While Labour fiddles…


by Kate Belgrave    
7:25 pm - June 15th 2009

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More on sheltered housing warden cuts in Barnet – an example of the sort of Tory public service cuts we’ll see more and more:

We go now to a tall, brutalist council building in Barnet’s Totteridge and Whetstone, where yours truly is holed up at a cabinet meeting in a large committee room, watching Cllr Mike Freer, the spiritual void who runs Barnet council, brush aside the concerns of elderly sheltered housing residents who are about lose their cherished onsite warden service in Freer’s latest cost-cutting wheeze.

As reported here recently, Barnet council and its financial team – that group of fiscal legends best known for investing (riskily) £27m in Icelandic banks, where the whole pile tanked – claim they need to find £12m in savings to balance books compromised by inadequate central government settlements (ie, it’s Labour’s fault – a point that Labour rubbishes, for what it’s worth), inflation, and a desire to keep council tax increases below three percent as local and national elections loom.

The council believes it can save £950,000 (re-forecast to £400,000 in a rapidly revised proposal for this evening’s meeting) by removing onsite residential wardens (whose tasks include dealing with health and security emergencies, organising GP visits, organising social activities, and checking on residents at least once a day) from sheltered housing scheme. They’d be replaced with a ‘floating’ support service where support workers based at hubs would visit elderly people who met eligibility criteria.

It’s a proposal that sheltered housing residents hate and have complained bitterly about since it was announced. Many feel that tonight’s their last shot at putting cabinet members off. That’s why hundreds of residents and their family members have turned up to this cabinet meeting to fight the mighty Freer.

Alas – Freer is unmoved before the hordes.

In a ‘prearranged answers to questions from residents’ session – with unarranged audience cries of ‘have you got a mother?’ and ‘what about all the money you threw away in Iceland?’ and ‘I’m going to hold you personally responsible for my mother’s health’ ringing round the room – the disdainful Freer lays out the council’s case for forcing residents to give up the wardens they trust and depend on.

Reading in monotone from a pre-typed sheet, the bored Freer (‘sorry, could you get to your question, please?’ he sneers at one man who prefaces his question to the cabinet with a brief description of his concerns) lays out the (thin) company line on the warden proposal – that cutting the onsite warden service will lead to a fairer distribution of funds among Barnet’s elderly.

At the moment, only Barnet’s sheltered housing residents get a permanent warden service. The council argues that every elderly person in the borough ought to get some level of support, whether they live in sheltered housing or not – that the 1500 or so people in sheltered housing get a disproportionate share of funds.

‘Services provided only for residents in specific locations should be replaced by a more flexible support delivered where people are living,’ drones Freer, over the top of audience protestations, ‘… housing and support services should be commissioned separately to distinguish clearly the roles of landlord and provider…’

‘What a red herring!’ someone in the crowd shouts.

‘Shame!’ the crowd yells. ‘Shame!’

‘I appreciate that feelings run high,’ Freer says as the thing shambles on, ‘but I ask that you give me the courtesy of listening…’

‘Why?’ the elderly shout. ‘You don’t listen…’

‘If you don’t want to listen, there’s not rather a lot of point in you being here,’ Freer tells the residents. ‘If you do want to stay, please listen to the debate.’

It isn’t a debate, of course. It’s the ultimate farce – a not-very-well-acted, going-through-the-motions-of-democracy charade about a decision we are all perfectly aware has already been made. Labour councils are also appalling outsourcers, service-cutters, and liars, but they do a slightly – slightly – better job than the Tories of hiding their revulsion for people who pile into meeting rooms to beg for public services. It’s the out and out dismissal of the concerns of vulnerable old people and their families that has caused such anger in Barnet, and around the country, where debate about canceling warden services has raged.

For what it is worth, the expert view is that people already in sheltered housing schemes should keep their wardens. Help the Aged recently produced a report on cuts to warden services and the impact of floating support on sheltered housing residents in the six years since Labour introduced the supporting people programme which gave supporting people administering authorities (councils in some cases) responsibility for providing housing-related support for a wide range of vulnerable people. (That support is no longer secure, though: in a moment of madness, the government removed the ringfence round supporting people housing-related funding).

Called ‘Nobody’s Listening,’ the Help the Aged report accepted the SPAA view that floating support in sheltered housing was an effective use of resources, BUT recommended residential wardens ‘should be retained if alternative arrangements are unsatisfactory for tenants living in existing schemes’.

The report was highly critical of the treatment of elderly tenants: ‘our focus groups and views expressed by the [sheltered housing residents'] lobby show that many residents do not feel their views have been properly considered …in some areas, we were told that the changes were pushed through quickly, with little time for tenants to organise opposition or seek external advice.’

So it has transpired at Barnet. Residents say councillors have not responded to their requests for meetings. The overwhelmingly pro-warden response to Barnet’s March 2009 consultation exercise on the topic is apparently dismissed by Freer at tonight’s meeting on the grounds that the majority of respondents were sheltered housing residents, or their supporters.

Freer has another problem, as most politicians must: people simply don’t believe there isn’t money to cover their services. Barnet sheltered housing residents think the council is perfectly able to pay for the warden service AND to support elderly people who want to stay in their own homes (‘you can afford both!’ they shriek at Freer. ‘Have both!’). In this era of duck houses, moats, third mansions and banker bailouts, the ‘we have to find savings’ argument has worn – noticeably – thin.

