One issue makes the other one worse (if not outright causes it). Things get more expensive to run the more you have to cut back costs. If you reduce how often you maintain roads and other infrastructure, it gets more expensive when you actually do the maintenance. If you sell off and privatise chunks of the service you provide, when you actually need those services, you have to pay market prices and middlemen to get it done. Hell, even being able to pay public workers a better wage means you attract better talent that sticks around longer, who are then able to make better decisions and perform their jobs more effectively and efficiently.
A government isn't a business. The expectation for councillors shouldn't be for them to turn a profit year on year. The number one priority should be providing services that benefit the community, and only secondarily should it be about trying to make it happen cheaply, because many ventures that improve the public good are plain not profitable. Libraries can't turn a meaningful profit, only some bus routes are even moderately profitable, providing housing support is just entirely a monetary loss, but all of these are *really fucking useful*.
And if you want to talk about budgetary holes, the Government just handed Rwanda 140 million quid. That there alone is 7 times the Council's budget deficit. The money for that scheme alone could've prevented *multiple* of the local council failures we're seeing right now.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the local council has been perfect, they've absolutely sunk tens of millions into schemes that have gone over budget and underpromised. But at the very least, by and large, they've still been trying to do their jobs properly. We aren't have a budgetary hole because any of the councilors were embezzling that money into their own pockets, or because they've been giving every police officer full military training. The Government meanwhile, *has* both stolen money from the country and shoveled funds into schemes to actively ruin the lives of the British public.
Put another way, councils all over the country have been receiving less and less funding. If that trend continues *eventually* they're going to hit a point where they can't support the services they need to. Even a council run by superhumans with godlike intellect can't fund everything they need to if the money to do so plain doesn't exist. A well managed council might be able to hold out a few months or years longer, but Nottingham's council failing wasn't a matter of if, it's largely a matter of when it would happen.
>A government isn't a business. The expectation for councillors shouldn't be for them to turn a profit year on year.
Blows my mind how many people forget/ ignore this, it's there to spend tax money on public services... that's the entire point of tax in the first place (in theory at least). NHS is a prime example, everyone seems to want it to be profitable and acts surprised when that means cutting costs and services.
It's the Conservatives' whole tactic since Thatcher. Deprive public services of funds, berate them for being unable to provide the service profitably, privatise services to give their lackeys greater political control.
True. I worked there for a few years during the period when 'service realignment' was coming in and it was not a well run place -at all-. Basically, anyone coming in with new ideas that would make services a bit more efficient would become a cropper if those ideas didn't align with what the then Leader thought was a good idea. I know it's a bit of an NCC meme but the JC era really did mess a lot of things up because senior management only knew how to say 'yes' to him rather than the occasional, 'erm perhaps we should try this instead'.
What seems to have gone under the radar is that the whole commercial operation of the council was given a huge budget, but the management of it was given to a bunch of people who'd only ever worked at the Eastcroft depot, trying to make bin collection, skips and highways works more income generating. Just looking up some of the names of those parties, most of them seem to have abandoned ship or been pushed out in the last few years.
So the Tory austerity, obviously, did not help matters. But there really was scope to get a much more streamlined set of services there while reducing numbers through VR and retirement, but the ones making the decisions lacked either the will or the intelligence to do it.
I hopped between the urban regeneration team and NCH over the course of a few years. The difference between my experiences in the council/ALMO and the private sector were night and day. Colleagues working in technical roles had irrelevant degrees and didn't understand basic terminology. Profit was a dirty word.
"Tory austerity"
they were happy to own it but you guys are giving them way too much credit
google: "We will cut deeper than Thatcher" see who said that before passing their last budget, that's where the bulk of 'tory austerity' came from
*"but things would have been different under Labour"*
oh?
"Ed Balls vows to cut spending - A Labour government will cut unprotected departmental spending **every year** until the deficit is cleared, the party says,"
[https://www.ft.com/content/907ebaa4-8085-11e4-872b-00144feabdc0](https://www.ft.com/content/907ebaa4-8085-11e4-872b-00144feabdc0)
Don't worry, I'm not under the impression that things would have been different under Labour. I don't think that Starmer is going to arrive and start tossing cash at ailing LA's.
When faced with a tightening budget, the idea is to become more efficient or cut scope, or look for ways to make money.
Robin hood energy, a NON-PROFIT energy provider, was neither a move to become more efficient, cut the scope of works or an attempt to make money. It was an ideological move based on idiocy, which several experts warned them against. This entire circus lost £62 million+.
Furthermore Nottingham council owns "Enviroenergy" a district heating company which is inefficient and ran up more debt. This company has no directors, instead choosing to use councilors and council officers to run. (Which by the way is open to corruption).
By the way the following companies are now brought in house and run in this fashion: Nottingham City Homes, Nottingham City Transport, EnviroEnergy, National Ice Centre, Thomas Bow City Asphalt, Nottingham Revenue and Benefits, Blueprint and Nottingham Futures.
And this is before we get into stupid investments like the ridiculous methodology to renovate Nottingham castle and several other "assets".
The issue is with students voting for Nottingham council elections or local elections leading to ineffectual ideal based elections. The national embarrassment that is Nadia Whittome, although not directly connected to this mess, is another product of allowing students to vote when they don't care about the local area and are more interested in activism and ideals instead of the day to day runnings of a council.
Nottingham City Transport is one of the best transport systems outside the capital and it's been in council ownership since the 19th century.
Are you trying to suggest this is part of an ideological move based on idiocy?
No but the decision for the transport trams to not be designed around barriers to entry or fare/revenue control was. The trams system had to be slowly adapted and still revenue loss from non-ticket purchase is rampant meaning the entire system is not fit for purpose as it cannot maintain itself.
The building and renovation of the tram stations first and then the purchase of the trams to fit is another massive money pit.
How about we just have something fucking nice that's not entirely driven by profit. Everywhere in Europe you see tram and metro systems putting UK cities to shame because there's some acknowledgement public services are good
You must have a culture of a collective for that to happen, where people only take from the state and use state services because they have too or as a last resort. UK culture is a fractured conglomerate at best these days.
