The District Council collects the council tax ? even though most of it is passed on to the County Council and other bodies.
So we had a District Council meeting this week to confirm the amounts to be collected – and we’ll be writing a bit more about the meeting over the weekend.
But in the meantime, we thought it might be interesting to see how aware people were of where their council goes to.
The total Council Tax for someone in a Band D Property this year will be ?1,512.41.
That amount actually goes in 5 different directions –
a) to the local Parish or Town Council, in this case Rayleigh Town Council
b) to the District Council,
c) to the County Council,
d) to the Fire Service and
e) to the Police Service.
Would anyone like to guess, how much , roughly, each of those 5 bodies will get out of that ?1,512.41. ?
Judging by the recent Daily Mail article, I think we can guess were the funds are going, especially when you consider that RDC is a relatively small council and, pro-rata, allowances should be below average. Another argument for combining with another council?
Also of concern is the information recently published by RDC showing ongoing annual losses, which have been covered by transfers from reserves (including from housing reserves). Reserves are now down to £2M.
Thankfully the financial position is now forecast to improve (although I am not sure what has changed and how recent government cutbacks will affect this). Seems a reasonable bet though that this is why RDC did an about-turn by increasing the number of houses to be built (from Labour’s 3,400 over 15 years to 3,800 over 20 years) in order to attract the new government housing allowance.
Are our finances being secure? Does the housing target simply represent a cover up?
Is this figure of £2 million of reserves correct? Rayleigh Town Council has to maintain a set level of money in reserves which is related to the annual precept. The figure quoted i.e. £2 million seems far too low if the same rules are applicable.
As reported on Onlinefocus earlier, the figures are at http://www.rochford.gov.uk/PDF/finance_statements.pdf
The Reserves are £4.5m at 31.3.10 split between Working £2.2m and Earmarked £2.3m, so appears just £2m ‘spare’ and have been running down due to losses in recent years. Why haven’t we heard more detail on this?
Mr Guyett
Quite apart from your odd interpretation of the question posed, clearly intended as to on whose behalf RDC collects council tax (and you may be surprised how little is retained by RDC), I suggest you read my previous reply to the trashy and hugely erroneous Daily Mail article.
I am sure we would all also be grateful if you had done the maths regarding house building before making false assertions i.e.
Labour 3400 over 15 years = 227 p.a. rounded up
RDC 3800 over 20 years = 190 p.a.
Had your assertion been true regarding any revision to take advantage of income to councils based on house completions (and therefore distant) would have increased the annual rate of planned permissions and retained the front end loading incumbent under Labour’s requirement.
Thank you for your comments Cllr Seagers. They raise some interesting issues.
1. The cabinet system adds about £87,000 pa to RDC costs. No doubt those individuals work hard but what value has this extra spend brought to residents? As far as I am aware, and please correct me if I am wrong, there have been no direct savings in RDC management as a result of the Cabinet. So this is all extra cost and also an extra layer of bureaucracy. How is it justified?
2. The accounts show that the Chief Exec’s package is £132K; the 2 deputies earn over £100Kpa; and 5 department heads each earn over £75K. So the total annual cost of all the “executives” is over £800K. For a very small authority, this makes the pro-rata cost per resident very high. Cuts are being made everywhere but to the executive. Is this appropriate?
3. I should have mentioned that the reserves are forecast to reduce just £1m this year. Can you explain why?
4. Returning to housing numbers, yes income falls in he short term but longer term obviously a significant increase results. If not for increased income, why do your party want to build more houses than Labour imposed?
I look forward to your clarification. Thank you.
Further to Mr Guyett’s comments and questions
Housing
RDC has actually REDUCED the annual housing build required to reasonable numbers, compared with Labour’s diktats, but hopefully leaving still sufficient to gain the protection of an acceptable Core Strategy and so prevent uncontrolled development. So if Mr Guyett wants even fewer houses built, the presumption is he would be happy to see many of our young people (children and grandchildren of many RDC residents) forced away from the District through lack of supply, remaining in their parents’ home, never owning their own home, or homeless. Our ageing RDC population resulting from increasing longevity will need a younger generation to service and care for them, and they will need homes too. Or does he wish to risk development becoming uncontrolled in the hands of developers rather than controlled by RDC? His erroneous assertion concerning RDC aiming to generate higher income via housing is totally blown apart by the fact that the new homes bonus is planned to run for but a fraction of either the 15 or 20 year periods quoted.
Executives?
There appears to be a confusion by Mr Guyett between Officers and the Members he refers to as layers of ‘Executive management’. Officers ‘do and advise’ whereas Members set policy and scrutinise. Cuts have been made in both areas, as below.
Officers
Paul Warren, RDC Chief Executive, would be most intrigued to learn he has TWO deputies! He has none in 2011/12, and is very good value as both hugely competent and dedicated in addition to being one of the very few Local Authority CEs who can proudly state they are paid less than the PM!