Resident after resident tells me that £950,000 is peanuts as far as council finance goes – especially for a council that had £27m to gamble in Reykjavik, and found thousands last year for consultancy on its plans to outsource all council services.

Resentment is everywhere. One member of tonight’s audience inadvertently explains why people in need vote for the likes of the BNP – ‘cut back some of the other money you’re wasting,’ she yells at the cabinet. ‘You give it to all of these immigrants! Spend it on your own people!’ – thus shoring up my long-held theory that a hatred of immigrants and the erosion of public services are inextricably linked. People fight when there’s not enough to go round.

Anyway – it’s over quickly this evening. The cabinet votes to cut the warden service. Yvonne Hossack, a lawyer representing some of the residents serves council officers with a letter advising them that she will apply for a judicial review of the decision.

——

To the residents (the links are to videos shot outside the meeting by Barnet Unison):

David Young, 78, has lived in the Kingsley Court sheltered housing scheme for four years. He says that if his warden, leaves, he’ll have to leave his flat and move in with his son for support and security. So much for independence.

‘The majority of people went into these flats on the condition that wardens were going to be provided. If it doesn’t happen, they have to find other arrangements. They feel so insecure.’ He says that £950,000 a year for residential wardens ‘is peanuts to them [the council], absolute peanuts. They just spent £27m of taxpayers’ money in Iceland.’

Shirley Schers, 66, is a schizophrenic who relies on her warden’s day-to-day monitoring of her illness. ‘He keeps an eye on me in case I get depressed, and when I was, he called the psychiatrist and he made sure that I was perfectly looked after. I’m not able to do anything else, because I’m not rich enough to go into a home. I’ll have to stay in the flat and make sure that nothing happens to me. I will be be terrified. I really will.’

Miriam Fishman, 81, moved into sheltered housing 17 years ago ‘because there was a warden to look after us… every day he is there, for 24 hours. If anyone has an accident, he is there. If the fire alarm goes off, he lets the fire people in. He lets the ambulance people in… a lady fell the other day when he [the residential warden] was [away] on a training course, and she lay on the floor for half an hour until the mobile warden came to let the ambulance people in. A lady fell out of the bath when our warden was on duty and he was there in one minute. It’s not good enough that they take our wardens away. We don’t want a mobile warden – no way. I wouldn’t have come to live here if I knew that they were going to do this.’

Ruth Lerner’s biggest fear is isolation. ‘A couple of months ago, I had a vertigo attack…the warden got the doctor for me. He even went and got my tablets for me. Who [else] would do that? I don’t know not what we’ll do.’

The answer to that is she’ll go without. Labour’s recession and dysfunction in recent months have given the Tories the excuse they needed to make the public sector cuts they were always going to make – including cuts that save next-to-no cash, and are notable only for their cruelty to the poor.

Audio of the cabinet meeting.

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About the author
Kate Belgrave is a regular contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. She is a New Zealander who moved to the UK eight years ago. She was a columnist and journalist at the New Zealand Herald and is now a web editor. She writes on issues like public sector cuts, workplace disputes and related topics. She is also interested in abortion rights, and finding fault with religion. Also at: Hangbitching.com and @hangbitch
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Story Filed Under: Blog ,Economy ,Equality ,Local Government


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Reader comments


This article tells you everything you need to know about Tories. They will say that they are concerned about the least advantaged in society, and doubtless they are, but the least advantaged will never be more of a priority for them than keeping taxes down for the wealthy.

Those of us on the left need to draw attention to cases like this so that potential Tory voters know what they will be letting themselves in for.

http://petespolitics.wordpress.com

2. donpaskini

Hi Kate,

Excellent post.

Just a quick point about “that support is no longer secure, though: in a moment of madness, the government removed the ringfence round supporting people housing-related funding” – this is an example of “new localism” and devolving power, budgets and decision-making down to a more local level.

This is a very, very fashionable idea which often gets a favourable mention here and in many liberal and leftie think tanks – supporters of it might like to take note that in practice it doesn’t seem to work quite as they claim it would.

3. Kate Belgrave

Hi Dan,

Got mixed feelings about the removing of the ringfence myself. The idea of devolution and localism is a good one in practice, but I fear the reality is exactly the sort of scenario we’re seeing at Barnet – a very local, very political interpretation of localism. You’ll see from the link I included above that Labour is already concerned about the local manifestations of that dropping of that ringfence.

This is a good piece in Inside Housing:

http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/story.aspx?storycode=6503655

canvasses a lot of opinion from supporting people administrators on the topic. Some say they’ll have to start reviewing their provider contracts in view of the abolishing of the ringfence. My personal feeling is that that sort of funding needs protection in law. Bet my bottom dollar that Barnet directs that previously ringfenced pot elsewhere next year.

Is the main issue here with the removal of the warden, or Mr. Freer’s lack of smiling?

Is there a better way for the council to save £500k?

5. Kate Belgrave

Well – a smile goes a long way in public life, Kentron. Yr great man Dave Cameron knows that. Our leaders may have nothing but disdain for the poor and downtrodden, but they should at least pretend that they feel their pain when they’re in public. Otherwise, they just look like rich Tory buttheads. Dave’s trying to get them away from all of that.

Re: savings – well, cutting the consultant’s fees would be a nice start. I understand Barnet has spent several hundred thousand already on consultancy for their Future Shape proposal. Someone in the cabinet meeting described above asked for a total on consultancy spend, which Freer said he’d make available.