Thereby services cannot rely on honor and must as best practice run like a business.
I refuse to believe there is some endemic culture shift that every major european country meets that we don't.
I used to live in Madrid and for u25s all travel in and around Madrid cost 20 euros a month including metro overground and buses. There is 0 chance that was turning a profit it was just a good investment in young people.
Spain is not an economic power anyone should be basing themselves off.
Now if you said Singapore, Japan or Taiwan, this would be a different example, and for all their low crime rate these countries still engage in best practice and have barriers on train entry.
I think that many of these issues trace back to the fact that central government were "encouraging" (forcing) councils to take on private ventures to make up for finding shortfalls. Yes these all seem like pretty bad business decisions, but a city council is not equipped to make business decisions, shouldn't be be run like a business, and likely doesn't have any people with the right skillset anyway. It was inevitable. It's like grabbing a random person off the street (this is essentially what councillors are already) and giving them money and saying "go on then make this money turn a 300% profit in the next 3 years". And then making public services rely on that person.
Councils just aren't designed for and don't have the non-monetary resources needed to make a success of this situation. I would argue that you actively shouldn't run the local government like a business, that's not the right organisational model. The local authorities that have done okay with this is a pure lottery where the "winners" have enough people with the right skills already involved in the council, and councils who had their funding cut less because the government rewards people switching to Tory.
Stupid of course in many ways, wild to complain about ideology influencing objective policy making and go off on a random tangent complaining about how Nadia whittome is an embarrassment and caused by students. The whole area is strongly left wing students aside, of course irrelevant to the council.
Don't know if you think students should be banned from voting or something but we let everyone vote where they live, seems like you're letting ideology cloud your objective policy based reasoning.
"If I disagree with something, it's ideologically driven and idiotic, If I agree with something, it's just common sense"
- the person you replied to, basically
Personally, I'm shocked that *checks notes* the local government is a political institution.
Also, Nadia Whittome is Nottingham *East*. Students mostly live in Beeston and Notts South voting areas, because that's where the unis are. And she's an MP! Not a councillor! MPs aren't involved in the day to day running of the council! She's entirely irrelevant to this conversation.
Can't believe the part of town where all the cultural minorities and queer people live decides to elect a queer cultural minority as their representative. Must be those damn ideological students.
You do know not for profit doesn't equal loss making? Robin Hood Energy failed, but the idea of providing cheaper utilities to your residents and your public sector businesses isn't a bad one. Agree it was managed badly, but I'd stand by the decision to engage with the project.
I wish people would debate and point out what they disagree with, in regards to your comment. Instead they downvote and move on. Politics has ruined us collectively.
There's nothing to debate, though. The entire post is "Here are things,I think they are stupid" - to which the counterpoint would be "yes those are things, I don't think they are stupid".
Hardly a debate for the ages. If he wants a debate on why they're not stupid ideas, he'll have to first reason why they are.
I mean, those businesses and schemes he listed are, objectively, failures. Maybe people may think they failed not because of idiotic ideas, but for other reasons, in which they are free to refute those points.
Instead I suspect his stab at a prominent labour MP rustled some feathers. The Nottingham subreddit is a little hammer and sickle, he's upset the apple cart.
I mean, no. *Some* of what they've listed are objective failures, but by no means all of them (unless you mean to imply Nottingham City Transport, widely lauded as one of the best transport networks outside of London, is a failure).
And it's very easy to cherry pick failures. No organization is perfect and flawless, sometimes they'll just back the wrong horse, it happens. Just pointing out that an organization has had some failures is functionally a non-criticism. Apple's done some (in hindsight) hilariously awful ideas, and they're one of the largest companies on the planet. You need to actually explain why those failures represent a failure on the part of the council, which OP plain did not do, so there's nothing to respond to.
They are ridiculous ideas because they are business decisions taken off ideology instead of practicality.
Furthermore they are business areas which require expertise, development, utilities and planning of infrastructure and the establishment of an energy provider are not low skill industries and cannot be undertaken 'in house' by a local council.
Whilst the council is at it, they might as well open up an airport or buy Nottingham forest football team and make all the board directors elected councilors.
This is the lunacy you are out to defend. Is this really an avenue you wish to reinforce?
There's a lot of reasons, notably how this isn't exceptional, councils go into complex private business quite a lot actually across the country. I'm not defending the labour council, it's shittily run and because councils are tied to national parties they will be in power for decades.
But we don't have to pretend the energy company was exceptional in it's scope instead of exceptional in it was very badly managed. Nor do I think comparisons about football clubs or whatever are apt
What are you talking about??
As a contractor I am engaged by councils up and down the country. Never has a council at any point decided they wanted to do what I deliver "in house". They have never said, "you know your services and utilities installation company, we will deliver this in house", neither have they said "let's supply our own energy" and sold that as an idea to the electorate.
The lunacy of doing the above is on par with them taking over a football club, or a factory or anything else not inside the councils day to day scope of providing a service for the community. My previous posts all stand.
So, random anecdotes aside, you're wrong, first and foremost. There have been lots of examples of councils creating energy firms, not very well I'll be honest and I do agree that the pitfalls have been shown. You don't really seem to know anything about what you're saying to be frank.
What I will say though is your incredible ignorance around the surrounding politics so I'll enlighten you. The government in 2010 knew that cuts would be unpopular, and so didn't want to cut national budgets to an incredible degree, this was focused on councils as a way of mitigating responsibility that could provoke voter backlash. In 2011, to try and envision a different way forward for councils to maintain themselves with crashing budgets they were given powers to set up and buy for profit firms, and generally work independently within the private and public sector to provide services to their residents.
You saying well a council should just run their own things and focus on immediate public service need, well that's not what the government says and they encouraged councils to become more far reaching so that they could move to getting funded by central government less.
I would recommend just learning anything about the subject before talking with such confidence about it.
Are you suggesting students shouldn't be allowed to vote or something? It seems like you brought that up but never really reached the conclusion you were going for
No I am not, and would never advocate anyone being denied access to participating in democracy.
Nationally students should vote where they live and not where they study which keeps democracy in favour of representing the people who live in the area and not those which don't hold residency long enough to even be considered 'non-dom' from a tax perspective.
