Framework's Judicial Review of City's Supporting People Cuts Failed

One from earlier in the year that I missed. Can't really find anything in local media and blogs either except in the NCH Bulletin.

It seems that Framework Housing's application to have NCC's Supporting People cuts Judicially Reviewed was refused back in March, according to an article in 'Inside Housing'.

It's not overly surprising, judicial reviews of governmental policy decisions, both local and national, are somewhat hit and miss but what is interesting is IH's reporting that correspondence between JoCo and DCLG "...indicated that the city’s formula grant allocation for the coming year includes at least £19.8 million for Supporting People..." whereas NCC cut its SP budget by 45% to £12.4m.

That £19.8m figure appears to have come from this letter from Grant Schapps to JoCo sent in January. The thing is that 'Supporting People' no longer has a ring fenced amount provided by central government. It was decided to roll SP into the overall 'Formula Grant' from this year (a decision actually made by the previous Labour administration) meaning that councils can more or less spend it as they see fit. This is probably why the JR action was refused; it was a local decision as to how to allocate formula grant to SP and other services and NCC's decision was not considered to breach the limits of 'rationality'.

I've touched on this before but as JoCo is still going about the place saying that it was the Tory Government that cut SP by 45% not NCC, it perhaps bears repeating. The Tory government axed NCC's overall 'spending power', a new measure which includes contributions to NHS and other services and thus probably disguises the true extent of cuts, by 8.9%. NCC calculates that this is equivalent to a cut to the actual council of 16.5%. Lets make no mistake this was an appalling and unjustified cut and we must continue to challenge it.

However, it was NCC that decided to disproportionately cut Supporting People by 45% rather than apply a proportional cut of 16.5% (or less for that matter), while at the same time protecting funding for Community Protection Officers (waste of space and a remnant of Labour's authority wank) and children's centres (more justifiable). We must all continue to challenge this with equal determination and Collins could do us all a favour and come clean.

Save Supporting People

Another quickie, please join the Save Supporting People Services group on Facebook Causes.

As I've said before, NCC's claims that the 45% cut to SP is entirely down to the government and that no alternatives exist are open to interpretation. It is MOSTLY the government's fault but NCC could mitigate the cuts more.

What We Told Them

You might have heard that there's a bit of an issue with cuts to NCC's budget coming up. Depending on who you believe, NCC's central government funding has been cut by either 8.9% (government version) or 16.5% (NCC version). The latter is probably nearer the reality because government figures refer to changes in 'spending power' which includes funding from the NHS and other sources.

As the Guardian wrote last week, the story is even less clear when we look at specific services like Supporting People. NCC says it's the government that has cuts Nottingham's budget, the government says the real figure is something like 10%. However, as SP central funding is no longer ring fenced NCC is not obliged to pass on the alleged cut wholesale which it seems to be trying to imply. It is NCC that has decided that SP projects will see the full 45% cut while protecting funding for Community Protection Officers and Childrens Centres.

This decision not to make any cuts to the CPO budget has been sold to us on the basis that we told NCC that we didn't want them to be cut in the answer to their surveys. I was a little sceptical about this because NCC doesn't have a particularly happy history of carrying out consultations fairly. Well, now we can see what they mean because the results of the budget consultations have been published.

So the headline findings of the first survey are summed up in this short extract -


"For each service a mean average has been calculated out of 5. The top 5 services rated most important by respondents are:

1. Tackling crime and anti social behaviour (4.3 out of 5)

2. Refuse collection (4.2 out of 5)

3. Services for elderly and vulnerable people (4.2 out of 5)

4. Child protection (4.1 out of 5)

5. Public transport (4.0 out of 5)"

So yes,  'tackling crime and antisocial behaviour' did get the highest average rating of 4.3/5 which I suppose does support retaining all funding for CPOs theoretically. But 'services for disabled and vulnerable' scored 4.2, a mere 0.1 percentage points less yet Supporting People gets a 45% cut. How does NCC square that?

The fact is that you could probably make a pretty convincing case for protecting just about any council service you care to pick so surely no one service should be immune to seeing cuts passed on. It seems pretty clear to me that the cuts have their own ideological element and NCC has always liked it's men in uniform.

News Round Up

Couple of stories in the media that are of interest.

Firstly, an excellent analysis of NCC's Supporting People cuts in the Guardian yesterday. There's a bit of a ding-dong going on between Housing Minister Grant Schapps and JoCo over whose fault the cuts to SP are and, as is so often the case there's no straight answer.

Have a look at the article but my take on it is that it is mainly the government's fault beause the level of cuts imposed on NCC's formula grant is shocking. However, NCC could do more to alleviate the effect on vulnerable people. For example there are no cuts to the Community Protection Officer budget and I can see no reason why this service should be immune as it's largely a waste of oxygen and second hand police uniforms, why can't some of their funds be moved across to SP?.

The second thing is the news that Cllr Tony Sutton has written to the IPCC to ask that they look into Notts Police's lack of an investigation into the housing allocations scandal. Obviously an IPCC investigation isn't the most terrifying thing to happen to a police force and I doubt it will go anywhere but at least someone's having a go.

Update - Cllr Sutton has submitted a motion to the full council meeting on 7 Feb requesting the council to back his call for the IPCC to look into the issue.