The interest from the £27m pissed away in Iceland would also have been useful but alas – we know the story there. Their press guy implied to me last week that they might get that dosh back though (god knows how or from where), so if they do, maybe we could ask if the first couple of sacks could be spent on a couple of wardens.

I don’t know if you follow the news but spending is going to be cut *whoever* is in charge over the next 5 years.

7. Kate Belgrave

cjcjc -

yep

@5: What I take away from the article is that Labour will make exactly the same cuts as the Conservatives would, but at least they’ll smile. A smile might go “a long way” in public life, but it doesn’t pay the bills.

Why cut the consultants? Do you specifically disagree with the “Future Shape” consultation, or are you just against all future planning in general?

As for “yr man”, grow up. I wouldn’t vote for David Cameron if you paid me. Disliking Labour does not mean I like the Conservatives. I’m disappointed I had to point that out.

9. Kate Belgrave

‘What I take away from the article is that Labour will make exactly the same cuts as the Conservatives would, but at least they’ll smile. A smile might go “a long way” in public life, but it doesn’t pay the bills.’

Yes.

I disagree strongly with the Future Shape proposals, and have written about it before:
http://hangbitch.com/node/204

I think the proposal is ill conceived and likely to be very costly – it will involve a massive restructure of the council to establish ‘partnerships’ with alternate providers and to outsource those services the council wants to outsource. I think it’s dangerous – by its own admission in its cabinet and council reports, the council will establish itself as a ‘strategic hub’ and provide only those services that it’s required to – it has offered little detail thus far about the nature of those services. I’ve read its agenda reports on the concept since it was first proposed in May last year, and have written that I thought they were insubstantial, and have written a great deal on the negative effects on staff and services of outsourcing.

At Unison’s suggestion, Barnet council hired an expert on public service provision at the end of last year to examine its Future Shape proposals. His early reports were not positive:

‘All councils face a significant, year-on-year financial challenge. However, Barnet has provided not a shred of evidence that the Future Shape model will make this easier in future. Nor has it suggested how a three-tier strategic council model will change the behaviour/health profile of Barnet residents and businesses to reduce the health gap, reduce the number of children in care and reduce waste costs – all cited by the council as key concerns.’

He also noted that Barnet had set aside a budget of £500,000 to finance its investigations into its Future Shape proposal.

10. donpaskini

Hi Kentron,

Don’t think (though happy to be corrected) that there are any examples of Labour councils cutting the supporting people funding in the way that Barnet are, so there’s one difference straight away.

I think the talk about cutting consultants’ fees is a bit vague (some consultants are a waste of money, others can save millions or do essential work which couldn’t be done inhouse). I’d be surprised if it were possible to save half a million quid a year in this way. But here’s a genuine alternative – I’d prefer to put up council tax rather than cut a warden service in this sort of situation. Haven’t done the exact sums, but roughly I think it would cost the average person about an extra 20 quid a year (bit more for the wealthiest, nothing for the poorest).

Today I sat in a local council listening to the discussion, how to make cuts after labour cut grants to all councils, one council will lose £60 million in four years, my council will lose 48 million.

the discussion was about out sourcing to save money, reduction of employee, and the stopping of all housing, housing repairs, and social housing up grading, this will mean the knock on of may building companies going bust, but worse now is the real problem of no more social housing building, street lights will go out at 12 at night. Charities will have funding cut, all money for things like fêtes or community program to stop.

we are going to go back to WW2 life will mean perhaps a lottery on who gets home and who sleeps in the shanty town being built on Waste land around me.

Thats not a joke a number of people homeless are building shanty type buildings on waste land, if we are not careful we will become a third world country especially in places like mine.

12. Kate Belgrave

‘I think the talk about cutting consultants’ fees is a bit vague (some consultants are a waste of money, others can save millions or do essential work which couldn’t be done inhouse’

I’d have to disagree with this to an extent, Dan – I think your statement is a little disingenuous. Some of the figures for the work done by these guys are extraordinary – I regularly dealt with figures in excess of £250,000 for single change management projects and poorly-defined advice programmes (the justification in that instance was that there weren’t the skills in house. What concerns voters and taxpayers is that the skills aren’t necessarily out-of-house either. The private sector hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory of recent times, and even before the crash, the standards of public service providers like Capita and Jarvis – and the costs of the contracts they were winning with local and central government – were causing considerable concern.

I think people are right to feel those sums ought to be examined. When at Unison, I once asked the finance director at Hammersmith and Fulham council how quarter of a million pounds could be spent on a single change management programme, and she shrieked ‘that’s just what it costs, Kate!’ That was it. Neither she nor the consultants the council engaged were able to justify those costs in a decent figures breakdown. That exercise shouldn’t have been as difficult as they found it.

Also – the point I’m making in my original post is that people perceive that priorities in public funding are badly wrong. They know about huge, failed EDS contracts, and the billions spent in Iraq, and, latterly, about the moat cleaning and second and third homes. Their perception is that political priorities are seriously skewed. That perception can’t be dismissed so easily, or described as ‘vague.’ Labour will lose the next election because of it.

13. sevillista

@kentron

Is there a better way for the council to save £500k?