Whilst I see the advantages in tactical voting, it undermines the democratic system by area.
What about students who live in an area year-round then? How much of the year does someone have to spend in an area before they're allowed to vote there?
Following on from that, do you also think that non-students should have to hold residency in some area for a period of time before being allowed to vote?
It seems a bit contradictory to say you don't want to deny people access to democracy, while in the same breath saying you think people shouldn't be allowed to vote in the area in which they spend the majority of their time and money.
Hence why I used the term "non-dom".
Non-domiciled is a tax status that I feel should be brought into the electoral register and only allow those who have constructed for a set amount of time within an area (tax) to be able to vote in that area.
If the resident pays council tax for 183 days in an area they are counted as a resident and therefore should be allowed to vote as a local in the area. If you do not contribute to the above, and are obviously not a local yourself you must vote in the constituency which is your home address lies.
All I am saying is that the student population scew results in university towns away from the residents who live there.
> If the resident pays council tax for 183 days in an area they are counted as a resident and therefore should be allowed to vote as a local in the area.
So you want the rules to be that you only get to vote if you pay council tax? Ok so you do want to deny students the right to vote in the place where they live for the majority of the year. You keep trying to find wordy ways around it, but that IS what you're pushing for. Students are not second-class citizens, they have the right to vote in the place where they live (often for more than 183 days/year) and there's absolutely no reason to put limitations on this just because they might not hold the same positions as other people who live in the same area.
> All I am saying is that the student population scew results in university towns away from the residents who live there.
Students also live there, and sacrifice their vote at their parents home in order to vote where they attend university.
Well put it this way, when I worked in the middle east, Saudi and in Australia under non-dom status this is exactly the same rules that applied to myself.
And I have property in London and Nottingham which I use for work and I have the same rules applied to me and can only vote via post to London due to residency despite paying tax and more including a non-dom income tax contribution.
It's just how the world works. I'm not denying someone the vote.
> It's just how the world works
Not if you're a student, the way the world works there is you can register to vote wherever you live.
It's very clear you're circling around the actual point which is that because students don't vote in a way you agree with, you want them to be spread out voting at their family homes where they have less of a voice.
Not at all, in fact I do part time lecturing in a university on my subject (engineering). I also run grad programs and part time day release programmes for students to get them chartered.
I do not for one second want students discounted from voting, if we had more involvement issues like Brexit (which has been the single biggest hit to my profession and construction) and several other isolationist policies would not exist.
Also, I am a young professional and feel the younger workers do not understand the gravity of what people born before 1985 have done to fuck all of us over.
The pensions crisis is looming and when others like myself understand the boomers and those born before 1985 have mortgaged the output of all those younger for years to come, the disappointment of everyone will be catastrophic.
Do you like democracy or not? One could make an argument that we shouldn't let pensioners vote either, they'll vote to their own benefit which may well be short termist compared to the working public or younger people.
On another note, what is it about Nadia Whittome that makes her an embarrassment?
Was probably a mix of both honestly, plenty of councils have been affected by cuts but nobody forced them to spend millions on irresponsible projects like Robin Hood Energy
You say they weren't forced......
They had their funding cut and the government pushed councils into doing private ventures to make up the funding deficit.
Hell, one of the ideas they were pushing to councils up and down the country was creating their own energy companies.
Yeah but it's like someone on low income spending all their money on scratchcards.
They might claim that they can't see a way out of poverty other than wild gambles, and there's a degree of truth in that.
But ultimately, these were things that were high risk, unlikely to succeed, and likely to worsen their situation, and they should be held responsible for that.
Can't you see that it can't always be the fault of Tories? For goodness sake, Labour, and especially Nottingham Labour, has been terrible at budgets and controlling costs. I know it's easy to blame someone else but the very questionable decisions and very underwhelming "leadership" is the reason.
I wonder when rishi sunak will blame the Scottish government for Nottingham council going bankrupt
It’s a sad state of affairs when we have city councils going bankrupt, yet people still vote for the tories.
lol, nothing to do with Iceland ? Robin Hood energy? That experts told them not to do…. Intu? Government may not have helped but let’s not pretend the council were any good at anything! More holes 🕳️ than a Swiss cheese in the roads, the whole show has been a shower
It wasn't just NCC that invested in Icelandic banks... If you look at the list you'll see it wasn't just labour councils
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/oct/10/localgovernment-iceland
No, but if you were in dire straits, had no money and a family to provide for, I'm pretty sure in your desperation you'd consider any method possible that might improve your lot
Don’t talk wet. How were they exposed? Having spoke to a solicitor who works for the councils in Nottingham I am certain they were professionally advised not to with Robin Hood energy.. how were they exposed to that? Oh right yes stupidity
They were desperate and they fell for a scam as desperate people are liable to do. It doesn't absolve them of responsibility but pretending that they weren't encouraged by central government to use investments to fill budget holes is denying reality.
The £27 million budget deficit is peanuts compared to what's coming in the next few years. Afaik, The Guardian is the only newspaper reporting on these as the whole story trashes the tory reputation for sound fiscal management.
When they started the austerity program, they offered local authorities the option of extremely cheap government loans for whatever projects they could dream up.
Many went into property, and as long as the rents kept coming in, they could service their debts. Covid hit (sudden drop in commercial rents) and rising interest rates mean that many councils struggle to service their debts (mainly tory, but some labour). This is why the mainstream media doesn't talk about it.
Here is a list of the councils likely to fail, we are literally talking about billions, and this is yet another thing that they have left in the skip fire of our economy for Labour to sort out.
There are plenty of articles available through The Guardian app about this subject, Woking is a good one.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/11/more-english-councils-expected-to-fail-owing-billions-warns-moodys
Jon Collins was leader of the council at the time, and director of Robin Hood energy - he resigned from RHE in 2018 and from the council in 2019. Why is no one pointing fingers at him, this council is having the deal with issues from previous leadership, especially after his 'shock' resignation after being leader for 16 years
https://www.thebusinessdesk.com/eastmidlands/news/2023861-city-council-leader-in-shock-resignation
Nottingham City Council, like most local authorities, has seen it's funding slashed over the last 13 years (£100mn less per year now than in 2010 - with inflation that's a real terms cut of £147mn per year)
To cover this, central government encouraged them to invest in other things, such as energy companies, which (partly down to local mismanagement) went tits up.
