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It is a real honour to have become the Leader of Bexley Council, and especially with such a clear and decisive mandate from people in Bexley. While my colleagues and I were hopeful of winning back control of our council we were thrilled to win 54 out of the 63 seats and reduce Labour to nine councillors. This was a result though of hard work over the last three years across the borough and of a positive and optimistic campaign. It is easy in politics to focus on your key areas but we campaigned hard in places like Belvedere, East Wickham and Erith and our new councillors deserved their victories.
But now the celebrations are over and the hard work begins. And what hard work it is going to be. Our number one priority is to get the council’s finances under control. Since the election, we have discovered that the Labour administration spent more money than was coming in for each of the four years they were in power. This has clearly had a huge effect on the council’s reserves of money, which means the money put aside for a rainy day is now almost gone. How on earth they managed to spend more than was coming in when Council tax went up 40% is a mystery that will take many months to resolve.
We will also start delivering on our promises. The notorious Welling Bus Lane will be scrapped by July. We will make major changes to the controversial North Cray hosuing scheme. And we have many more pledges to put into action over the next few months and the next four years. We will get more police on the beat and have already started discussing how we will do that with the police. We will ensure graffiti is removed within 7 days and we will provide more and better care for the elderly.
It is not going to be easy, but we are not afraid of a challenge and, whatever we do in the coming years, it will have just one aim - to ensure we serve the people of Bexley to the best of our ability.
We are still reeling in Belvedere from the decision by Energy Minister, Malcolm Wicks, to allow the Belvedere waste incinerator to go ahead. The incinerator will be the largest in the UK and is being built primarily to burn the rubbish from Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Lambeth and Wandsworth. They could have built a local incinerator in Battersea (Wandsworth) but residents in that area objected and their councillors decided to plump for Belvedere. The government’s guidelines say that waste should be dealt with as close to its source as possible – this is called the proximity principle. Clearly Belvedere does not meet that rule.
The Minister argues that most of west London’s waste could be taken to Belvedere by boat and that this would reduce lorry movements in London. But the incinerator will be huge and will be able to burn, additionally, twice as much rubbish as that coming from west London. For the incinerator to be commercially viable they will have to import more waste and most of this will come by road – through Erith, Welling, Bexleyheath and Plumstead. The Minister says the arguments are finely balanced – if so he should have come down on the side of his own guidelines. I believe there are strong grounds for challenging his decision in court and I hope the council will have the courage to do so.
But not only does the decision go against current government guidelines, it goes against the Mayor of London’s Waste Strategy. The west London boroughs have some of the worst recycling records in London. Under a Labour Council over the past 4 years, which has invested in recycling, Bexley recycles more rubbish than any other London borough.
The Minister has also ignored recent independent reports which show that waste to energy incinerators pump out a third more Carbon dioxide from fossil fuel sources than gas fired power stations. And if we are successful in achieving the government’s recycling targets by 2020, plastics and other toxic material will make up more of the waste going to incineration and the Belvedere incinerator will be putting out as much fossil fuel derived carbon dioxide as a coal fired power station. That hardly makes it “green energy”.
The campaign is not over. There are some who have come late on the scene who are trying to take over the campaign and exploit it for their own political ends – I am sure the local community will give them short shrift. This campaign has been led, not by politicians, although some of us have been active in the campaign for more than 15 years, but by local people – people like Jo and John Livingston and Alec Tapper – they deserve the credit for the campaign. It has in the past been a campaign above party politics with the active involvement of people from all parties – let’s hope it will stay that way and not be taken over by recent arrivals on the scene for their own opportunist purposes.
Bexley Council’s new administration has given the go-ahead to a series of fundamental reviews into services and spending as it starts to address the Council’s difficult financial situation.
“I know from listening to local people that they want Bexley to be a high-performing Council that delivers value for money and sets a Council Tax that people can afford,” says Cabinet member for Finance & Corporate Affairs, Cllr Colin Campbell.
“We will take the tough decisions that are needed to make Bexley ‘the value for money Council’,” says Cllr Campbell. “Our residents have to live within their means and so must the Council.”
Bexley’s new Cabinet considered a report on value for money and financial planning at its first public meeting on 21 June. It instructed the Chief Executive to bring forward a comprehensive review programme, in which the Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committees will play a key role.
The Council’s entitlement to Government grant is low and its financial difficulties are worsened by the current very small annual increases.
For the coming year, Bexley has been given a cash increase of only 2% to meet higher demand for services and inflation, although it faces inflationary costs of about 4.2%.
Councillors are concerned that the authority’s current level of expenditure is not sustainable. According to the best available projections, spending may need to be cut by as much as £10 million over the next two years.
Senior managers will be asked to make presentations to the Council’s Overview & Scrutiny Committees on the Council’s services and the cost of providing them. Each committee will then look at the cost and effectiveness of everything the Council does and will give local people the opportunity to give their views and experiences on how the Council can do things better and more efficiently.
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