Brent Council's Poor Use of Council Tax

Brent Council’s Chief Executive has launched a new plan to reduce costs across Brent Council.

The first thing I notice is that this transforming strategy is being promoted across the Council without having been in front of the Liberal Democrat and Tory councillors. In other words the local government officers are being forced to provide Brent Council with political leadership because the Tory / Lib Dem Executive members are simply not up to the task.

Secondly, the Chief Executive comments that there are “significant savings and efficiencies to be made.” That sounds like an admission that the Council has been wasting money under the Liberal Democrat / Conservative administration.

Gareth identifies two major areas of waste. He admits that the Council has too many managers, sometimes managing only one person. This is a criticism that Labour has been making for some time: that the Council is top heavy with highly paid managers and doesn’t spend enough on the people who actually deliver Council services. He also suggests the need to shed a number of jobs with a suggested number of about 300 jobs, about 10% of the total.

This must be a considerable embarrassment for the Lead Member for Resources, Bob Blackman. Even worse, the Chief Executive also identifies the need to be “One Council” as the key theme. This reverses the fragmentation approach that Bob Blackman adopted when he was leading Brent Council back in the 1990s.

Finally, the Chief Executive identifies the need to work with other partners, especially the NHS, closely. That implies an admission that the vicious confrontation over “cost shunting” that Liberal Democrat Leader Paul Lorber engaged in three years ago was a costly error.