Council Budget 2003/2004
LEADER'S BUDGET SPEECH
13 FEBRUARY 2003
Today I present a Budget of stability.
Today I present a Budget of growth.
Today I present a budget providing clear evidence that the process which we began last year is continuing and that the Administration's strategies are now off the drawing board and are increasingly a reality for Aberdeen. And we have also provided the firm financial footing for sustained growth based on sound financial judgement, without raiding the piggy bank in an irresponsible way, to ensure future prosperity of this fine city of ours.
We do expect some efficiency savings to be made across all services, as we move towards better integration of services, but these are relatively modest.
Yes, over the last four years we have had to make tough decisions and due to enforced financial restrictions, some of which were unpopular. But the electorate asked us to govern . . . they did not ask us to make knee jerk decisions . . . they did not ask for cheap gimmicks to grab a front page headline in the local evening newspaper . . . and they asked us to lobby and fight for a fair share of central government support. We were elected on our policies. It started last year and now we are really reaping rewards.
It is not for me to judge our success - but which Council Leader in recent times can report:
- A decision by the Scottish Executive to support our case for the building of the Western Peripheral Route. And they will be picking up the lion's share of the £120 million cost.
- £11.5 million boost for our environment and infrastructure through the Better Cities Review.
- A decision to locate the Energy Intermediary Technology Institute in Aberdeen with the target of creating 2,000 jobs
And let us not forget that free concessionary off peak travel has been introduced recently along with free personal care.
The City Council has also provided financial guarantees for the £12 million revamp of the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre turning it into the top conference facility in North Scotland. Work will also begin in May to restore and expand HM Theatre into the crown jewel of cultural activities in North Scotland.
Today I will yet again attempt to remove the myth that this Administration is anti-car with another freeze on car parking charges, other than increased charges for those who abuse the system.
There will be no increase in the price of school meals.
I will carry out our commitment to fully fund Grampian Police to GAE level so that more Bobbies can be put on the beat. At the same time fixed penalties will be raised for lawbreakers with the extra funding going to good causes.
I will also announce radical plans for youth with an immediate investigation of the possibility of late-night opening of community centres. . In turn reducing vandalism.
The Civic Pride campaign - hailed a huge success by citizens - will not only continue but will be extended with the assurance it will cover all neighbourhoods.
Our modernisation programme to improve service delivery will move up a gear. We will work with the Trade Unions and staff to ensure success.
And I will give details later of a new system whereby we will give 3-year funding guarantees to organisations which depend on us - with the guarantee they will receive no less in years two and three.
The healthy eating initiative and free-swimming lessons will continue for primary pupils.
The programme of repairing footways and roads will continue unabated.
We will increase funding to community councils.
We will remove the charge for the taxi card scheme.
The Tourist Board can look forward to more financial aid.
Funding for entertainment for older people and those with disabilities will double.
And importantly our proposals are that I fully expect Aberdeen's Council Tax to be cheaper than in the other major cities of Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling.
I am proud to deliver this budget . . We are reaping the rewards of four years of hard work. We are the party who put forward the policies. . We are the party that has delivered . . . We are the party, which will continue to deliver.
Working together Aberdeen is going places.
This budget should reinforce our challenge to the myth that the Council is anti-car with no overall increase in parking charges for the third year running – and remember this is in a city with one of the highest numbers of City Centre public parking spaces per head of population of all cities in the UK. However, we intend to increase the parking surcharges (see Council Budget 2003/2004 - Appendix 1) for those who abuse and cheat the system. The penalty will rise from £40 to £60 and the discounted penalty will rise from £20 to £30.
This budget will see a £7.4 million increase in Social Work expenditure.
This budget will see Education expenditure increasing by £7.6 million.
This budget will see a £1.8 million increase in our contribution to the Police and Fire Joint Boards. The Police increase will result in significant increase in front line policing within the City.
aberdeenfutures
Our budget priorities are set to ensure that we along with our partners achieve what is set out in aberdeenfutures, our Community Plan for our City. You will probably be aware that the Community Planning process is now a statutory duty under the new Local Government Act and that Aberdeen is so advanced in this very positive process that we were asked by the Scottish Executive to assist in the preparation of the Bill and we have been responsible for writing the bulk of the detail which will accompany it.
