We have to find out just where council is spending our money
ROSSENDALE Council’s cabinet was due to meet this week – for the first time since February.
For an authority with a £9m a year budget, there wasn’t a lot on the agenda given the council’s main decision-making committee hasn’t met in public for over four months – but enough to give cause for alarm.
To the untrained eye – indeed, this eye! – the financial reports presented by the council can feel utterly impenetrable.
But some numbers do stand out.
The council’s capital programme – the budget to build or repair things – was due to be £1.5m this year.
Around £5.5m of projects from previous years slipped into last year and by the end of the year the budget was £10.1m.
That’s one heck of a budget change – from £1.5m to £10.1m. What we don’t know is where all the money is coming from to fund it.
Two areas of spending should give cause for concern.
The first, not surprisingly, is the ongoing Empty Homes Scandal. It’s remarkable to think that a well-intentioned project designed to bring empty homes back into use almost a decade ago still rumbles on, and is costing the council dear now.
We still don’t know how much it has cost the council, but we do know it’s north of £6m.
The latest financial report from the council talks about additional cost in the council’s Capital Programme – but doesn’t say how much.
The second area of concern is the Spinning Point development. This is the building of the bus station, the refurbishment of the old town hall and what was due to be the redevelopment of the Town Square into something or other.
The council, rightly, pulled the plug on the something or other – shops, flats, hotel, spa etc – more than a year ago, just before the pandemic hit after research suggested there was little demand for such a scheme.
The problem is that the council had already received a Lancashire Enterprise Partnership grant – previously reported as being £1.9m – to fund the project.
It was contingent, according to reports in 2018, on phase two being completed.
It is not now being developed at all.
The council report fails to mention how much money is going back to the LEP.
Previous reports have suggested that £900k of the £1.9m was used in phase one – so already spent – and £1m for phase 2.
Has the £1m been spent? Where will the £900k come from?
This stuff may now sound dry and boring, but it really matters.
It’s about how our council is spending our money and how much value they are getting from that money.
All the time we see the council, rightly, seeking new funding to support ways to improve Rossendale.
The many bids for cash from Bacup, some of which have been successful.
Funding to help the Whitaker expand. Helping the East Lancashire Railway improve Rawtenstall Station. Funding to improve Haslingden.
But the council also needs to give voters, taxpayers, the confidence that when it gets the money, it gets spent as it should.
Despite covering north of 30 pages, the council’s latest finance report leaves questions unanswered.
For opposition councillors, it is very hard to get answers.
This is why they should insist that the council’s scrutiny committee, looks at both Spinning Point and the Empty Homes Scandal as a matter of urgency.
There is no reason for anyone at the council to object to this – so why isn’t it happening?