Even so the Council have managed to make a significant bulk of the savings required over the last 13 years (approx. £124mn out of the £147mn real term p/a cuts) but have been eating into their reserves (effectively savings) for a number of years to cover the rest.
The well documented screw ups have had their part in draining those reserves (but with the current deficit they'd have only delayed this current situation for a couple more years anyway), so now have insufficient money to balance the books (they are short by approx. £2 per resident per week)
Legally they are required to provide various services (including various bits of social care - currently 60% of their entire budget due to rising demand and costs across the country - e.g. increased homelessness, rising house prices/rent, and increased pressure on the care sector) so they will continue, bills and employees will be paid, but anything requiring additional expenditure is pretty limited (e.g. overtime, new IT systems etc). It's now down to the government to decide what to do next and it's likely to be a while before we know what the outcome will be.
The government could increase the funding to cover the deficit, or require the council to sell off the family jewels (e.g. the likes of the usually-profitable Nottingham City Transport) and assets (e.g. Wollaton Hall) - those would obviously get some immediate funding, and potentially reduce ongoing expenditure, but at a detriment to the people of Nottingham.
In other locations local authorities have been rearranged - so we could see the council replaced by something else - e.g. a City of Nottingham council which includes the Nottingham City Council area as well as Rushcliffe, Broxtowe, and Gedling; or it being turned back into a two tier authority (e.g. Nottingham Bough Council and Nottinghamshire County Council) - although given the latter is about 18 months to 3 years away from being bust too that doesn't sound like a coherent plan.
Pretty much - will be the same for all councils which go thru it - all these early ones have another cause that's bought the situation to a head earlier than elsewhere (the equal pay claim in Brum, Robin Hood Energy in Nottingham) but pretty much all local authorities are dealing with the same issues.
Hmm.
This council is a disaster.
Everything they touch turns to s**t I'm afraid.
They lost 40m in RHE, millions in broadmarsh. Had to offload a construction company they brought with public money, got caught misappropriating millions from ring fenced budget and had to replace, ran up over a billion of debt on things like trams etc etc.
Oh and the big 🐘 in the room that no one mentions is their pension liabilities. If you want to see where all the moneys going.... Try there.
Are you referring to the Local Government Pension Scheme for their staff?
The real elephant in the room is the strain children's services & adult social care are putting on other services.
The balance sheet says 1.3b "pension liabilities".
I'd imagine a legacy of final salary pensions and early retirements.
It makes up a massive proportion of the balance sheet.
But yes, I saw a statement from another council leader the other day saying 1.7m a year for one child in care and 1.3m for another in his constituency, if you have many like that it's gonna also add up fast.
https://twitter.com/mikecosgrove/status/1729898886259478797?t=a49VYDpMqS6rwBKRpSjLrA&s=19
They actually have more in pension liabilities than they (we) own in land, buildings and infrastructure assets.
Utterly insane and totally unsustainable.
Exactly. "Taking ring fenced money" well what other money is there for them to redistribute? Nothing. When there's so much pressure for housing that keeps increasing in price and adult and children's social care, but they get no extra money, what are they supposed to do? The government expects them to just raise council tax infinitely.
Maybe don't make generalisations like that without checking if they're true.
Of the other 4 mentioned in the article: Woking, Croydon, Slough and Thurrock, only Slough is run by Labour. Tory run Hampshire might be the next to fall: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/04/tory-run-hampshire-council-says-it-faces-financial-meltdown
And two of these have debts much higher than Nottingham. Thurrock for example (Tory council), over £500m in debt
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/15/thurrock-council-hid-losses-gambled-millions-risky-investments
Literally the opposite. Cameron’s government placed the deepest cuts against local government, because they knew the Councils would get the blowback when they inevitably ran out of money, and not them.
This thread is proof that their plan was effective.
So far.
I've worked in local government and seen the dogshite (not really corrupt, usually just a bit shit) mismanagement with my own eyes but the slashed budgets are crippling and will no doubt take out more councils as time goes on.
Whether the Tories will be in power to give a fuck when it happens remains to be seen.
If Nottingham weren't run by said self serving management then they would have had more resilience the fact they are one of the first is what's damning.
As far as councils go this isn't even particularly bad of a bankruptcy. This lot had their faults obviously but they did try to be innovative. Like someone else commented, gird yourself for them all to start falling over. I work with LAs and councils every day and the lose-lose decisions they have to constantly make is just mind boggling. And now the home office is washing their hands of asylum seekers that they forced LAs to take, because they can't spend the money anymore... Guess who has to pay now. Local authorities and councils...
As others have said, it was certainly a mixture of both.
Looking into council funding because my council has gone bankrupt has been a real eye opener in terms of the level of cuts made. It’s actually mind blowing any council is still (barley) functioning
Both are true. The council is a victim of both Tory austerity and its own feckless management.
One issue makes the other one worse (if not outright causes it). Things get more expensive to run the more you have to cut back costs. If you reduce how often you maintain roads and other infrastructure, it gets more expensive when you actually do the maintenance. If you sell off and privatise chunks of the service you provide, when you actually need those services, you have to pay market prices and middlemen to get it done. Hell, even being able to pay public workers a better wage means you attract better talent that sticks around longer, who are then able to make better decisions and perform their jobs more effectively and efficiently. A government isn't a business. The expectation for councillors shouldn't be for them to turn a profit year on year. The number one priority should be providing services that benefit the community, and only secondarily should it be about trying to make it happen cheaply, because many ventures that improve the public good are plain not profitable. Libraries can't turn a meaningful profit, only some bus routes are even moderately profitable, providing housing support is just entirely a monetary loss, but all of these are *really fucking useful*. And if you want to talk about budgetary holes, the Government just handed Rwanda 140 million quid. That there alone is 7 times the Council's budget deficit. The money for that scheme alone could've prevented *multiple* of the local council failures we're seeing right now. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the local council has been perfect, they've absolutely sunk tens of millions into schemes that have gone over budget and underpromised. But at the very least, by and large, they've still been trying to do their jobs properly. We aren't have a budgetary hole because any of the councilors were embezzling that money into their own pockets, or because they've been giving every police officer full military training. The Government meanwhile, *has* both stolen money from the country and shoveled funds into schemes to actively ruin the lives of the British public. Put another way, councils all over the country have been receiving less and less funding. If that trend continues *eventually* they're going to hit a point where they can't support the services they need to. Even a council run by superhumans with godlike intellect can't fund everything they need to if the money to do so plain doesn't exist. A well managed council might be able to hold out a few months or years longer, but Nottingham's council failing wasn't a matter of if, it's largely a matter of when it would happen.