Now I would like to give you some of the detail:
I trust that you will see our citizens’ priorities being reflected in the Administration’s proposals.
Savings Measures
The package of measures which I intend to balance the 2003/04 budget are contained in Appendix 1 which is being circulated in the Chamber.
Further details appear in:
Council Budget 2003/2004 - Appendix 2
Council Budget 2003/2004 - Appendix 1
Council Budget 2003/2004 - Appendix 4
Social Inclusion
To support the development of all the Communities within Aberdeen we will continue to commit more than £1 million of Social Inclusion monies, and committing other resources working with our partners in the Public Sector and the Voluntary Sector in high priority areas of the City. I am instructing officers to bring forward an urgent report on the possibility of opening all our community facilities until 11.00 p.m. to provide for our young people and thereby to counter vandalism and other anti social behaviour. I also wish to increase our efforts in relation to increasing Access of all kinds and we have allocated £50K to provide for the provision of a service which will meet our aspirations and the demands of the Disabled Rights Act 2004.
The gradual implementation of our restructuring of service delivery which is now well underway will see this joined up approach to service delivery in all parts of the town over the coming year. It is our aim to have staff transferred to the new Neighbourhood Services Teams by the end of April this year. The core of the teams is already in place and we are already receiving positive feedback as the public see the benefits of more effective service delivery.
We will continue to devote specific attention to planning and delivering services in a way which meets the needs, as far as is possible, of the various groupings of the City's people – Children, the Elderly, Youth, Women, People with Disabilities, Lesbian, Gay and Transgender People and Ethnic Minorities.
Additional Funding
May I highlight our increasing success in attracting additional monies to the Council and the city, primarily from Central Government. Last year I asked that we focus on improving access to Lottery Funding and similar areas such as the New Opportunities Fund. I particularly wanted to see the Council being able to give substantial support to community groups in their bidding for Lottery funding. I am pleased to be able to report that we now have an officer in place who is working with her colleagues and community groups to drive this important area of work.
Sustainability
We continue to press on with measures to make less use of water, energy and other materials in general within the Council. We are also looking to make our buildings more energy efficient including our Housing Stock. We successfully bid for and received £106K for the extension of recycling of green waste which proved very successful. I have included £30K in this year's budget to continue that service and we have bid for a large amount of money from the Government's Strategic Waste Fund to expand our "green" policies. This includes an element to fund the expansion of the green waste collection.
Safety and Security
As I said before, we continue to make our full contribution to Police and Fire so as to meet the priority which our citizens give to this.
I have also committed additional monies to speed up the provision of 20-mph zones.
Opportunities for Learning
This administration has set out its agenda to create ‘A City for Learning’ – one where raising expectations and levels of achievement goes hand in hand with social inclusion and lifelong learning.
The additional resources of £50K for Libraries will add to last year’s £50K increase on book expenditure (through the ‘Quality of Life budgets’) and provide even more and better resources in our libraries. This is in addition to – more funds for the Mobile Library Service; supporting the newly developed Kaimhill Library & Learning Centre and more general improvements to the service.
The City was highly commended by the Governments Inspectors for, (1) the work we already do in Community Learning and Development, and (2) for our vision within aberdeenfutures for our communities - £80K additional funding will help us to address the recommendations in the HMI report.
We recognise the invaluable work that teachers and support staff in schools carry out on a day-to-day basis. We have therefore allocated significant sums to continue the improvements in remuneration and reward for support staff in schools and will also continue to seek resources to fully implement "A Teaching Profession for the 21st Century". As a first step I will be committing £250K to employ additional support staff in our schools.
I am also pleased to announce that we will repeat for a second year our highly successful schemes:
- to provide primary school swimming opportunities £120K
- to provide fruit for our primary school pupils £48K
- to provide fruit juice for our primary school pupils £27K
We have demonstrated our commitment to lifelong learning in the past, these significant increases in the budget for the Learning & Leisure Services show our continued commitment.
Clean and Healthy Environment
This continues to be one of the main priorities for us and as I said that was confirmed in our public consultation.
Much of our work to improve the situation has been through our successful Civic Pride Campaign which receives wide public support. We intend to continue and expand the campaign and to put even more resources into it.
