Council executive meets to plan next move
Article published: Thursday, June 2nd 2011
With Sir Richard Leese off to Brazil for the C40 international environmental conference, Manchester City Council’s executive held its first official meeting since Labour’s landslide in last month’s local elections to approve their next steps forward.
Chairing the meeting in Leese’s absence was deputy leader Councillor Jim Battle. Controversy between Labour and Liberal Democrats flew almost instantly, when town hall chiefs refused to discuss rumours that the council is planning to give away Heaton and Wythenshawe Halls to save money.
The halls are currently closed due to lack of funds and the council is in talks with groups including English Heritage and the National Trust over how they are run and maintained. However, Lib Dem councillor Paul Shannon, while still demanding a public statement clarifying the issue, later acknowledged that culture executive Mike Amesbury informed him following the meeting that ownership would not be transferred.
That out of the way, councillors settled down to official business. First on the agenda was the conversion of the council’s Education Trading Services wing, which provides support to schools including music tuition, back office staff and education psychology, into a wholly council-owned trading company ready for business by the start of the next academic year.
Mike Livingstone, director of Children’s Services, explained the reasoning: government reforms including academies and free schools are opening the door for greater involvement by private companies and other providers. Given “increased competition” by an “expanded range of providers”, quick timing for the council to effectively create its own company was “critical” if it was to keep its foot in the door of the market.
Opposition councillors voiced some concerns over accountability, with Gorton North Lib Dem Jackie Pearcy warning that previous arms-length bodies had gone “pear shaped” despite “anodyne reports saying it’s all gone well.” She added, “We don’t want be two years down the line having to dig this company out of the mire.”
In response, Livingstone said full ownership and control of the company would be retained and that there would be regular reports on its progress. Amesbury shot back at the Lib Dems, saying the council was “responding to a competitive environment for schools that your government is creating” and said the council would make sure Manchester’s children get the best future possible.
From there the meeting moved on to proposals for Manchester and Salford to save money through sharing their legal services. Questions arose over how much the move will save, with a previously reported figure of £5 million revealed to be merely the current combined legal spending of the two local authorities. The city solicitor replied that legal spending, including barristers’ fees for any “high profile cases”, is difficult to predict year-on-year and that they were working on the issue.
The meeting ended on a different note, with all parties welcoming a new report by the City Finance Commission advocating significant and far-reaching changes to how local government is financed.
The review, commissioned with the aid of Westminster, Manchester and Birmingham councils and chaired by property magnate Sir Stuart Lipton, advocates allowing local authorities to keep back taxes raised through business rates, arguing the reform will provide an incentive for local authorities to promote growth in order to gain revenue.
Currently, business rates are first transferred to central government and then shared back out among councils across the country. Under this arrangement councils in economically deprived areas of the country lacking a decent tax base receive back more than they put in, and many are likely to see yet more cuts if that balance is removed. Strong objections have been raised against the plan in Liverpool, yet Manchester’s councillors on all sides were nevertheless eager for the reforms to go through.
Advocates say that the changes allow for councils to have greater freedoms in setting priorities, although the report makes clear that decisions will be channelled through arrangements formally “connecting businesses with key decision makers” to redress business fears that “many increases in local government spending have not been targeted at services they are most concerned about.”
Support for the review received no objections.
Richard Goulding
More: Manchester, News
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