Notice of Motion

CONSERVATIVE group

VALUE FOR MONEY SAVINGS

This Council:

1. Notes that the Administration is responsible for a budget of hundreds of millions of pounds each year;

2. Notes numerous recent examples of taxpayers’ money being wasted as listed in Supporting Information below;

3. Requests that the Council initiates a ‘value for money’ programme examining back-office savings, further savings under a Workstyles programme 2 and how further similar financial occurrences can be avoided, with a report being sent to Policy & Resources Committee within 6 months to outline the results of this; and

4. Requests that officers provide the estimated costs in this report to Policy & Resources Committee, if necessary through going out to tender, of removing every piece of graffiti from public and private land within the city boundary; and this to be a recommendation of spend from the savings outlined in (3).

          Proposed by: Cllr Bagaeen                           Seconded by: Cllr Miller

Supporting information:

· £10 million on the ideological council decision to ‘insource’ the city’s housing repair service, currently subject to ongoing industrial action.

· £1 million on the former administration’s meddling with the City’s Home to School Transport policy on similar ideological grounds - which resulted in the collapse of a service for disabled children to get to school.

· £3 million overspend at City Clean in the two years to the end of March 2020, with Auditors saying that they had not been able to count all the costs of the problems with the council service.

· £800,000 for the 8 months measures resulting from the former and current administrations controversial decision to close Madeira Drive and implement the A259 Cycle Lane were in place, money which would usually go towards concessionary bus passes for the disabled and over-65s as well as subsidising bus routes.

· £3.3 million administrative error impacting local schools – the council has said that it passes 43% of the costs of this error onto schools and local taxpayers will pick up the rest of the bill.

· £1,200 a day for 8 months on a temporary housing director employed by the Council;