We have enhanced our street cleaning with more staff and more equipment working on cleaning our pavements for more hours of the week. All city centre pavements are regularly washed now and we can see the difference. We have included another £70K for chewing gum removal and will continue to lobby for central government action on this. We have also included, for example:
- an additional £165K for pruning and replacement of trees
- an additional £82K for grass cutting and verge maintenance
- £10K for additional disabled parking bays
I also propose allocating £75K from the City Improvements Fund for improving the condition of public toilets.
I will be making further announcements at a later stage about using additional Scottish Executive funding of £442K for road surfaces, pavements and street lights.
We will also be continuing the process which we began last year of allocating £10K in total to each of our city wards to be used on projects identified by our Councillors in discussion with the folk in their wards. This has been highly successful over the past year and has seen a whole lot of work done which had for years been impossible because of lack of funding.
Social Care
New allocations of funds from the Scottish Executive will enable full implementation of the policy of providing Free Personal Care; meeting the agreed fee levels.
Following an 18 month construction period the replacement for Fergus House residential care home for older people at Dyce is scheduled to open early in the new year with the accommodation exceeding the standards as set by the Commission for the Regulation of Care. We have provided additional revenue funding for this. The home has been built at a cost of £2.2m and will provide accommodation for 40 people and 3 respite beds.
I referred earlier to budgeting for predicted increase in demand and we have made full provision for the increased numbers of clients over that budgeted for in the current year.
2002/03 - 2003/04
Older People:
Nursing Home 784 increases to 847
Residential Home 207 increases to 267
Learning Disability:
Residential Care 58 increases to 62
Day Care Provision 141 increases to 159
Home Care – provided by:
Independent sector 488 increases to 754
Another major new initiative is the development of more integrated services for Children and Families particularly the most vulnerable in our city and this will be facilitated through grant payable by the Executive via the Changing Children’s Services Fund.
Last but not least mention has to be made of our continuing close working relationship with the Voluntary Sector and the increasing expectation of them to provide services of high quality services to the levels expected. These organisations are being faced with cost pressures similar to the local authority and in recognition of this additional provision of close on £1M has been made available to enable funding to be increased by an amount well in excess of the current general inflation rate.
As I said, I give a commitment to voluntary sector groups that they will receive at least the same level of finding over the next three years – maybe more, but no less.
We have committed an additional £1.6m to funding the cost of free concessionary travel for older people. We are very keen to make a joint approach with groups representing older people to the Scottish Executive to seek the necessary funding to provide free transport before 9.30 a.m.
We are also planning for the extension of the free concessionary travel later this year to men aged 60 – 65.
We will actively lobby the Scottish Executive for a fair share of the Contingency Fund they have established to allocate to authorities where the costs of the scheme exceed existing funding available.
We will remove the previous charge for the taxi card scheme.
Drugs
Aberdeen City Council has made tackling drug misuse a priority since its inception in 1996. In 1999 an additional £125K was added to the budget for drug prevention work. Since 2001 the Council, along with others throughout Scotland, has received a share of an additional £100M committed by the Scottish Executive to support the national drug strategy. The current position is that, to support the local drug strategy, the Council now spends £1.3M in direct spend and a further significant proportion of generic services (e.g. social work, schools).
A significant proportion of Drug Strategy Initiative Fund and external funding has been allocated to short term youth work drug diversion projects that aim to target young people who have developed or are at risk of developing a drug centred lifestyle. It is evident from the feedback from local projects that the young people in Aberdeen have benefited greatly from their involvement in these initiatives. If young people feel positive and stimulated they are less likely to become involved in harmful drug misuse.
An additional £60K will be allocated across the three Neighbourhood Services areas to support drug diversion youth work targeted according to local priorities.
Citizen Care
I said that the Administration's policies are now clearly paying off. Our Citizens are seeing real improvements to services. Our new customer centre opened its doors last March with a build up to being fully operational by the summer. Open late on Thursdays and on Saturday it is a visible manifestation of our commitment to Citizen Care. We will also continue to extend other means of engagement of citizens (in this case world wide) in Aberdeen City and our Council for instance by further development of our very successful website and very soon a citizens' focus group for which we have been awarded £30K of EU Funding in conjunction with Edinburgh and four other European cities. As our new service delivery structures roll out, services and staff at all levels will be brought much closer to local communities streamlining services across departments and delivered in conjunction with our public sector and voluntary sector partners. Further Customer Service Centres will be opened at convenient points around the City.