Barnet raise £189 million via council tax – see http://www.barnet.gov.uk/council-tax-a5-booklet-2008-2009.pdf (page 17)

Raising £500,000 would cost an additional 0.26% on the council tax bill (0.5/189), or a £3.68 per year – increase in the Barnet Band D council tax of £1,392.57.

I hope the 7p per week every band D resident is better off does nothing to swing local elections the current Barnet administrations way.

There’s quite an obvious ‘better way’ to save £500,000 than stealing it off vulnerable old people. But – as is the way with most Tory administrations – it is the cutting services from people in need that is the preferred option.

If they can’t bite the council tax bullet, how about tackling the 26% rise in central expenditure – which has risen by £2 million from £7.2 million to £9 million this year?

I guess there’s an easier way which fits better with their ideology…

14. CharlieMcMenamin

OK, let’s make myself unpopular here.

The Supporting People (ex) ring fence has got sod all to do with property based support v peripatetic or floating support for older people. In general, that switch is a good thing as it opens up the possibility of people in sheltered accommodation not having to pay for support until and unless they need it, and people living outside sheltered accommodation who need support actually receiving it. But withdrawal of said support from existing sheltered services has to be done gradually and sensitivity (the NHF have published guidance), and it appears that Barnet have not done so. But it is certainly true that several Labour councils have also gone down this road. In many cases, they were right to do so: an awful lot of sheltered housing is unpopular and under occupied; an awful lot of elderly owner occupiers or private tenants need support

But the ring fence does matter, for other reasons. It matters not for older persons services in general, but for those ‘unpopular’ and possibly non local groups, – women fleeing refugee, the single homeless, substance misusers etc , Their interests may get downgraded in favour of those groups – the elderly, people with learning difficulties etc – who tended (a) to have far stronger local connections and (b) be the groups that Housing or Adult Services have a <b.legal </b. obligation towards.The end of the ring fence may equal a shift of funding towards these ‘priority’ groups – and leave the unpopular ones out in the cold.

15. donpaskini

Hi Kate,

Fair point – I’m certainly not arguing in favour of large consultancy fees!

But there is a bit of a trap here which I am nervous about, in which we claim that cutting “waste” and unpopular projects is enough on its own to pay for all the public services that people need. As well as making a case which talks in general terms about Icelandic banks, MPs’ expenses, the war on Iraq etc., I think a successful campaign also needs to set out a costed alternative about how the council ought to find the money – whether through cancelling specific pieces of consultancy that they’ve commissioned, raising council tax by 7p per week (thanks, sevillista), spending less on other services or whatever.

Charlie also makes an important point – I hope there is equal scrutiny of what other cuts Barnet are making in supporting people. If they are prepared to antagonise such a vocal and popular group as elderly people in sheltered housing, I bet there are some other really nasty cuts for services for less popular but equally needy people.

16. Cabalamat

There’s the issue of residential wardens. But I think there’s a bigger issue:

It isn’t a debate, of course. It’s the ultimate farce – a not-very-well-acted, going-through-the-motions-of-democracy charade about a decision we are all perfectly aware has already been made.

This sums up everything that’s wrong with how this country is run. People feel powerless, and they feel that when the public is consulted on an issue, the decision has already been made and the consultation is mere window-dressing. The solution is to allow binding referendums at all levels of government, if enough people (say 5%) sign a referendum calling for one.

That way, if you don’t like what your local council is doing, and there’s enough people who feel that way, you can go over the heads of the council and put the issue to the people. If course, the people might not agree; but that’s democracy.

Yes, because the council trying to save £500,000 will be helped by paying … £500,000 to stage a referendum on the issue. That’s before we even get into the entirely disagreeable things opinion polls would tell us await if we ran government by direct voting.

18. Cabalamat

@17, Kentron: Yes, because the council trying to save £500,000 will be helped by paying … £500,000 to stage a referendum on the issue.

Would a referendum really cost that much?

That’s before we even get into the entirely disagreeable things opinion polls would tell us await if we ran government by direct voting.

Yes, we can’t have democracy, because the people will vote for the wrong things. Instead, decisions should be made on the people’s behalf, perhaps by people like your good self, eh, Kentron?

I am afraid the old chestnut of using the money to spread care further into the community is something of a non brainer and it is used to deflect people from realising that there is really a cut in spending on support services overall or to give it the more easily recognised title ‘spin’ .

I am afraid that both Labour and Conservative are equal across the country in this and they are seeking out the, hitherto, soft target of the elderly from which to make savings. Only recourse here it to the present tactic which is to take it to ‘law’ and national protest

20. Bishop Hill

If the council is finding wardens’ wages too high, perhaps there are other ways of making them cheaper. Cutting NI? Abolishing the minimum wage? Reducing unemployment benefits to encourage people back into work?

21. Dekka Draper

Would you say that on the doorstep, Bishop Hill? Are you a Tory or a LURPAK member? Either way I’d like to see you explain yourself to the electorate rather than discuss your right-wing fantasies about crushing the proles.

22. the a&e charge nurse

Somewhere in the back of everybody’s mind is the trillion £ (and rising) national debt equivalent to 80% of the countries economy.

Many local authorities will be nervous about increasing council tax again.
As several commentators have already pointed out its not a question of IF cuts will be made, but WHERE – this unpalatable reality applies equally to all parties.

For some time now workers in public services (police officers, nurses, teachers, social workers, etc) have been reporting anecdotally there is very little spare capacity in the system, and for as long as I can remember there have been concerns about the standard of public services offered to oldies.

