“It Seems That Councillor Taylor Would Rather Ignore Legislation And Facts, As Well As Not Supporting The Health Of Our Residents”.

Havering’s Leader of The Council, Councillor Ray Morgon responds to Councillor David Taylor’s article in the Havering Daily

I always find Cllr David Taylor’s take on things interesting. 

He is correct that because of Government legislation we need to deliver services that support the health of our residents and this would be fine, but because of the substantial drop in our grant from Government which started back in 2010 under his Conservative Government we are now in the financial black hole that he refers to. 

I understand his call for more money on place based services and indeed, I have called for Central Government to fund people services whilst local residents finance place based services such as looking after our environment.  

Public Health services such as the ones that he identified are separate from other health services delivered by the NHS. We are given separate Government grants to deliver these services, and many of them are set in legislation. This is about supporting residents so they have better health and lives. David Taylor clearly thinks that these services are a waste of money. 

The Government have also legislated that pure petrol and diesel cars will be banned from being sold in 2030. Whether you agree with this or not, residents will need charging points, and indeed, the Government require that this infrastructure is built in to our neighbourhoods. 

We also need to invest in our borough to create jobs and skills. A new Data Centre would support this. With regards to the costs mentioned by David, it is not true that these are costs we are incurring. In fact, these are project management consultancy costs which are being covered by the Planning Performance Agreement (PPA) with Digital Reef. 

I am aware that David Taylor asked officers about the cost of the food waste collection leaflets. In his article he says it came from £70k Havering Residents Association pot for communicating food waste collections. Well this £70k is actually part of a grant from the Government to help deliver the roll-out as set in legislation by his party when they were in power. The cost of the waste collection leaflet, which was a food waste survey, cost £372 – as legislation also says, we need to communicate and ask residents about any service changes.

So these are the facts. As a council, we have to deliver services that are legislated by Government and have to be complied with in the same way all councils across the country have to. This includes social care, street repairs, rubbish collection, public health plus hundreds more. We don’t have a choice. And this means, due to the years of underfunding, we now have to deliver services that cost more than our budget. We have been audited by an independent body, the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA), which concludes that the Council’s financial management arrangements are working effectively and confirms the Council’s decision making process is sound. 

So it seems then that David Taylor would much rather ignore legislation and facts, as well as not supporting the health of our residents or tell them about changes to services.

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