Minutes:
The Leader of the Council, Councillor Colin Smith, attended the meeting to respond to questions from the Committee. Councillor Smith gave a brief introduction highlighting the following issues:
· Current focus was drawing the 2018/19 budget into place and ensuring that it was under control for 2018/19 and 2019/20. This could involve savings and efficiencies being realised through greater integration with the health partners.
· LB Bromley had recently signed up to the Pan London Business Rate Retention Pilot Scheme.
· There was a significant reduction in the overspend in Adult Services and this had been delivered through closer working with Bromley Clinical Commissioning Group and increasingly better working practice with the Department..
Councillor Smith then responded to questions, making the following comments:
· Since the arrival of the Deputy Chief Executive and Executive Director for Education, Care and Health Services a stronger relationship and better understanding had been developed with Health partners facilitating closer understanding amongst other things, concerning use of the Better Care Fund. The Government had made it clear that it was anticipating ever closer cooperation between local authorities and the health sector in the future in order to deliver a better service for those in need by streamlining services and eliminating waste. It was clear that the impasse that had historically existed between local authorities and the heath sector concerning responsibility for funding certain services across the Country needed to be broken and it was encouraging that relationship was beginning to strengthen locally.
· In the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower disaster it was clear that a firm grip was needed on housing and how the policies of the Council were expressed and this was now an administration priority. The Leader told the Committee his advice was that no tall properties owned by Bromley RSLs had the cladding which had contributed to the speed of the fire taking hold at Grenfell. Any private owners of properties would need to address such issues themselves as the Leader had concerns with the intervention of the Council in relation to private property owners. The Leader noted that property may be devalued if it had certain types of cladding which should act as a natural incentive to upgrade it.
· In response to a question on affordable housing, a Local Development Plan was in place and Bromley compared relatively well with other London Boroughs in terms of homelessness. There was a need to ensure that affordable housing was built for Bromley residents first and the Council would continue to work closely with Housing Associations to bring such properties forward for Bromley residents wherever that proved possible. The Leader was pleased to report that the GLA indicatively supported Bromley’s view that Green Belt and Metropolitan Open Land should be protected, but foresaw significant future challenges ahead with their suggestion that denser development and garden grabbing offered a solution to the problem.
· The Leader was hoping to revisit possibilities for a centre of excellence for Special Educational Needs (SEN) in the Borough. In addition to savings money this would provide in-borough services for residents.
· In terms of the direction of the Council, in the short-term very little would change as a result of the financial situation. There would be no loosening of the purse strings. However, the Leader assured the Committee that he would be taking a “shrill and more belligerent” tone in the future when advocating for a fairer funding settlement for Bromley in order to redress the imbalance in funding that successive government’s had allowed to continue since the turn of the millennium.
· The Leader would look to rebalance some of the current Portfolio responsibilities and would be discussing this with Executive colleagues in the coming weeks. Advice would be taken on a number of issues including contracts and commissioning and where possible synergies would be identified.