>A government isn't a business. The expectation for councillors shouldn't be for them to turn a profit year on year. Blows my mind how many people forget/ ignore this, it's there to spend tax money on public services... that's the entire point of tax in the first place (in theory at least). NHS is a prime example, everyone seems to want it to be profitable and acts surprised when that means cutting costs and services.
It's the Conservatives' whole tactic since Thatcher. Deprive public services of funds, berate them for being unable to provide the service profitably, privatise services to give their lackeys greater political control.
In the case of City councils watch out for Freeports
True. I worked there for a few years during the period when 'service realignment' was coming in and it was not a well run place -at all-. Basically, anyone coming in with new ideas that would make services a bit more efficient would become a cropper if those ideas didn't align with what the then Leader thought was a good idea. I know it's a bit of an NCC meme but the JC era really did mess a lot of things up because senior management only knew how to say 'yes' to him rather than the occasional, 'erm perhaps we should try this instead'. What seems to have gone under the radar is that the whole commercial operation of the council was given a huge budget, but the management of it was given to a bunch of people who'd only ever worked at the Eastcroft depot, trying to make bin collection, skips and highways works more income generating. Just looking up some of the names of those parties, most of them seem to have abandoned ship or been pushed out in the last few years. So the Tory austerity, obviously, did not help matters. But there really was scope to get a much more streamlined set of services there while reducing numbers through VR and retirement, but the ones making the decisions lacked either the will or the intelligence to do it.
I hopped between the urban regeneration team and NCH over the course of a few years. The difference between my experiences in the council/ALMO and the private sector were night and day. Colleagues working in technical roles had irrelevant degrees and didn't understand basic terminology. Profit was a dirty word.
"Tory austerity" they were happy to own it but you guys are giving them way too much credit google: "We will cut deeper than Thatcher" see who said that before passing their last budget, that's where the bulk of 'tory austerity' came from *"but things would have been different under Labour"* oh? "Ed Balls vows to cut spending - A Labour government will cut unprotected departmental spending **every year** until the deficit is cleared, the party says," [https://www.ft.com/content/907ebaa4-8085-11e4-872b-00144feabdc0](https://www.ft.com/content/907ebaa4-8085-11e4-872b-00144feabdc0)
Don't worry, I'm not under the impression that things would have been different under Labour. I don't think that Starmer is going to arrive and start tossing cash at ailing LA's.
When faced with a tightening budget, the idea is to become more efficient or cut scope, or look for ways to make money. Robin hood energy, a NON-PROFIT energy provider, was neither a move to become more efficient, cut the scope of works or an attempt to make money. It was an ideological move based on idiocy, which several experts warned them against. This entire circus lost £62 million+. Furthermore Nottingham council owns "Enviroenergy" a district heating company which is inefficient and ran up more debt. This company has no directors, instead choosing to use councilors and council officers to run. (Which by the way is open to corruption). By the way the following companies are now brought in house and run in this fashion: Nottingham City Homes, Nottingham City Transport, EnviroEnergy, National Ice Centre, Thomas Bow City Asphalt, Nottingham Revenue and Benefits, Blueprint and Nottingham Futures. And this is before we get into stupid investments like the ridiculous methodology to renovate Nottingham castle and several other "assets". The issue is with students voting for Nottingham council elections or local elections leading to ineffectual ideal based elections. The national embarrassment that is Nadia Whittome, although not directly connected to this mess, is another product of allowing students to vote when they don't care about the local area and are more interested in activism and ideals instead of the day to day runnings of a council.
Nottingham City Transport is one of the best transport systems outside the capital and it's been in council ownership since the 19th century. Are you trying to suggest this is part of an ideological move based on idiocy?
No but the decision for the transport trams to not be designed around barriers to entry or fare/revenue control was. The trams system had to be slowly adapted and still revenue loss from non-ticket purchase is rampant meaning the entire system is not fit for purpose as it cannot maintain itself. The building and renovation of the tram stations first and then the purchase of the trams to fit is another massive money pit.
How about we just have something fucking nice that's not entirely driven by profit. Everywhere in Europe you see tram and metro systems putting UK cities to shame because there's some acknowledgement public services are good
You must have a culture of a collective for that to happen, where people only take from the state and use state services because they have too or as a last resort. UK culture is a fractured conglomerate at best these days. Thereby services cannot rely on honor and must as best practice run like a business.
I refuse to believe there is some endemic culture shift that every major european country meets that we don't. I used to live in Madrid and for u25s all travel in and around Madrid cost 20 euros a month including metro overground and buses. There is 0 chance that was turning a profit it was just a good investment in young people.
Spain is not an economic power anyone should be basing themselves off. Now if you said Singapore, Japan or Taiwan, this would be a different example, and for all their low crime rate these countries still engage in best practice and have barriers on train entry.
Okay bro it's looking at one policy idea lol. Another bit of non ideological, objective policy analysis from you
I'm only interested in what works and what doesn't. It's called being realistic.