I am not in the least surprised that ‘resource’ wars are starting in earnest – you didn’t need a crystal ball to see it coming.

23. Kate Belgrave

A few points in response:

I don’t think it’s bad to point out that sheltered housing is not the only or most popular
support option that supporting people offers the elderly – that is certainly the case. The
number of people living in sheltered housing in Barnet is not large – 1500 of about 55,000 in the demographic are the figures Barnet uses and certainly Help the Aged reports many instances where floating support works well, particularly for people who want to stay in their own homes.

The point is the existing contractual arrangements that existing sheltered housing tenants have with the council, and, as part of that, their expectations of a residential support service – the fact of which was the main reason many existing tenants decided to go into sheltered housing in the first place. We’re talking about very elderly people who are usually frail, often in poor health and have come to rely very heavily on wardens who they feel very strongly provide them with security, emotional support, and day to day living support. Some of the residents I spoke to for this and my earlier article had been in sheltered housing for ten, 15, and 20 years.

Reading its report, it is clear that one of the main reasons Help the Aged commissioned research into sheltered housing was because it was getting so many complaints and calls from elderly residents who couldn’t handle the change, were terrified of losing their warden support, and who felt they’d been utterly ignored by their SPAA as changes were rushed through – all of which have been issues for the residents at Barnet.

As I pointed out in my original posting, one of Help the Aged’s report recommendations was that existing residents should be allowed to keep their wardens and perhaps that option could be put to a majority vote in schemes. The cost of keeping wardens on really is peanuts the in greater scheme of things – £400,000 in Barnet’s revised proposal. Dan’s point about raising council tax could be interesting here – if there are gaps in the council’s finances (at least some of which are of its own creation), why not plug them by raising council tax for the wealthier people in higher tax bandsin Barnet, instead of screwing a few coins out of this group of very elderly people who have almost nothing anyway?

I think the point about the popularity of sheltered housing is an interesting one, as well. Certainly Barnet argues that it can’t fill some of its flats – that people don’t want to go down the sheltered housing route. Could be true, but I must say that alarm bells always go off for me when I heard that social housing can’t be filled – makes me wonder if everybody is putting their best effort into filling it. Is the option promoted among elderly people? If an elderly woman, for example, breaks her hip and goes to hospital, is she offered a sheltered housing option, or encouraged to stay at home – possibly because that’s a cheaper option?

Let’s not forget that one of the points of the supporting people programme was to separate the ‘bricks and mortar’ costs of housing support from housing support itself. That means housing support can be provided in people’s homes, etc – it isn’t tied to a particular building type, if you like. That’s all very well – and it is, in many cases – but it does in my mind leave the bricks and mortar vulnerable to sell-off, etc,
especially if councils and others are looking to raise funds and can demonstrate that that housing isn’t being utilised. Just a thought.

Speculating – I wonder if that is one of the reasons Help the Aged also called for government to urgently review sheltered housing and provision for the elderly. Its report authors make the point that a failure to properly monitor and understand trends since supporting people was introduced six years ago could land us with a very difficult future.

24. Bishop Hill

Dekka

I’m not a member of any political party. What’s so appalling about the idea of cutting NI? The problem is that staff costs are too high. There is clearly no room for higher taxes. The only solution is to make staff costs lower.

25. CharlieMcMenamin

Kate,
Thanks for your reasoned response. I would say that the research, looked at broadly, suggest people move into sheltered for one or more of three main reasons:

1. Because they currently have support needs;
2. As an insurance policy in the event of them developing support needs later in life
3. Because they want to live in a community of people of a similar age and outlook on life.
Given that, in many parts of the country, the lower age limit for entry into sheltered housing is now 55 – a response to occupancy problems – it might be thought that reasons 2 & 3 have been getting more important in recent years.

The solution is fairly straightforward in management terms: the residential wardens take on a mixed caseload, providing support to those in existing sheltered services who need it as well as other older people in the surrounding community who might need it, whilst giving some priority to other residents of sheltered for support packages as and when they need it. If Barnet haven’t done this they do deserve criticism. But I think – and you seem to agree – it is less supportable to imply that the shift from residential wardens is inherently a bad thing per se; it means prioritising a group of people for service simply on the basis of where they live, not the severity of their need.

For those of you for whom all this is all a bit too much detail – I can understand it might be – I would gently suggest that an all purpose political discussion needs to be grounded not merely in some wider sense of what we on the left are against (‘the cuts’) but also some positive sense of what it is desirable for public services to achieve, even in a context of declining spending overall .

Hello All

To get it in context, these cuts were planned in 2003 way before the present credit crises, indeed some councils and RSLs are way ahead of Barnet and had already cut their services. Profit comes into it too. The present Supporting People budgets and the way the funds are now allocated makes it very difficult for Councils and RSLs to make a profit from Sheltered Housing and they are, therefore, getting rid of their Wardens to improve the balance on their books.

