Tell us how you’re spending our millions, say councillors

Kirklees Council has been urged to provide more detail and greater transparency around massive spending plans.
Huddersfield Town HallHuddersfield Town Hall
Huddersfield Town Hall

The call came as Kirklees Council’s finance boss laid out the authority’s position and spoke of the impact of having to respond to the changing face of the Covid pandemic.

Eamonn Croston, the council’s service director for finance, said it had £197.4m in reserves at the end of March this year, along with £56.1m in the housing revenue account, which is cash from council property tenants and leaseholders.

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The authority also faces a £25.1m deficit around special needs funding, with the amount likely to increase to “at least” £35m by the end of the financial year.

Current reserves are higher than last year due to £82m of Covid Government support being rolled forward into 2021/22.

Speaking at a meeting of the council’s corporate scrutiny panel, Mr Croston said Covid has had “a significant impact on councils’ bottom line positions” in that local authorities have had to respond to national measures to control infection rates.

And there are concerns that that could start to “ratchet up again”.

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He said the pandemic was a prime example of external volatility, how that might impact on the borough and how much cash the council holds in reserve to be able to help.

He said the “significant increase” in reserves would be largely deployed in coming months but also potentially in 2022/23.

He pointed out that cash reserves needed not just to react to national issues but also local factors that could be unique to Kirklees, such as the special needs deficit.

Mr Croston also referenced the so-called Huddersfield Blueprint, an overall £250m project to regenerate the town centre but which involves pulling down the piazza for which the council paid £3.25m.

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The blueprint includes the George Hotel, also bought by the council for £1.8m.

Mr Croston said the council was “not assuming significant commercial returns to support the entirety of the borrowing costs” around the blueprint project, which he described as “a significant long-term regeneration investment”.

He said: “We have been quite open from the outset that that will impact on the council’s treasury management function if it goes ahead to the scale that was mooted.

“We are not assuming that that development will make a commercial return.”

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In response, panel chair Coun Andrew Cooper (Green, Newsome) said issues of transparency around the blueprint were “very difficult”.

He highlighted last week’s revelation by West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin that a much trumpeted National Rugby League Museum earmarked for the iconic George Hotel is now set to be housed within the “cultural heart” envisaged as part of the Huddersfield Blueprint.

“That was a surprise to many of us. It was certainly a surprise to me.

“We are just left to trust [that] the right decisions are being made with no access to papers.

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“It’s incredibly unsatisfactory with regards to the biggest capital project that this council has undertaken.”

Coun John Taylor (Con, Kirkburton) talked of the paucity of detail being fed back to councillors on the evolving Huddersfield Blueprint and said members were being asked to take “on trust” what the Labour-led administration wanted to do.

He said: “The analogy for me is a maths exam.

“In a maths exam it’s no good coming out with the answer; you have to show your workings out.

“And I’m afraid the administration haven’t been showing the workings out on a lot of this.”

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He said the lack of information being shared meant it was “very difficult for us … to form a view because we have no information in sight”.

He suggested that not providing services during the initial Covid period should have left an underspend.

“It must have happened because we weren’t able to do things.

“That’s the bit I struggle with: where did that money go?”

Coun Kath Pinnock (Lib Dem, Cleckheaton) echoed calls for greater detail on how funding could be used.

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She said: “None of us want to be in the position of trying to explain to people who question why there’s £180m in there and we’ve still got potholes, for example.

“The key thing is understanding where there’s flexibility.”

And Coun Charles Greaves (Ind, Holme Valley North) added: “When it comes to budget time … we’re always told there’s no money and then money somehow magically appears from nowhere out of some reserve that nobody was aware of.

“Sometimes it just feels [that] where flexibility exists isn’t clear to everybody in the council.”