Councillor Roger Mace, who resigned as Leader of Lancaster City Council yesterday, has issued the following statement regarding his reasons and his view of the state of the Council’s Cabinet body, and warning of the potential of both more cuts to Council services and a large rise in council tax next year, which we publish here in full:
“ENOUGH IS ENOUGH”
Carping and bickering in Cabinet has got worse in recent weeks. The cohesion between groups that existed in the first 16 months of my leadership has broken down. Cabinet’s fractiousness and the renewed tendency for political point scoring has made it impossible to negotiate consensus. Consensus can only be obtained from willing participants in a negotiation process. Willingness on my part is no longer being reciprocated. The situation appears irretrievable in the short term.
In the local elections in May 2007, the electors gave no Political Party a majority. So with the support of other Parties I undertook the Leadership of a five group proportional representation cabinet comprising two Conservatives, two Labour, two Greens, one Liberal Democrat and three Independents (actually Morecambe Bay Independents). I chair the Cabinet, and am Leader of the Council, but neither I nor the Conservative Group can control the decisions made in either place.
It was obvious to everyone, including myself that this was always going to be difficult, but it was a challenge I willingly accepted in the hope that by working together we could improve, even if in a modest way, the quality of life that the Council can offer to the people of Lancaster and Morecambe and the smaller towns and villages in the other parts of the District.
I am proud of the achievements to which I have contributed, particularly
• the restructuring of the Lancaster District Local Strategic Partnership (LDLSP) which has meant that the Partnership is better able than before to tackle effectively the needs of the District,
• the emergence of the Sustainable Community Strategy which has meant that the needs and aspirations of the District are better articulated than before,
• the work on the development of a Community Engagement Framework for the LDLSP which will help facilitate improved engagement with our communities by the key partners within the LDLSP,
• the publication of the Faber Maunsell Report offering practical ideas for the development of the transport infrastructure in the District, additional to the benefits to be provided by the construction of the Heysham-M6 Link,
• the introduction of the “Street Pride” scheme which has contributed to developing a sense of community cohesion within neighbourhoods in the District, and
• the inclusion of significant pledges from the local Conservative manifesto for the May 2007 City Council election in the Council’s Priorities for 2008-9.
In other respects, I have been deeply frustrated by the lack of progress in a number of areas: not least in reducing the losses in running Lancaster Market a reduction of which, in normal circumstances, would have successfully kept Council Tax rises within reasonable limits.
I have been shocked by members’ apathy towards the issue I raised in my annual report to Council last April, namely the need to develop financial arrangements for the new Morecambe Town Council that would be fair for all areas of the District, whether inside the new Morecambe or outside it. Solving this issue required a new way of minimising the potential for double taxation of parished areas. In time, the financial arrangement by which residents in parishes pay the City for a share in services they don’t receive from the City will be more widely seen as unfair.
The divisive effect of Council’s failure to tackle the underlying problem in a timely way will be more apparent when Council Tax demands for 2009-10 reach residents, and the Council Tax differential between parished areas – including the new Morecambe parish – and Lancaster residents comes to be more widely recognised. When residents in Morecambe notice they are paying more Council Tax than Lancaster residents, perhaps Council’s decision last December to reject the Conservative proposal for a Community Governance Review in 2010-11 will be reversed.
I did not take on the role of Leader to sanction decisions made by others to the disadvantage of any of the communities in our District. I did not take on the role to do hatchet work on local jobs and services on behalf of a Central Government which has conspicuously failed to fund adequately the extra activities it has forced District Councils to undertake – most significantly the concessionary travel scheme for the over 60s.
One aspect of the current situation is that some councillors are persistently unwilling to recognise the roles and responsibilities set out in the City Council’s Constitution. The Constitution is clear that the role of Leader is to coordinate the Cabinet’s preparation of draft proposals for amending or updating the Council’s Budget and Policy Framework. I have been doing that work for the 2009-10 Budget since January of 2008.
In the context of the difficulties likely to arise in relation to the forthcoming Budget, you may have noticed that today’s report to Council [Editor’s note – PDF docuent] does not illustrate how a tax increase not greater than 4% might be achieved. Statements presented to members show that the level of unidentified savings still needed to achieve the required result remains substantial.
Systematic weakness always comes to light in times of crisis. There is for example no corporate time recording system in place across the Council to enable information to be readily produced for members to show how staff time is used on the various roles, functions, activities and projects for which staff are responsible. Time allocation is an important component of total cost, but without information as to the staff time involved in the activities that members are required to review as part of the current Budget exercise, it is neither clear precisely what resources would be released or costs saved by any activities the Council decided to reduce or to cut, nor clear how future resource allocation can be directed by members towards priorities and away from non priorities.
By way of another example, there has been no system for members to exercise effective control over the size of the Council’s establishment – and Cabinet has not implemented effectively the qualified freeze on new or replacement appointments that all Group Leaders agreed on 24 October 2008 to consider “as a matter of urgency.”
The constitutional position is clear. As Portfolio Holder for Finance, my role is to take any individual cabinet member decisions as required within my portfolio, and to present relevant reports to Cabinet and Council. I have fulfilled that role. Budget recommendations from the Cabinet to the Council are the responsibility of Cabinet as a whole: they are not the responsibility of the Portfolio Holder for Finance. In the absence of clarity that a balanced Revenue Budget can be agreed with a tax increase not greater than 4%, or that sufficient feasible options will be on the table between which members could exercise choice to arrive at such a position – or at a higher or lower increase in Council Tax than 4% – I am unwilling to commend to Council a report that I was unable to support in Cabinet [see Recommendation 5 within Item 9 in the Agenda for Council on 4 February 2009, which reflects the first approved recommendation within Cabinet Minute 120 of the Cabinet meeting on 20 January 2009].
In these circumstances, I have resigned as Portfolio Holder for Finance and as Leader of the Council to enable me to defend the interests of communities in my Ward against decisions made by others which I believe are to the detriment of the District as a whole.
For the sake of clarity, I confirm that the resignation just described does not apply to my membership of the Cabinet, nor does it apply to my portfolio responsibilities, other than those relating to the Finance Portfolio.
The Conservative group in the Council has tried to work with others but will now have to carry on its battle for a cost effective and efficient Council in the role of Opposition. We hope to convince electors that the real changes that are needed to improve our district can only come through their support at the ballot box for Conservative policies provided by a Conservative controlled Council. Then they can test our promises against our delivery because then they will have given us the majority on the Council to carry them out.
Councillor J. R. Mace
Leader of the Conservative Group
Lancaster City Council
4th February 2009
Leader of the Council May 2007 – February 2009