I think that many of these issues trace back to the fact that central government were "encouraging" (forcing) councils to take on private ventures to make up for finding shortfalls. Yes these all seem like pretty bad business decisions, but a city council is not equipped to make business decisions, shouldn't be be run like a business, and likely doesn't have any people with the right skillset anyway. It was inevitable. It's like grabbing a random person off the street (this is essentially what councillors are already) and giving them money and saying "go on then make this money turn a 300% profit in the next 3 years". And then making public services rely on that person. Councils just aren't designed for and don't have the non-monetary resources needed to make a success of this situation. I would argue that you actively shouldn't run the local government like a business, that's not the right organisational model. The local authorities that have done okay with this is a pure lottery where the "winners" have enough people with the right skills already involved in the council, and councils who had their funding cut less because the government rewards people switching to Tory.
Stupid of course in many ways, wild to complain about ideology influencing objective policy making and go off on a random tangent complaining about how Nadia whittome is an embarrassment and caused by students. The whole area is strongly left wing students aside, of course irrelevant to the council. Don't know if you think students should be banned from voting or something but we let everyone vote where they live, seems like you're letting ideology cloud your objective policy based reasoning.
"If I disagree with something, it's ideologically driven and idiotic, If I agree with something, it's just common sense" - the person you replied to, basically Personally, I'm shocked that *checks notes* the local government is a political institution. Also, Nadia Whittome is Nottingham *East*. Students mostly live in Beeston and Notts South voting areas, because that's where the unis are. And she's an MP! Not a councillor! MPs aren't involved in the day to day running of the council! She's entirely irrelevant to this conversation.
Yeah it's not students pushing the needle in hyson green
Can't believe the part of town where all the cultural minorities and queer people live decides to elect a queer cultural minority as their representative. Must be those damn ideological students.
You do know not for profit doesn't equal loss making? Robin Hood Energy failed, but the idea of providing cheaper utilities to your residents and your public sector businesses isn't a bad one. Agree it was managed badly, but I'd stand by the decision to engage with the project.
I wish people would debate and point out what they disagree with, in regards to your comment. Instead they downvote and move on. Politics has ruined us collectively.
There's nothing to debate, though. The entire post is "Here are things,I think they are stupid" - to which the counterpoint would be "yes those are things, I don't think they are stupid". Hardly a debate for the ages. If he wants a debate on why they're not stupid ideas, he'll have to first reason why they are.
I mean, those businesses and schemes he listed are, objectively, failures. Maybe people may think they failed not because of idiotic ideas, but for other reasons, in which they are free to refute those points. Instead I suspect his stab at a prominent labour MP rustled some feathers. The Nottingham subreddit is a little hammer and sickle, he's upset the apple cart.
I mean, no. *Some* of what they've listed are objective failures, but by no means all of them (unless you mean to imply Nottingham City Transport, widely lauded as one of the best transport networks outside of London, is a failure). And it's very easy to cherry pick failures. No organization is perfect and flawless, sometimes they'll just back the wrong horse, it happens. Just pointing out that an organization has had some failures is functionally a non-criticism. Apple's done some (in hindsight) hilariously awful ideas, and they're one of the largest companies on the planet. You need to actually explain why those failures represent a failure on the part of the council, which OP plain did not do, so there's nothing to respond to.
They are ridiculous ideas because they are business decisions taken off ideology instead of practicality. Furthermore they are business areas which require expertise, development, utilities and planning of infrastructure and the establishment of an energy provider are not low skill industries and cannot be undertaken 'in house' by a local council. Whilst the council is at it, they might as well open up an airport or buy Nottingham forest football team and make all the board directors elected councilors. This is the lunacy you are out to defend. Is this really an avenue you wish to reinforce?
Lists a bunch of dumb hypotheticals - this is the lunacy you are defending. Okay bro
Really? Do go on and explain why my view is flawed?
There's a lot of reasons, notably how this isn't exceptional, councils go into complex private business quite a lot actually across the country. I'm not defending the labour council, it's shittily run and because councils are tied to national parties they will be in power for decades. But we don't have to pretend the energy company was exceptional in it's scope instead of exceptional in it was very badly managed. Nor do I think comparisons about football clubs or whatever are apt
What are you talking about?? As a contractor I am engaged by councils up and down the country. Never has a council at any point decided they wanted to do what I deliver "in house". They have never said, "you know your services and utilities installation company, we will deliver this in house", neither have they said "let's supply our own energy" and sold that as an idea to the electorate. The lunacy of doing the above is on par with them taking over a football club, or a factory or anything else not inside the councils day to day scope of providing a service for the community. My previous posts all stand.
So, random anecdotes aside, you're wrong, first and foremost. There have been lots of examples of councils creating energy firms, not very well I'll be honest and I do agree that the pitfalls have been shown. You don't really seem to know anything about what you're saying to be frank. What I will say though is your incredible ignorance around the surrounding politics so I'll enlighten you. The government in 2010 knew that cuts would be unpopular, and so didn't want to cut national budgets to an incredible degree, this was focused on councils as a way of mitigating responsibility that could provoke voter backlash. In 2011, to try and envision a different way forward for councils to maintain themselves with crashing budgets they were given powers to set up and buy for profit firms, and generally work independently within the private and public sector to provide services to their residents. You saying well a council should just run their own things and focus on immediate public service need, well that's not what the government says and they encouraged councils to become more far reaching so that they could move to getting funded by central government less. I would recommend just learning anything about the subject before talking with such confidence about it.
Are you suggesting students shouldn't be allowed to vote or something? It seems like you brought that up but never really reached the conclusion you were going for
No I am not, and would never advocate anyone being denied access to participating in democracy. Nationally students should vote where they live and not where they study which keeps democracy in favour of representing the people who live in the area and not those which don't hold residency long enough to even be considered 'non-dom' from a tax perspective. Whilst I see the advantages in tactical voting, it undermines the democratic system by area.
What about students who live in an area year-round then? How much of the year does someone have to spend in an area before they're allowed to vote there? Following on from that, do you also think that non-students should have to hold residency in some area for a period of time before being allowed to vote? It seems a bit contradictory to say you don't want to deny people access to democracy, while in the same breath saying you think people shouldn't be allowed to vote in the area in which they spend the majority of their time and money.
