By Cllr Dr Beccy Cooper

New Year’s Resolutions: Keep Serving Our Communities, Protect Front Line Services

Welcome to 2023! For a while now I’ve been wanting to write a regular update about the work I do as Leader of Worthing Council. I will be honest and transparent and try to give you lots of information without too much boring detail!

For my first attempt, I’d like to give you some insight on how the Council budget planning is going. I’ve had several enquiries about some recent headlines including:

• Budget savings
• Car Park Charges
• Cost of Living Crisis support
• Councillor allowances

The first thing to know is that we inherited a Council budget with low levels of reserves. Then, like the rest of the Country, found ourselves slap bang in the middle of a Cost of Living Crisis. With inflation now running at over 10%, Council costs have increased exponentially, particularly in the areas of energy, borrowing, and providing Emergency and Temporary Housing.

Our Council housing stock was sold to Worthing Homes almost 25 years ago and the previous Tory Administration failed to properly invest in this area. So we have the double whammy of low reserves and rising emergency spending, as increasing numbers of our Community tragically find themselves being made homeless by spiralling bills.

We could spend time considering the wisdom of National Government cutting Local Authority budgets to the bone for the past 12 years; or the lack of investment in sustainable energy sources (the Rampion Wind Farm is owned by EDF and their shareholders reap the dividends of our Natural resource, not us); our previous Tory Council not investing in local housing resilience or their lack of fiscal responsibility in not building up our reserves for a rainy day (currently bucketing cats and dogs!).

I would welcome debate on these areas over a cuppa at any point and doubtless they will also be heard in the Council Chamber.  However, in the immediate term, we find ourselves faced with these very real challenges and we must find the best way to serve our Communities with the resources that we do have.

So first to: Budget Savings

By law our Council has to balance its budget every year. My background is in the NHS, which can run on financial deficits, but Local Authorities do not have that option.

Our priority as a Labour administration is to ensure that the Council is effectively supporting our Communities with every penny of resource that we have. We have statutory services that we must provide, such as housing people who present as homeless and emptying your bins. And we also work with you to take care of our public spaces such as our parks, town centre and seafront. This all takes human and other resources, which are running very lean already, Our Officers are amazing and we need to be good employers, to pay fairly and make sure our workforce has a good work/life balance. To do this alongside protecting our front line services and balancing our books in this Cost of Living crisis, we have no choice but to find savings and/or additional income, and to work incredibly effectively.

From September to December last year, the Council teams went into overdrive to find savings from every department, with a new Chief Executive bringing fresh ideas for organising a people centred, resilient Council. Even so, we are still looking at a black hole in our spending of an estimated £1.5 million by the end of the Financial Year at the end of March. This money will have to be taken from our savings (reserves) which leaves us with very few options for any future rainy days. With that in mind, we are looking at where we may be able to find crucial additional income. Which leads us to:

Car Parking Charges

Car parking charges are always controversial. Even though our charges are relatively low compared to say, Brighton, I know that they are still a charge and are therefore welcomed by almost no-one.

During the course of the Pandemic, our income from Car Parking decreased and has still not entirely recovered. As a Labour administration with a focus on improving public transport and making cycling and walking much easier in Worthing, we are going to need to rely less on these charges anyway. We want people to be able to visit all the great parts of our Borough without using their car.

It is likely that car park charges will increase from April 2023 and that charges will be introduced in some car parks which previously did not have a charge.

This is one of those Hobson’s choices that I appreciate is not likely to be popular and we will continue to look at every available option and to listen to our Communities. No decision needs to be forever and those made in difficult times must be revisited as – and hopefully when – we move on to better ones.

Cost of Living Crisis Support

Throughout our time in opposition, we campaigned for the £5 minimum Council Tax charge to be removed. This penalised some of the most vulnerable people in our Communities and was an unfair burden for those who were already struggling. As a Labour Council, we have now removed it. Whilst the Council Tax charge was in place, there was a hardship fund available for people unable to make the payment. In reality, a combination of grant funding from the National Government, County Council and ourselves covered the support for people and this hardship fund was generally not called on.

We know that removing the Council Tax charge, whilst welcome, will not alleviate the other hardships that so many people are now facing, and we have allocated £100,000 this year directly to a Cost of Living response plan that we are delivering in partnership with the many excellent Community organisations in our town. Alongside this, we are working as quickly as possible to find better and more cost effective ways to house people in emergency and temporary accommodation (it is unacceptable that families have to live in a Bed and Breakfast outside their home town) and to put in place development plans for a longer term, properly affordable, social housing option in Worthing. We want our residents to stay here, to thrive and to help our Communities to thrive.

Councillor Allowances

In our December Council meeting we agreed to the recommendation from the independent panel to increase our Councillor allowances by 5.82% – about half the current rate of inflation.  Councillors get a basic allowance of just over £5,000 per annum with some also receiving a special responsibility allowance.

As Leader, I get an allowance of £18.5k per annum – this allows me to go part time in my day job as a Public Health Doctor and to dedicate that time to running the Council.

Overall, this percentage increase will cost the Council around £16k per annum.

Prior to the Council meeting, we discussed this at length as a Labour Group. We know that many workers are currently fighting for a pay increase to offset the Cost of Living crisis and that many are struggling to be heard. A Councillor role is not salaried, but for many people, the time required to be a Councillor means that you are able to earn less or to claim less benefit. The aim of the allowance is to offset that sacrifice, so that the role is not only open to people who are retired or independently wealthy. We therefore agreed to the increase to try and open the doors of local politics a little bit wider across all our political parties – democracy works best when a diversity of voices are represented.

So there we have it. My first blog of 2023, outlining the thinking, discussions and often not easy decisions that we have been making as we seek to do our very best for the Communities we serve. I hope that this is useful information and am sure it will generate more questions! As ever, we are always pleased to hear from you. Please do email myself or other Councillors with any queries – all our Councillor addresses are here.

Many Thanks for taking the time to read this and look forward to catching up again soon.