Cabinet
There has been no increase in allowances to either Members or Executive Members since 2009 and the number of Committee Chairmanships and therefore the relevant allowances has been reduced for 2011/12.
Reserves
There are myriad reasons for RDC reducing General Fund reserves in recent years, including Labour’s past inducement to do so, and of course the little matter of the Coalition Government’s heavy reduction in our Central Grant entitlement – including yet another ‘floors and ceilings’ deduction to protect other more generously funded authorities, despite our protest to Lib-Dem DCLG Minister Andrew Stunnell MP – front loaded to 2011/12 and more heavy cuts to come in 2013/14. However, as you correctly stated previously, that General Fund reserve is expected to be rebuilt over the next few years as savings accrue. Do not confuse capital and revenue reserves, the former cannot be used for revenue expenditure purposes.
I trust the aforegoing will satisfy Mr Guyett’s many queries.
Cllr Seagers, thank you again for a prompt and full answer. Once again you raise issues:
1) Housing: however you look at it, the number of houses to be built has been increased. I have not seen any evidence to justify the need for 3,400 extra houses, let alone the 3,800 now proposed. So how do you justify your comments?
2) Executive management: Yes I am combining officers and cabinet members. This is entirely appropriate as the Cabinet System increases their combined costs by around 10%, with no identifiable increase in efficiency. If private commerce applied that formula they would soon go broke!
3) Council structure: My comments are entirely correct based on the report just published by RDC. Looking at the website, I see that one deputy CEO has now become a head of department, so hopefully a small cost saving. But, for a small authority, we still appear significantly top heavy and I note you have not commented on qualative comparisons with other local authorities, which would provide a good, independent guide. I would suggest we simply cannot afford to sustain so many senior executives and the council needs to reform in line with the cut backs being imposed everywhere. I would fully accept this is a Labour created problems, but the council needs to ‘cut its cloth’ or it will look like ‘jobs for the boys’.
4) Cabinet costs: again, how do we compare on a pro-rata basis? Your arguments seem to fail on this point and I assume your ongoing silence supports by arguments.
5) Reserves: Thank you for the clarification. I would accept we have suffered from less than satisfactory central funding. It just reinforces the need to ensure that the council is cost effectively managed in an increasingly tight financial climate.
Thanks again.
Mr Guyett
Housing
Hardly my specialist subject, but please read and understand my previous comments and the RDC Core Strategy documents. Any Core Strategy needs to include housebuilding at an acceptable level for the District needs and to demonstrate adequate land supply for on a running 5 years basis or it will fail to gain acceptance and result in completely random and uncontrolled building by developers, voiding controls even on green belt. That would make Labour’s 3400 in 15 years or RDC/Coalition era SMALLER 3800 in 20 years levels look absolutely paltry. If not the 190 houses p.a. RDC proposes (under 0.6% additional p.a.), just how many do you believe p.a. will meet the need, bearing in mind the local and regional demographics? How many younger people would you have leave our District? From what distance would you require necessary workers, including carers for an aging RDC population, to travel into the District? How sustainable will that be in years to come as fuel and energy prices continue to rise? What will it do for congested roads? What will it do to the cost of employing them? And just where would you export our Rochford children and grandchildren to? How often would you have RDC spend money on revisions to the costly Core Strategy process, annually?
Need I go on?
Cabinet costs
Not silent, previously answered and further detailed information is available to you in RDC documents for the 2011/12 budget and previous. Private commerce tends to be autocratic rather than democratic and rarely publishes full remuneration details.
Officer costs
RDC pays the market rate to recruit good, competent and generally highly qualified senior officers and does its best to develop its own staff through training, and those who wish to seek better remuneration move to similar jobs with larger authorities elsewhere if perhaps promotion opportunities within RDC are unavailable – point made? I sincerely hope so, because spending more time on this apparently fruitless excercise in answering your questions will doubtless put me at risk of being accused of wasteing my own time!
Colin – Andrew Stunnell is only a junior government minister – it’s unlikely he could amend the government formula for grant distribution by himself.
But if the council seriously expected to make some progress by seeing a Lib Dem minister it might have been useful to have included me in the delegation, or even let me know it was happening in advance. I have met the guy before.
Cllr Chris Black
The meetings were arranged by DCLG for Leaders and Finance PFH and Chief Finance Officers, and that for RDC was originally a joint representation to include our Castle Point and Basildon opposite numbers too as I recall, with RDC Leader Cllr Terry Cutmore, RDC Head of Finance Yvonne Woodward and myself. The Minister chosen by DCLG to receive us was I believe changed a second time at very short notice, so I rather doubt that you could easily have been notified or attended by the time it was known Andrew Stunnell MP or any Lib-Dem was involved. In the event only the three of us from RDC attended due to illness of the Castle Point Leader on the day and reason(s) unknown to me for Basildon’s withdrawal. As it was to be only half an hour allotted to the three Authorities combined, it would have been difficult to introduce more representatives in the joint format originally arranged, but rest assured we got our four pennyworth on behalf of RDC’s case alone for the entire half hour. Unfortunately, although the tenor of the meeting was a ‘robust but respectful’ exchange of views and problems on both sides, it was to no eventual beneficial effect on the RDC settlement bottom line. We certainly did all anyone could, but I really doubt any of the many other Authorities attending such meetings with Ministers, junior or not, gained anything from them. We did not expect a change of formula solely to suit RDC, but we did want to understand how very similar Brentwood benefits so much more per head of population (c. £10 = £800K equivalent for RDC on roughly 80,000 pop.) with a slightly lesser degree of deprivation than RDC. I will endeavour to investigate much further the resulting variances arising from the incredibly complex system later this year when my retirement from the City hopefully permits time.
