Council Tax Benefit Replacement - It's Decision Time

Big news - the Council's Executive Board is to make the decision on the local replacement for Council Tax Benefit on 18 December. The 'Defend Council Tax Benefit Campaign' appear to have a demo booked and I presume that will still go ahead despite significant amendments to the proposals since we last saw them.

So the report with all the details, as well as quite a bit of info from the consultation exercises is here. It confirms that NCC has amended its scheme to ensure it qualifies for a share of DCLG's panic grant which was informally announced at a meeting at NCVS. Unfortunately, the report goes on to say that this will only be in place for one year, as that is how long the DCLG money lasts. That said, the government's Council Tax Freeze grants have been renewed so there's a chance a similar thing may happen here. It's also worth noting that NCC has done the bare minimum on this so those on passported benefits will still have to pay 8.5% of their Council Tax bill but it seems that the Band B cap has also been abandoned as part of this temporary relief.

Also confirmed is the abolition of empty homes discounts and the money saved, £2.67m apparently, used to off set the cuts. There would have been no excuse for NCC to do anything else but, even so, this is reassuring.

Also announced is that backdating will continue and that the proposal to impose a minimum payment has been modified to 50p/wk, instead of the £2 - £4 originally mooted. This means that, if your benefit entitlement works out at less than 50p/wk you don't get anything. This would've been pretty catastrophic if the threshold had remained at £4. It looks like the drop in capital allowance from £16k to £6k remains, as is abolition of second adult rebate.

NCC says that a £1.2m funding gap remains which suggests to me from one of my notoriously unreliable back of envelope calculations that they expect to collect 100% of that 8.5% that people on Income Support etc have to pay. That sounds a little ambitious to me. Also, in the absence of any further rabbits out of hats from DCLG next year it is stated that full-on Plan A will be back.

So things are still looking pretty bad as far as I can tell and it still needs to be challenged.

Interestingly, the report includes an exempt appendix which the Board are planning to discuss in private. This is on the basis that it is subject to legal professional privilege which can only mean that they are concerned that part, or all, of the scheme is vulnerable to legal challenge and the appendix contains the legal advice on that.

I have written to the committee administrator to challenge this decision to discuss the appendix in private on the basis that they have not properly considered whether it is in the public interest and that they have not complied with the required public notice requirements to do so. My email is set out below and I would be interested in any opinions on this as the arguments involved are all new to me and I've been suffering from brainfog for some weeks (you'll have noticed the lack of posting on here). Anyway, If I get a reply I'll let you know and hopefully see you at the demos.

"I am writing to you about the decision to discuss an exempt appendix to the Council Tax Support scheme report in private at the Executive Board meeting on 18 December.

According to the notice posted at the previous Exec Board (the 28 day notice)

http://open.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/comm/download3.asp?dltype=inline&filename=54262/forwardplanreport.pdf

it was stated that the item was not expected to be discussed in private. This might explain why no representations have been received challenging a decision to discuss the matter in public, as noted in your 5 day notice

http://open.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/comm/download3.asp?dltype=inline&filename=54736/121210FiveDayNoticePrivateeetingNoticeEBANDEBCSC181212.pdf

I would certainly wish to challenge the decision to hear any part of the decision concerning the proposed Council Tax Support scheme in private.

The discussion of the exempt appendix in private on the basis of legal privilege is justified as being in the public interest in the following terms;

"Furthermore, having regard to all the circumstances, the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information. This is because disclosing the information could waive legal professional privilege in any future legal proceedings."

In my view this not a valid public interest justification. Essentially the justification amounts to "the matter is subject to legal privilege and should be heard in private because we want to keep it that way". This is essentially a circular argument and doesn't in fact address the issue of public interest at all. It does not automatically follow that because legal privilege can be claimed it is automatically in the public interest to do so. Neither does it follow that, because discusing a matter in public may cause the council some embarrassment or discomfort it is automatically in the public interest to discuss it in private.

The establishment of the CT support scheme has generated considerable public discussion and interest, including the formation of a dedicated campaign group on the matter. I strongly believe that it is very much in the public interest that any and all discussions of this new scheme should be held in public. Furthermore, as stated above, I do not accept that the council has made out any sort of case for the matter to be discussed in private.

I therefore request that it be agreed that the matter is discussed in public. I suspect that not to do so would be unlawful due to the failure of the 28 day notice to mention any possibility of the matter being discussed in private, as well as the lack of any satisfactory public interest justification.

I have cc'd my local councillors and ask that they also take this matter forward on my behalf."

Executive Board in a Bit of a Rush?

Saw a tweet from one of the Post reporters earlier that the Executive Board meeting today was all done in 17 minutes bar an 'exempt item'.

Executive Board is really the meeting where the vast majority of bigger decisions are made. This meeting had three 'key' decisions, one of which is a £13m pool development at Harvey Hadden, the schools budget for the year and a review of gambling policy. Quite a work rate you might think.