One must not forget also that Barnet charge their residents rents and historically they received
£1.2m from Supporting People from Supporting People. Additionally about 30% of their residents will be self funding, so cost nothing . The figure now is that the Supporting People grant will fall to £ .85m i.e a drop of roughly £400,000. Under present Rentrestructuring and Target Rents (another Labour stupidity) the Barnet council will be able to increase its rents by half a % plus £2 per week, plus inflation, until 2012. Thus, the £400,000 will be made up in a very short time indeed. Especially in this year where this formula still applies yet, interest rates are practically zero (the inflation rate having been decided in September of 2008 when it was much higher),

What has happened of significance is that initially when Sheltered Housing was first moved into the orbit of Supporting People (which largely deals with drug addicts and people with learning difficulties) in 2003 the budgets for Sheltered Housing were ring fenced but that ring fencing comes off in the financial year 2009-2010. Which means that the Council can pretty much spend the Supporting People budget on what it wants. Thus, the money which was previously allocated to Sheltered Housing is up for grabs by any other department which feels its needs are greater than the residents.

From start to finish the whole thing has been vandalism created by Labour but, apparently condoned by the Conservatives . The Supporting People money which was once intended for (sic) SUPPORT can now be used to prevent Council Tax from going up, or at least to minimize it . The people who are paying for all this skullduggery are some of the nation’s most vulnerable, namely the residents in Sheltered Housing.

It was ‘John Prescot’s’ Department , then the ODPM, which introduced all this, but in the near future, probably to be carried on by ‘David Cameron’.

What is really required is either for the ring fencing to be re-established within the Supporting People budgets or, most desired that the ‘Support’ element of Sheltered Housing to be returned to Housing Benefit from where it was taken in 2003

Sincerely

Vernon J Yarker
Chairman
The Sheltered Housing UK Association (SHUK)
http://www.shelteredhousinguk.com

Hello Charlie

The lowering of the age eligibility for Sheltered Housing is probably a ploy to advance the policies that you advocate . Sheltered Housing is and should be for people of retirement age only !

The two age groups do not mix at all and it only serves to destroy the spirit of Sheltered Housing.

What you have put forward is a philosophy but it is not grounded in fact . Residents were offered a certain level of Support when they first took up occupation and it is unfair, unjust and immoral to say ‘now that we have you and there is no way back’ we are going to take away that support .

If policies change and it is decided that additional care is needed in the community outside of Sheltered Housing, thats fair too, but you have to find the money and the staff to discharge that aspiration. Not rob Sheltered Housing !

Sincerely

28. CharlieMcMenamin

Verony,
The lowering of the age of entry to sheltered housing has, in general, been a response to occupancy problems and an attempt to keep the schemes financially afloat. I’ve even come across one service with an entry age of 45 !( Albeit only if the person was physically disabled). Obviously such occupancy problems vary across the country and, quite often, according to the quality of the stock on offer – at the time of SP’s introduction, for instance, the average level of occupancy in LB Hackney services was only 75%.

i am in favour of sheltered housing for all who want it. I am in favour of people living in sheltered housing who simply want the housing – and I don’t think they should be under any contractual obligation to pay for support they don’t need. I am also in favour of people being able to live in sheltered housing and receive they support they might need when and if they need it. I agree people who have moved in sheltered housing without any current support need but on the understanding that support will be there as and when they need it deserve some prioritised entry into support packages. But I don’t think people should have to move to receive that support unless it is absolutely necessary. That’s why I think the basic idea of decoupling housing and support is a good one.

@18: Yes, we can’t have democracy, because the people will vote for the wrong things. Instead, decisions should be made on the people’s behalf, perhaps by people like your good self, eh, Kentron?

Err, no. We should have a system of representative democracy, where people vote for representatives to a democratic parliament system… oh, wait. We already have that :s

30. Cabalamat

@29 Kentron: We should have a system of representative democracy, where people vote for representatives to a democratic parliament system

Sorry, but I don’t think that being able to choose between two competing whole baskets of polices once every five years is good enough (especially considering I must choose one basket in it’s entirety, I can’t mix-and-match).

I do not consider the present system adequate at all, I don’t consider it democratic. At best it’s semi-democratic.

At the next general election, the Conservativres will probably win on about 37% of the UK vote. Is it dewmocratic that 63% of the voters have less say than 37%? Of course it bloody isn’t.

Is it democratic that the government, having been elected, can totally ignore the voters and push through contentious policies regardless of opposition (e.g. Iraq War), without the people being able to stop them? Of course it bloody isn’t.

Is it democratic that the government, onvce they’ve won the election, can proceed to renege on manifesto promises, with no comeback to them? Of course not.

If we had democracy in this country, it’d be the people in charge, telling the government what to do. As it is, the government are in charge, telling us what to do, and there’s not a lot we can do about it.

And that’s why people are fed up with the political system, and why we need change.

Don

But here’s a genuine alternative – I’d prefer to put up council tax rather than cut a warden service in this sort of situation.

But Don, that’s your answer to everything. Make the pips squeak. Only problem is it is the tax payers of Barnet whose money you are spending and it would seem they voted for a Tory council.

Kate

At Unison’s suggestion, Barnet council hired an expert on public service provision at the end of last year to examine its Future Shape proposals.

So you were actually encouraging them to employ consultants?

Why do council department directors get six figure salaries if they are incapable of basic business planning, change management etc?

The reason they bring in consultants, at huge expense, to run “change management projects” or to justify outsourcing or whatever is because the LA culture does not allow them to take the bold management decisions that would be necessary to run the organisation efficiently- so they bring in consultants to make the recommendations for them. Then they are absolved of responsibility for any pain.

So if you’re looking for people to blame for the fact that there is not enough money left over to pay the wardens, the power of Unison makes a contribution.