Mr Guyett
Not silent, merely my submitted reply subsequent to yours timestamped 10:02 February 28th remains unpublished, apparently my submission has not cleared moderation but I have no idea why not. If censorship prevails this really IS a waste of my time now, goodbye.
Apologies for the dealy Colin, no censorship – it’s just that your reply (comment 8 above) got caught in my spam trap. (over 300,000 fake comments caught in there so far).
It is very encouraging to see good open debate on this site . For the very comprehensive explanations Cllr. Seagers has provided .Which contrasts very much with the debates in Council meetings with a few exceptions ,Cllr.Seagers being one .Surely the cabinet system goes right against the governments wish for more openness and transparency well at least in the way it works at the moment .
Colin – re your comment at 8 :
“I sincerely hope so, because spending more time on this apparently fruitless excercise in answering your questions will doubtless put me at risk of being accused of wasteing my own time!”
Your contributions are always welcome and you are certainly not wasting your time, you are helping to reach out to residents. That’s good for everyone…
If you compare onlinefocus to the area committees:
Number of unique visitors to onlinefocus yesterday = 173
Total Number of visitors to Area committees last municipal year 2009-10, 18 meetings = 272
Like Alistir, I am very grateful to Cllr Seagers for his time and views. Even if we cannot agree the debate is very worthwhile! Spam is the price we have to pay for the benefits of the internet and clearly we all need a little patience.
I am content to rest my case that a senior management team of 16 (8 members + 8 officers) at a cost of £900Kpa is simply too large for a small authority like RDC.
I also admit I do not know know how many houses we actually need, but neither does the council because it hasn’t done the research!
I would have also rested on the entire debate but Cllr Seagers has introduced the issue of transport. The Core Strategy moves employment to the outskirts where there are no buses/trains increasing traffic. Scattering housing across the District results in diseconomies of scale and no meaningful road improvements. Sorry Colin but it simply is a poorly thought out plan which will prove bad for the District.
Thanks again for enabling this debate.
I’ve noticed that the Echo is reporting that Castle Point have reduced their cllr’s allowances by 10% and Southend are looking at doing something similar.
Their allowances and salaries have to come down. They are so out of line with National Politicians and the prime Minister that it should be made “law”!
I would really look forward to seeing actual numbers put to all suggestions as to what salaries and allowances should be in each specific role and will undertake to communicate those to RDC Officers and Members. But please remember that, if they were implemented, when the going gets tough the toughest (and likely best) get going, so consider how well your services are run currently and how much you would tolerate them deteriorating! And I don’t recall a Labour government of long ago being too successful at setting wages for every job in the country!
And no one seems yet to have discovered the answer to the original topic question apparently, so would a very uninformed rough guess for the figures from me take any prize money for RDC?!
The housing issue and concerns for the youngsters stuck in parental homes was raised at Rayleigh Town Council recently. Perhaps the answer is to ensure that all new homes built are starter homes. i.e small and affordable. Do we need more 4/5 bedroomed homes? And yes we do need homes ask friends etc how many have or know of 20 -30 year old living with parents.
Cllr Seagers was kind enough to respond to my questions, so I’ll try and help him with the numbers he clearly wants to make public. The recently published financial statement for 2010 states a typical Band D resident paid Council Tax as follow:
– ECC £1,066
– RDC £ 197
– Police £128
– Fire £ 65
– Parish £30
Total £1,487
Clearly the majority does not go to RDC. However we know Fire Services are being cut (eg Canvey converted to retained status)and the Home Secretary today spoke above reducing police salaries, so lets hope the trend continues.
Do I win that prize Colin?
Brian. Do you mean the trend of less fire cover and the trend of reducing police pay and morale?
Not quite, Bruce! Are you supporting a senior management team of 16 at a cost of £900Kpa?
Not at all just trying to clarify the trend.
Yes, Mr Guyetts research appears to be spot on for Rayleigh residents, although the overal amount varies for RDC residents depending upon the Parish/Town Council precept is applicable. But no, unless onlineFocus is offering one, there is no prize – despite my hope that there might be one to add to RDC reserves had my ‘insider’ knowledge been employed before sending my reminder of the original topic!
regards
Colin Seagers
Colin, one day we might have some onlineFOCUS
T-shirts- but not yet!