Look a bit further down the agenda and you get a possible clue to this apparent ability to make decisions so quickly

"PORTFOLIO HOLDERS ARE REMINDED THAT THERE WILL BE A PRE-MEETING IN THE LEADERS ROOM AT 1.00PM"

Now then, Executive Board is only actually made up of the Portfolio Holders (opposition parties can send a non-voting representative but, for obvious reasons rarely bother).

So why have a meeting of the Executive Board in the Leader's Room for up to an hour before the official meeting of the Executive Board? Because of course, the public don't have access to the pre-meeting, they can only go and watch the official meeting.

Now I'm sure I'm just being Mr cynical conspiracy theorist but is it not just possible that the idea behind this arrangement is to make sure the real decision making and discussion happens in private and, once the story's straight, go on to a public rubber stamp meeting.

I doubt it's any different to how things go with any other council which has a party with such a large majority but it's not great is it?

JoCo to Have a Word With Himself

No, really. Cllr Jon Collins is going to have a meeting. With himself.

I can only presume it's all to do with the new 'strong leader' form of executive governance we've got along with the new constitution for the council. This allows Collins, as the aforementioned 'strong leader' to decide key decisions by himself if he feels like it whereas before they would always be made by the Executive Board.

Because as you can imagine, Executive Board was totally a hotbed of unpredictability and rebellion before and you could never get anything done.

Let's hope he makes it on time...

Jumping the Gun

I suppose you can forgive their giddy enthusiasm but are Nottingham's inner circle of politicians getting a little ahead of themselves?

Full council meets today for the first time since the election. Early on in the agenda is the election of the leader who has the gift of appointments to the executive/portfolio holders in her/his power. Somewhat helpfully, JoCo has already written a report "...in the event that [he is] elected as Leader of the Council..." setting out who will be his chosen few. It's listed as a 'report from the Leader'. Even though he isn't the Leader yet. But he should be by the time the relevant agenda item comes up so I suppose that's alright then.

Mind you a couple of these prospective portfolio holders have also been making hay before the sun's even out of bed. Graham Chapman has already signed off three portfolio holder decisions, one of which involves expenditure of £270k, and 'Calamity' Jane Urquhart has done one. Surely, technically these can't be valid because the councillors concerned were not portfolio holders at the time of signing?

Executive Board Erases the Past

They were busy at the Executive Board the other day. Also on the agenda was the housing allocations disaster and specifically the Standards Committee's discussion of the Audit Commission's recommendations for 'moving forward'.

Now first of all class I'm going to set you some revision. Look back, not so much in anger but despair, at my previous musings on the Committee's consideration of this embarrassing episode. There may be a test later.

Finished? Right, lets get back to what the Executive Board said about it.

" RESOLVED that the content of the minute extract be noted.

Reasons for the above decisions:

To enable the Executive Board to be updated on the Standards Committee consideration of the Report of the District Auditor on aspects of the City Council’s allocation of housing properties between 2003 and 2005, to the Council’s acceptance of the District Auditors recommendations in their entirety and to actions for the Authority which were either in hand or already completed arising from the recommendations and to receive the Committee’s comments and observations on the matter."

Interesting because the Standards Committee's advice wasn't to accept the Audit Commission's recommendations in their entirety at all. In particular they rejected the recommendation to draw up a protocol requiring councillors to register potential conflicts of interest when advocating on behalf of constituents. However, prior to the this on 9 February the full Council did formally accept all the Audit Commission's recommendations on pages 5 and 6 of their report. Which said a protocol to -

"Ensure there are mechanisms in place that require councillors to register any potential conflicts of interest when seeking to advocate on behalf of local constituents."

Should be introduced.

I'm not sure where this leaves us. In theory the full Council decision holds sway but why then was the Standards Committee asked to look into it if it wasn't still up for grabs? My hunch is that it means that all the right noises on 'accepting recommendations' get into the papers while the awkward nuts and bolts of actually increasing councillors' accountability is kicked into the long grass.

Victoria Baths Decision

The Executive Board met on 21 April to discuss, among other things, which of the three options for the development of the Victoria Leisure Centre to go with.

It will probably come as no surprise to the campaigners that Option C was chosen. This was the option involving the demolition of the centre, apart from the historic clock tower, and the fewest leisure facilities. It was also the most expensive option but happily frees up a nice juicy big chunk of development land.

The minutes record that 'consideration' was given to a minute extract from the last meeting of the St Anns and Dales Area Committee meeting which had previously considered the various options in order to make a recommendation. Unfortunately we don't know what that recommendation was because the minutes of that meeting have yet to be made public.

Whatever the outcome of the Area Committee meeting, the Executive Board decided to go with the report of the Corporate Director of Community and Culture which, not only endorsed option C but had been written before the Area Committee had even had a chance to meet and the final options. I wonder how important they're feeling right now?

The Save the Victoria Baths Campaign have long been arguing that option C was not the one wanted by locals and had amassed quite a bit of evidence to back this up. Have a look at their website where they explain all that and make your own mind up about how much local opinion matters to the boys and girls in the Council House.