32. sevillista

@pagar

Make the pips squeak

A 7p per week increase for every band D household (see above – this is what is required for Barnet to fund the £500K) is hardly likely to make the pips even murmur slightly.

And there is always an alternative – e.g. why have they seen fit to increase central admin expenditure by £2 million (26%) while cutting support for the most vulnerable in Barnet?

The reference to pips was an allusion to the famous Dennis Healy quote.

Like Healy, Don seems to think that there are enough rich people around to tax so that a never ending supply of money to fund social projects is guaranteed in perpetuity.

Regarding your second point, I have no knowledge of the efficiency or otherwise of Barnet Council and am perfectly happy to accept your assessment that they are a bunch of evil charlatans.

I’d be surprised if they weren’t.

34. Kate Belgrave

@ pagar

‘At Unison’s suggestion, Barnet council hired an expert on public service provision at the end of last year to examine its Future Shape proposals.

So you were actually encouraging them to employ consultants? ‘

I’m not a member of Unison, pagar – I was for a while, but left before I was chucked out (I was being disciplined for writing anti-Blair material on a union computer) in 2006. That said, Barnet Unison did ask the council to consider getting an independent view of its Future Shape proposals and the fact that the council agreed did mean the union encouraged the use of a consultant. Spose you can call it hypocrisy if you want, although I never thought of it that way myself, probably because he wasn’t charging £200,000 for advice. Anyway, the council cut the union’s consultant off as soon as it saw his less than flattering assessment of Future Shape. Last I talked to the local union branch, it was trying to raise the money to continue to fund the work itself.

Like this point:

Why do council department directors get six figure salaries if they are incapable of basic business planning, change management etc?

When I was working in local government, the number of people earning more than £50,000 at that council doubled or even trebled, if memory serves, in the space of a couple of years. That meant there was an even larger number of people around not making decisions while relying more and more on expensive consultant advice. I would absolutely agree that councils are top heavy and that rationalising of management would be a very useful exercise. Can’t imagine who’d launch it, though.

35. Mike Killingworth

[34]

I would absolutely agree that councils are top heavy and that rationalising of management would be a very useful exercise. Can’t imagine who’d launch it, though

This was the centrepiece of the Tory manifesto in Sutton (SW London) at the last municipal elections. The voters returned the incumbent Liberal Democrats.

36. sevillista

@pagar

The reference to pips was an allusion to the famous Dennis Healy quote.

And I knew that.

I just didn’t understand how you could claim a 7p per band D household tax increase as somehow being excessive. The point you were trying to make was that to fund the wardens, tax demands on Barnet residents were excessive. Clearly they are not.

The leadership of Barnet council clearly believes that it is better for Band D householders to have 7p a week extra in their pocket than vulnerable old people to have the services they need. But – as you say – one should expect such judgements from a Tory council. Maybe they should be more open about this in their election literature though – “we will have lower expenditure by cutting front-line services” than unkeepable promises based on lies about restricting back-office expenditure on bureaucrats.

re the second point – it seems that there are a lot of efficiencies that Barnet (or other Conservative councils) could make before it has to resort to cutting front-line services for vulnerable people. They seem to prefer the taking services away option though.

Food for thought:

Barnet Councillors give themselves pay and allowances of £1.1 million http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23595637-details/28+million:+the+annual+payout+to+our+councillors/article.do?expand=true

Apparently this has increased significantly over time – not that Barnet publish this data to allow scrutiny.

While we are on the subject of consultants and Local Authority salaries you might want to take some solace.

Solace Enterprises, a recruitment company, is paid fees by local councils to headhunt chief executives and recommend salary levels. Its advice has contributed to burgeoning pay packets for chief executives, many of whom are now paid more than £150,000 a year.

Solace Enterprises is wholly owned by the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers, which represents town hall executives. The company’s directors include a number of serving chief executives.

So, to be clear, we have the situation whereby local authority executives authorise the payment of consultancy fees to a company they own to set their own salary levels.

Who accused MP’s of corruption? And who is surprised there is not enough money left to pay for front line services?

More on sheltered housing warden cuts in Barnet – an example of the sort of Tory public service cuts

We will be seeing public service cuts for a very long time – whoever is in power.

It is not just the national debt and the deficit – their is also the pensions timebomb, and unfunded public sector pensions in particular. We will be paying for a decade of kind compassionate government for a very long time.

39. sevillista

We will be seeing public service cuts for a very long time – whoever is in power

We already have been in Tory councils up and down the land to enable them to hold council tax rises down to 3% or below. Even 7p per week council tax savings are considered good reason to cut services for the most vulnerable even where less vital services and inefficiencies could be cut instead, as Barnet have shown.

The first target for cuts is always social care for the elderly and other services for vulnerable people, rather than these apparently massive inefficiencies that their media and think tank proxies tell us exist.

A story:

I used to work in a very Conservative Shire council in the South East. The Government were asking local authorities to examine the case for merging into unitary authorities. The work we were doing identified £100 million of efficiency savings for local government, along productivity improvements for local government and other public sector organisations in the county, through reducing the vast number of partnerships (and associated bureaucracy) that are needed to make local public services work.

The Leader of the council was clearly tempted by the possibilities – he could cut council tax, and as a Tory was relishing this prospect.

However, there were two problems.