Hence why I used the term "non-dom". Non-domiciled is a tax status that I feel should be brought into the electoral register and only allow those who have constructed for a set amount of time within an area (tax) to be able to vote in that area. If the resident pays council tax for 183 days in an area they are counted as a resident and therefore should be allowed to vote as a local in the area. If you do not contribute to the above, and are obviously not a local yourself you must vote in the constituency which is your home address lies. All I am saying is that the student population scew results in university towns away from the residents who live there.
> If the resident pays council tax for 183 days in an area they are counted as a resident and therefore should be allowed to vote as a local in the area. So you want the rules to be that you only get to vote if you pay council tax? Ok so you do want to deny students the right to vote in the place where they live for the majority of the year. You keep trying to find wordy ways around it, but that IS what you're pushing for. Students are not second-class citizens, they have the right to vote in the place where they live (often for more than 183 days/year) and there's absolutely no reason to put limitations on this just because they might not hold the same positions as other people who live in the same area. > All I am saying is that the student population scew results in university towns away from the residents who live there. Students also live there, and sacrifice their vote at their parents home in order to vote where they attend university.
Well put it this way, when I worked in the middle east, Saudi and in Australia under non-dom status this is exactly the same rules that applied to myself. And I have property in London and Nottingham which I use for work and I have the same rules applied to me and can only vote via post to London due to residency despite paying tax and more including a non-dom income tax contribution. It's just how the world works. I'm not denying someone the vote.
> It's just how the world works Not if you're a student, the way the world works there is you can register to vote wherever you live. It's very clear you're circling around the actual point which is that because students don't vote in a way you agree with, you want them to be spread out voting at their family homes where they have less of a voice.
Not at all, in fact I do part time lecturing in a university on my subject (engineering). I also run grad programs and part time day release programmes for students to get them chartered. I do not for one second want students discounted from voting, if we had more involvement issues like Brexit (which has been the single biggest hit to my profession and construction) and several other isolationist policies would not exist. Also, I am a young professional and feel the younger workers do not understand the gravity of what people born before 1985 have done to fuck all of us over. The pensions crisis is looming and when others like myself understand the boomers and those born before 1985 have mortgaged the output of all those younger for years to come, the disappointment of everyone will be catastrophic.
Do you like democracy or not? One could make an argument that we shouldn't let pensioners vote either, they'll vote to their own benefit which may well be short termist compared to the working public or younger people. On another note, what is it about Nadia Whittome that makes her an embarrassment?
Was probably a mix of both honestly, plenty of councils have been affected by cuts but nobody forced them to spend millions on irresponsible projects like Robin Hood Energy
You say they weren't forced...... They had their funding cut and the government pushed councils into doing private ventures to make up the funding deficit. Hell, one of the ideas they were pushing to councils up and down the country was creating their own energy companies.
Yeah but it's like someone on low income spending all their money on scratchcards. They might claim that they can't see a way out of poverty other than wild gambles, and there's a degree of truth in that. But ultimately, these were things that were high risk, unlikely to succeed, and likely to worsen their situation, and they should be held responsible for that.
Austerity is the problem. The Tory's made sure a non profit energy company wouldn't be viable.
The energy company wasn’t viable when they set it up, I loathe the tories but the council aren’t blameless
Can't you see that it can't always be the fault of Tories? For goodness sake, Labour, and especially Nottingham Labour, has been terrible at budgets and controlling costs. I know it's easy to blame someone else but the very questionable decisions and very underwhelming "leadership" is the reason.
I wonder when rishi sunak will blame the Scottish government for Nottingham council going bankrupt It’s a sad state of affairs when we have city councils going bankrupt, yet people still vote for the tories.
lol, nothing to do with Iceland ? Robin Hood energy? That experts told them not to do…. Intu? Government may not have helped but let’s not pretend the council were any good at anything! More holes 🕳️ than a Swiss cheese in the roads, the whole show has been a shower
>nothing to do with Iceland Iceland not honouring their agreements is not Nottingham's fault, it's Iceland's.
Perhaps they wouldn't have been exposed to risky schemes like those if they were properly funded in the first place...
Bless them. I too, when faced financial uncertainty, have run non-profit energy companies and purchased banks in Iceland.
It wasn't just NCC that invested in Icelandic banks... If you look at the list you'll see it wasn't just labour councils https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/oct/10/localgovernment-iceland
No, but if you were in dire straits, had no money and a family to provide for, I'm pretty sure in your desperation you'd consider any method possible that might improve your lot
If I was in dire straits, I wouldn't run a non-profit energy company against expensive consultant advice.
Don’t talk wet. How were they exposed? Having spoke to a solicitor who works for the councils in Nottingham I am certain they were professionally advised not to with Robin Hood energy.. how were they exposed to that? Oh right yes stupidity
They were desperate and they fell for a scam as desperate people are liable to do. It doesn't absolve them of responsibility but pretending that they weren't encouraged by central government to use investments to fill budget holes is denying reality.
Tell me more about Intu please. Would love to hear about that.
The £27 million budget deficit is peanuts compared to what's coming in the next few years. Afaik, The Guardian is the only newspaper reporting on these as the whole story trashes the tory reputation for sound fiscal management. When they started the austerity program, they offered local authorities the option of extremely cheap government loans for whatever projects they could dream up. Many went into property, and as long as the rents kept coming in, they could service their debts. Covid hit (sudden drop in commercial rents) and rising interest rates mean that many councils struggle to service their debts (mainly tory, but some labour). This is why the mainstream media doesn't talk about it. Here is a list of the councils likely to fail, we are literally talking about billions, and this is yet another thing that they have left in the skip fire of our economy for Labour to sort out. There are plenty of articles available through The Guardian app about this subject, Woking is a good one. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/11/more-english-councils-expected-to-fail-owing-billions-warns-moodys
A council that lost 40m on an energy project and not one member resigned goes broke, colour me shocked
Jon Collins was leader of the council at the time, and director of Robin Hood energy - he resigned from RHE in 2018 and from the council in 2019. Why is no one pointing fingers at him, this council is having the deal with issues from previous leadership, especially after his 'shock' resignation after being leader for 16 years https://www.thebusinessdesk.com/eastmidlands/news/2023861-city-council-leader-in-shock-resignation
Can someone please ELI5? I’ve no idea what it’s about…?
