Fife Council budget preview

Fife Today

Danyel VanReenen, Local Democracy Reporter,  on the key issues at the heart of the council's budget debate

Transcript

00:00 [Music]

00:04 Money talks are heating up in Fife this week as the local S&P and Labour groups prepare

00:07 to go head to head on Thursday.

00:09 I'm here at Fife House today to talk to Council Leader David Ross about his plans for the

00:13 new year and beyond.

00:15 Let's get straight to it.

00:16 Here's what Councillor Ross has to say to Fifers.

00:19 Well fortunately we'll be able to avoid any significant budget cuts this year.

00:25 That's because of a combination of very good housekeeping and good management by our finance

00:33 staff and our senior managers.

00:36 But there are huge pressures coming in the future that we're going to have to deal with.

00:42 So whilst this year I think we'll be able to get away without any significant cuts,

00:50 I'm not sure it's going to be the same next year.

00:53 The rents do look like they're going up by a fairly significant amount, what 5% you're

00:58 proposing?

00:59 We're going to put the rents up by 5% this year.

01:04 They tend to be based on inflation and inflation in September/October when we have the comparison

01:11 was I think over 8%.

01:13 So we are keeping them down as far as we can.

01:18 However that's the minimum rent increase we need to be able to maintain the level of current

01:24 services.

01:25 And our tenants, when we do the consultation, tell us they want to have improvements to

01:33 their properties, new bathrooms, new kitchens, roofs.

01:40 And they also value the money we're putting into new affordable housing, new build programme,

01:47 because that benefits tenants moving on and frees up houses for homeless tenants or applicants.

01:56 Now we've heard some things about the voids situation improving in Fife, but it's not

02:02 quite where you guys want it to be yet.

02:03 How do you justify raising the rents while also still having this kind of voids gap and

02:08 some other issues within the service?

02:11 Well the pandemic really hit our housing service hard.

02:15 We were unable to get into houses to do repairs.

02:19 We were unable really to do the level of transfers and movements that we wanted.

02:27 So it has taken time to get over that.

02:30 We are making significant progress now on improving the voids turnaround time.

02:38 But we need to keep putting the funding into that to maintain the improvements.

02:45 So that's the case.

02:48 The people paying the rents will see improvements in the service.

02:53 But the other thing we'd also say is that 67% of our rental income actually comes through

03:02 housing benefit and is paid for by the UK government.

03:08 So to keep the rents down would in effect be handing money back to the Treasury.

03:14 And then you mentioned earlier about the Health and Social Care Partnership budget.

03:17 I think you said that there might be some cuts from the NHS side this year.

03:20 Can you tell me a little bit more about that and how you think that's going to impact the

03:24 Council?

03:25 Well my understanding is that NHS Fife are at the moment reporting a £60 million black

03:32 hole in their budget.

03:34 The Health and Social Care Partnership is funded jointly by NHS Fife and Fife Council.

03:41 So if the NHS is saying they need to make significant cuts, I'm very worried that they

03:47 will pass that on to the Health and Social Care Partnership.

03:51 And as we all know, actually providing social care packages to keep people safe and well

03:58 in their own homes is much more effective than having to go into hospital.

04:04 So it's short-sighted to pass those cuts on to the Health and Social Care Partnership

04:10 and we'll be making that point very strongly to NHS Fife.

04:15 Councillor Ross also touched on his approach and philosophy to the budget this year.

04:19 I mean it's always been our philosophy that we value local services and we want to protect

04:25 those local services.

04:27 I think a lot of the pressure we get from auditors and Scottish Government as well is

04:34 'oh you need to take hard choices, difficult choices' which actually means you need to

04:39 make cuts in your services and cuts in your budgets.

04:42 And we have avoided doing that as far as we possibly can because we're not here, as far

04:49 as I'm concerned, to manage decline of local government.

04:53 We're there to protect services and to remain ambitious for our communities and to meet

04:59 the new and emerging needs that are coming forward.

05:03 You were talking about how the school psychologists are going to eventually, hopefully, improve

05:07 the violence in schools issue.

05:09 Can you just touch on that and expand on that a bit more?

05:12 We know there is a huge problem across Scotland in all schools now with behavioural problems

05:19 and quite frankly violence and aggression in some places and assaults on staff and other

05:25 pupils.

05:26 It's not something that's confined to Fife but we do take that very seriously.

05:31 We've got a programme where on particular schools we put additional support in, there

05:37 is particular training, we've improved our reporting systems.

05:41 But one of the things we're doing in this budget is to put more money into new posts

05:46 for educational psychologists and that will improve the time that it takes for schools

05:52 to refer to specialists and to get assessments and hopefully the appropriate approaches for

06:01 young people who do have problems or are causing problems in our school.

06:06 So it's something we take very seriously and I've had meetings very recently with all the

06:11 teaching trade unions about this.

06:13 And they're completely on board and think this is the right way forward?

06:17 Yes they're certainly happy with putting more money in and they're happy that Fife is taking

06:28 a proactive approach but they want to see significant improvements as soon as possible

06:35 and that isn't always deliverable.

06:39 This is Danielle Van Reenen, Fife's local democracy reporter.

06:45 Tune in on Thursday for all the latest Budget Chamber news.

06:47 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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