not speak English and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. There is a risk that disabled people could be severely affected by experiencing a raft of changes from different service areas, even if each proposal may appear to have a limited impact in isolation.

Many proposals will have an impact on staff, especially in corporate services where the majority of the budgets are made up of staffing costs.

Given the scale of staffing reductions, there is potential for these proposals to have a significant impact on all levels of the workforce. The majority of the workforce is BAME and it is important that changes are not disproportionate in terms of their impact. Brent’s Managing Change Policy and Procedure provides a framework to be followed during times of organisational change to minimise the risk of a negative impact on any equality groups. The Managing Change Policy requires that staffing changes undergo equality analysis to ensure that the restructure process is conducted in a fair, transparent and non-discriminatory manner. The Equality Team will review the cumulative impact of restructures on the workforce diversity profile.

 Cllr Sam Stopp's commentary on the Full Council meeting should perhaps be read with the above comments in mind LINK