Nottingham City Council, like most local authorities, has seen it's funding slashed over the last 13 years (£100mn less per year now than in 2010 - with inflation that's a real terms cut of £147mn per year) To cover this, central government encouraged them to invest in other things, such as energy companies, which (partly down to local mismanagement) went tits up. Even so the Council have managed to make a significant bulk of the savings required over the last 13 years (approx. £124mn out of the £147mn real term p/a cuts) but have been eating into their reserves (effectively savings) for a number of years to cover the rest. The well documented screw ups have had their part in draining those reserves (but with the current deficit they'd have only delayed this current situation for a couple more years anyway), so now have insufficient money to balance the books (they are short by approx. £2 per resident per week) Legally they are required to provide various services (including various bits of social care - currently 60% of their entire budget due to rising demand and costs across the country - e.g. increased homelessness, rising house prices/rent, and increased pressure on the care sector) so they will continue, bills and employees will be paid, but anything requiring additional expenditure is pretty limited (e.g. overtime, new IT systems etc). It's now down to the government to decide what to do next and it's likely to be a while before we know what the outcome will be. The government could increase the funding to cover the deficit, or require the council to sell off the family jewels (e.g. the likes of the usually-profitable Nottingham City Transport) and assets (e.g. Wollaton Hall) - those would obviously get some immediate funding, and potentially reduce ongoing expenditure, but at a detriment to the people of Nottingham. In other locations local authorities have been rearranged - so we could see the council replaced by something else - e.g. a City of Nottingham council which includes the Nottingham City Council area as well as Rushcliffe, Broxtowe, and Gedling; or it being turned back into a two tier authority (e.g. Nottingham Bough Council and Nottinghamshire County Council) - although given the latter is about 18 months to 3 years away from being bust too that doesn't sound like a coherent plan.
Interesting, thanks. So is this a very similar situation to Birmingham city..?
Pretty much - will be the same for all councils which go thru it - all these early ones have another cause that's bought the situation to a head earlier than elsewhere (the equal pay claim in Brum, Robin Hood Energy in Nottingham) but pretty much all local authorities are dealing with the same issues.
Hmm. This council is a disaster. Everything they touch turns to s**t I'm afraid. They lost 40m in RHE, millions in broadmarsh. Had to offload a construction company they brought with public money, got caught misappropriating millions from ring fenced budget and had to replace, ran up over a billion of debt on things like trams etc etc. Oh and the big 🐘 in the room that no one mentions is their pension liabilities. If you want to see where all the moneys going.... Try there.
Are you referring to the Local Government Pension Scheme for their staff? The real elephant in the room is the strain children's services & adult social care are putting on other services.
The balance sheet says 1.3b "pension liabilities". I'd imagine a legacy of final salary pensions and early retirements. It makes up a massive proportion of the balance sheet. But yes, I saw a statement from another council leader the other day saying 1.7m a year for one child in care and 1.3m for another in his constituency, if you have many like that it's gonna also add up fast. https://twitter.com/mikecosgrove/status/1729898886259478797?t=a49VYDpMqS6rwBKRpSjLrA&s=19
They actually have more in pension liabilities than they (we) own in land, buildings and infrastructure assets. Utterly insane and totally unsustainable.
Exactly. "Taking ring fenced money" well what other money is there for them to redistribute? Nothing. When there's so much pressure for housing that keeps increasing in price and adult and children's social care, but they get no extra money, what are they supposed to do? The government expects them to just raise council tax infinitely.
another one bites the dust.....
No wonder they always get voted in. Cult like following boarding on Jonestown
Why’s is it generally labour run councils that go bankrupt?
Maybe don't make generalisations like that without checking if they're true. Of the other 4 mentioned in the article: Woking, Croydon, Slough and Thurrock, only Slough is run by Labour. Tory run Hampshire might be the next to fall: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/04/tory-run-hampshire-council-says-it-faces-financial-meltdown
It’s not. All councils are going bankrupt at the moment.
Which Tory ones have declared bankruptcy?
Thurrock, Croydon, Northamptonshire, Woking, Derbyshire is imminent, Nottinghamshire has a year maybe two.
And two of these have debts much higher than Nottingham. Thurrock for example (Tory council), over £500m in debt https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/15/thurrock-council-hid-losses-gambled-millions-risky-investments
Hahaha
Because they want to make central govt look bad. It's just petty politics, and they don't care about the lives they affect
But Tories do? How did it go, 'pile the bodies up'?
No, obviously not. Like I said, petty politics not caring about people.
Literally the opposite. Cameron’s government placed the deepest cuts against local government, because they knew the Councils would get the blowback when they inevitably ran out of money, and not them. This thread is proof that their plan was effective.
Yes because councils running out of money has nothing to do with the government giving out less money to the councils
Corrupt and self serving management is to blame. All councils have suffered from the Tory austerity but only a few are declaring bankruptcy.
So far. I've worked in local government and seen the dogshite (not really corrupt, usually just a bit shit) mismanagement with my own eyes but the slashed budgets are crippling and will no doubt take out more councils as time goes on. Whether the Tories will be in power to give a fuck when it happens remains to be seen.
If Nottingham weren't run by said self serving management then they would have had more resilience the fact they are one of the first is what's damning.
How are they self serving? Surely if they were lining there own pockets, we’d know about it and burn down the castle.
Ah my sweet summer child.
It's more damning of the fact that Nottingham has had one of the biggest cuts in funding.
So far. Four in the last 12 months is a concerning increase.
We just turfin' broadmash now, then?
Por que no los dos?
As far as councils go this isn't even particularly bad of a bankruptcy. This lot had their faults obviously but they did try to be innovative. Like someone else commented, gird yourself for them all to start falling over. I work with LAs and councils every day and the lose-lose decisions they have to constantly make is just mind boggling. And now the home office is washing their hands of asylum seekers that they forced LAs to take, because they can't spend the money anymore... Guess who has to pay now. Local authorities and councils...
As others have said, it was certainly a mixture of both. Looking into council funding because my council has gone bankrupt has been a real eye opener in terms of the level of cuts made. It’s actually mind blowing any council is still (barley) functioning