Firstly, Cameron and Conservative Central Office instructed Conservative councils not to engage with this. It would lead to the loss of a lot of Conservative councillors and end the dishonest spin that the vast majority of councillors were Tory (due to double representation, which doesn’t exist in unitaries and metropolitan boroughs) and also threaten the position of the local Conservative party at the grassroots as a result. Cameron was also apparently of the opinion that Labour weren’t to have efficiency savings – if there were any mergers they were to happen under his watch from 2010 so he could get the credit and continue to make political capital out of “Labour’s failure to make efficiencies in the public sector”.

Secondly, as this would have meant that many of the councillors on the county council – who were also district councillors – would lose their nice little earner, it would have been a very unpopular move with the local party. Threats were made that he would be smeared as a paedophile in the local press and hounded out of the local party.

So, he bottled it. Far better to cut social services for older people (pretend the voluntary sector can do it) and fail to invest adequately in other social services, leading to a service acknowledged by the inspectorate as shoddy.

And all this at the cost of £1 million for the labour costs and consultancy support bought in to do the report.

I take your point though – but there are many choices to make as to where these cuts are targeted. The Conservatives – based on past experience – will target front-line services for vulnerable people (why bother with them – they don’t help the core vote and so the penalty for cuts is lower, and they are far easier to realise than the mythical back-office savings).

there are many choices to make as to where these cuts are targeted.

A 10% pay cut across the public sector, perhaps? That would not cost the “vulnerable people” who benefit from social services anything at all.

41. sevillista

@ad

A 10% pay cut across the public sector, perhaps?

That could be an option , yes. It’s only fair that public sector workers – after years of pay restraint in the good times – should bear the brunt of the bad times.

Minimum wage legislation may prevent this in certain sectors – though I suspect Cameron can abolish this with the “damaging business in a recession – minimum wage causes unemployment” argument.

Good luck to any Government that tries it while demanding productivity increases from the public sector. I forsee a little bit of resistance from the unions, and a lot of recruitment difficulties in the south of the country. But all public sector workers are lazy and paid far too much by definition I guess.

There’s always outsourcing, which is how the goal has historically been achieved.

Plain old service cuts are far more likely though – it’s easier to achieve this and serves ideological purposes of deregulating business, allowing middle-class advantages to persist, and making the welfare state more voluntary charity (deserving/undeserving poor) on the part of the rich well.

Good luck to any Government that tries it while demanding productivity increases from the public sector.

Why? Surely all those noble public servants would not want the poorest and most vulnerable members of society to suffer, and so would want to help the government get as much possible good out of its declining revenues?

If so, they would have to support productivity increaces, so that the the governemt could do as much good with a smaller, cheaper, payroll.

43. sevillista

@ad

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of this (noble public sector workers helping their councils give people living in big houses real council tax cuts by cutting their pay 10%), do you really think it will work from a practical perspective?

I’d love to see it tried – a new Government announcing that all teachers, doctors, nurses etc should take a 10% pay cut. I predict a riot. And additional recruitment difficulties in the public sector – particularly in London, the South East and other high cost locations, where vocations that require degree-level training (e.g. teaching) are already paid far less than other occupations (e.g. losing banks and the British taxpayer billions of pounds through dopey, ill-informed speculation)

I have seen a good number of posts on Liberal Conspiracy claiming that people in the public sector are more generous, public spirited etc than other people. I was merely taking these claims at face value. Presumable you do not, if you “predict a riot”.

BTW – note that MPs, ministers and senior civil servents are also public sector workers.

45. sevillista

@ad

I have seen a good number of posts on Liberal Conspiracy claiming that people in the public sector are more generous, public spirited etc than other people

That is true for many (but far from all) workers in the public sector. It is a fact that many choose the public sector when they could get easier jobs that pay far better in the private sector with their skills and qualifications. But for other important public sector workers it is just a job (e.g. do you think people who work as receptionists on public sector buildings are doing so out of public spiritness? What about tax collectors? I could go on).

You argue that public sector workers should accept pay cuts to give other (far wealthier) people council tax cuts, rather than to allow more resources to devoted to public services. It’s unclear why this would be a ‘public spirited’ thing to do – more an incredibly stupid one. Do you think that all public sector workers are paid too much?

Maybe you are right. This recession was caused by those damn teachers and nurses gambling on worthless US sub-prime debt, purchasing foreign companies at vastly inflated sums, and lending money to people who clearly couldn’t afford to pay it back. Those nasty and parasitical social workers creating complex financial instruments and pyramid schemes to sell to gullible investors. They should be punished heavily for this.

And on your logic why stop at a 10% pay cut? Why not a 20% cut? Why don’t all public sector workers work for free? Why don’t we charge teachers for the privilege of being public spirited?

In the real world, it is apparent that for many public service jobs, the pay is already insufficient to attract high calibre candidates for the most difficult positions. Social workers are in very short supply. All public sector jobs in London tend to have high vacancy rates. The teaching profession in Inner London and other areas of deprivations suffers from the wage not compensating for the high stress of teaching in areas of high deprivation.

All this is surely beside the point I was making though. It was more a point of pragmatism.

Enforcing an across the board pay cut on public sector workers is impossible. There will be a lot of strikes. Public services will be paralysed.

But if a political party wants to try and get elected on a platform of “10% across the board public sector wage cuts”, they are more than welcome too. I hope David Cameron takes the opportunity to do this. It’s the only hope of him throwing his chance to be Prime Minister away.

I suspect if this is the plan, it will not be mentioned in any election campaign, denying people a democratic choice.


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