Green budgets
By Richard Scrase
Green councillors may want to spend more money - on grants for insulation or solar panels for example, but they have to work within the constraints set by law and the limits to council taxes set nationally and of course by what their voters will tolerate. In these examples we see how Greens’ creativity, imagination and hard work have greened their council budgets.
Kirklees Greens set a carbon budget with free insulation
The Greens in Kirklees have achieved a reputation for innovation. Previously they organised European funding for solar panels so that now Kirklees has 5% of the UK’s total for solar power. Now they have set a carbon budget to test the impact of their financial proposals.
The carbon reductions from their latest measures should be 1169 tonnes in 2007/08 increasing to 3973 tonnes in 2009/10 within the council itself. But this pales into insignificance against the massive savings the Greens will achieve across Kirklees of around 100,000 tonnes annually through new insulation measures.
Green Councillor Andrew Cooper can be particularly satisfied as over 30,000 households are to be insulated free under a Green Party initiated scheme. The £14million programme will ensure that households across Kirklees receive around £400 worth of insulation measures - for free!. The scheme will see £6million of Kirklees funding matched by a similar amount from Scottish Power under their Energy Efficiency Commitment. Households benefitting from the scheme will see their fuel bills reduce by an average of £150 pa.
There is an additional social benefit from this saving as at least £4.5 million will go back into the local economy each year rather than being exported into the coffers of the energy companies. “This is a great scheme and the best deal anywhere in the country”, said Kirklees Green Party Leader Councillor Andrew Cooper.” Overall the Greens are proposing a council tax increase of 3.2% while maintaining key services through savings.
OXFORD
Oxford Greens hold the balance of power on Oxford City and neither Labour nor LibDem groups are able to set the budget without Green support.
Matt Sellwood, Deputy Leader of the Green Group said, “We’ve had another Oxford City Council success, albeit after a mammoth budget meeting that featured pretty savage attacks by Labour on us when they realised they weren’t going to get their way!”
The compromise city budget includes numerous Green Group proposals such as:
- Extending burial service to weekends to meet needs of Muslims and Jews
- New energy officer post and small spending budget
- Additional weekly waste contingency
- Reversing cuts to allotments
There was also a bi-partite agreement with the LibDems on the following Green proposals with Labour voting against:
- a Benefits take-up campaign
- reversing cut to an Asian families worker
- additional Dial-a-ride service
- reversing cut to playscheme co-ordinator
- additional money for playgrounds
- additional money for Climate Change
- more money for Area Committees to be distributed according to social deprivation
- reversal of cut to domestic violence officer
As is the nature of compromise budgets, not all Green proposals were funded. For example, the LibDems and Labour joined forces to cut £150,000 of funding for energy efficiency and renewables on council houses. Neither would the LibDems or Labour agree to spend more money for free loft insulation and many other Green initiatives. In the end the agreed level of council tax was 3%, the level in both Green and LibDem budgets (Labour voted to set Council Tax at 4%) and the Greens managed to secure 18 out of their 25 budget proposals.
LEWISHAM
In last year’s council elections the London borough of Lewisham saw the Greens go from one to six councillors and they now hold the balance of power. All of the spending proposals in the Green budget amendment were adopted by the minority Labour administration in Lewisham. Lewisham Greens’ finance spokesperson Councillor Ute Michel said: “Our proposals aimed to help the borough’s most vulnerable residents; social care service users and refugee children as well as boosting the environment and local shops.”
The Green Group items were:
- removing £1.7 million of planned cuts in Adult Social Care to allow proper consultation to take place before any changes are made
- additional £23,000 to continue funding an Access to Schooling scheme for asylum seekers at its present level
- £107,500 for pilot scheme for a Green waste collection for 5,000 households
- £7,500 for 500 free composting bins
- encouraging commercial waste recycling by reducing the collection fees for recycled waste and increasing fees for non-recycled waste
- £14,800 to participate in a real nappies scheme
- additional £10,000 in marketing budget ringfenced for promoting recycling, energy and sustainability
- additional £30,000 to fund renewable energy in schools to help cover projected funding shortfall
The big issue in Lewisham was the mayor’s proposed cuts to adult social care - the outcry from service users was huge. More than £1.6m in savings was written into the mayor’s budget, which would have to be found through cuts in the coming year. The Greens argued for a 2.73% rise in council tax rather than the mayor’s planned 2.5%. That would have added just 4p a week to Band D. They also argued for using council reserves as a one-off to give breathing space so proper work could be done on reviewing care services to make them really sustainable rather than simply saving money wherever possible.
The lessons from the Lewisham experience were that hard work pays off, such as scouring accounts and budgets for possible savings and making proposals balance. Working with senior officers also pays off. The Greens took their offer of help at face value and had many meetings with them to make sure the Green proposals stood up legally and financially. As a result the Green items were taken seriously, and the six Green councillors made infinitely more of an impact than 17 Lib Dems.
BRADFORD
In Bradford, despite the best efforts of Green Councillor David Ford proposing well budgeted green ideas, the Greens failed to change the budget, showing the urgent need for more Green votes and more Green councillors.
Councillor David Ford writes, “In Bradford we had an exhausting three weeks of Budget making, eating and sleeping budgets, and we had frequent meetings and exchanges of e-mails with service directors and senior officers. We also had talks with the Council leader where he showed interest in our proposals. Our Budget was fully costed, and came in at a lower council tax rate (4.6%) than the others, despite having a raft of Invest to Save measures to address climate change and poverty. But in the end we got shafted, by a Conservative-Lib Dem alliance that more or less kicked out any ‘Green’ measures.”
“There are several positive outcomes though, we developed relationships with the council officers and by developing Green policy showed our electorate and the other parties that we mean business.”