As part of these many initiatives to develop more citizen involvement I also want to acknowledge the role played by our Community Councils and we have allocated a small but hopefully significant amount of additional funding to help them to do their job.
And what of securing Aberdeen's Future? This is clearly as important as providing quality services today. Because of intensive work and lobbying, not least when the Scottish Parliament came to Aberdeen last May. Major achievements have been realised over the past year and I intend to drive on with these. Within the Council our restructuring has allowed us to create a powerful new City Development Service. Commencing operation last April it will provide new dynamism to the City by drawing together Economic Development, Planning and Estates Management. I am already receiving very positive feedback on this from the business community. I intend that the new Service will work closely with the private and voluntary sectors and with the new Network Aberdeen Leadership Group which has generated a realisable vision to ensure our City's prosperity into the future.
The New Local Government Act will come into force in April. Although we are very well placed to meet the terms of the Act there will no doubt be cost implications in its implementation. However, this is an Act for the whole public sector. I am therefore asking the Chief Executive and his staff and the Corporate Director for Finance and ICT to use their joint working processes to bring forward to us and our colleagues in the wider public sector, a joint report on resourcing requirements.
The past year and in fact the past few weeks have seen significant progress in shifting Central Government and Scottish Executive opinion on the urgency of the work to improve transport and other infrastructure in and around Aberdeen. You will all be aware of the positive announcements in relation to the Modern Transport system and the Western Peripheral Route in particular and the major shift signalled in the Cities review.
The announcement that the Scottish Executive will site the Energy Intermediary Technology Institute in Aberdeen with a potential of 2000 jobs is also positive and exciting news.
We have committed to work closely and very constructively with the new Chief Executive of the Tourist Board and I am pleased to announce that we will be increasing our contribution to their operating costs by £50K. This should help support their drive to better market the city and our surrounding areas.
Our plans are aspirational but that's what I want for our City – and they will require new partnerships with the private sector to generate the necessary funding. However, they are achievable and some of the first pieces of the jigsaw are already fitting into place with the work to refurbish and extend His Majesty's Theatre commencing in a few weeks time.
Work has also commenced at Guild Street. The Exhibition Centre refurbishment is nearing completion and I have asked the Chief Executive to press on with the work he has been undertaking to facilitate redevelopment of the Triple Kirks site.
Outwith the City Centre we are pushing ahead with our partners with the second phase of the major redevelopment at the Duthie Park. We intend to extend this work with further parks refurbishment as part of a wider strategy.
Summary
Lord Provost, I have tabled at Council Budget 2003/2004 - Appendix 3 an overall budget summary with supporting information in Appendices 2 to 4.
I propose a Council Tax increase of 4% in order to present a balanced budget. No one likes increasing council taxes, but given the financial pressures facing the Council, and the many initiatives which the public wish us to pursue and which I've set out in this budget, it is the responsible thing to do. A 4% increase at the Band D level equates to an increase of 75p per week.
Lord Provost, I said at the outset that this was a budget where citizens and business will see the real benefits which have begun to emerge.
This Administration proposes that we will make every endeavour to restrict Council Tax increases in the next two years to no more than 5% per annum.
The total 2003/04 proposed Revenue Budget has increased by over £25M in cash terms. This is a 8.1% increase. We recognise that a proportion of this increase remains ring fenced, and whilst we would always wish for more funding we are making real progress attracting additional funding and in delivering quality the Scottish Executive for further relaxation of ring fencing.
Lord Provost, Members of Aberdeen City Council, I wish to move as follows:
a) that all proposals so far mentioned are agreed
b) that the Administration’s proposals as detailed at:
Council Budget 2003/2004 - Appendix 3
Council Budget 2003/2004 - Appendix 2
Council Budget 2003/2004 - Appendix 1
Council Budget 2003/2004 - Appendix 4
c) that we set a Band D Council Tax for 2003/04 of £1020.06, an increase of 4% or £39.24 per annum (75p per week). Full details of the proposed increases are shown at Council Budget 2003/2004 - Appendix 5.
You will see that Scottish Water are proposing no overall increase in their charges for the North area.
d) that we aim for Council Tax increases for the following two financial years to be no more than 5% per annum.
Len Ironside
Leader of the Council
13 February 2003
Read the speech announcing news on Council rents here.
