Lewisham budget challenge

[Tim Lund]

I would be interested if they are still wasting money on staff for , gender or race discrimination , or for that matter any other kind,


Lewisham used to be infamous for that.

Possibly, but if local government wants to know that it is reaching a representative cross section of the population, and not just the usual suspects, it does need to collect data on gender, race, age, etc.

I'd also add housing tenure - how much more do we hear from owner occupiers than tenants? And people in the private rented sector in particular? I think we should have the statistics

[Eagle]

Collecting this info costs money. And how accurate is it.

I always refuse to complete the racial profile section.

As far as I am concerned I am British.

[Tim Lund]

Collecting this info costs money. And how accurate is it.

I always refuse to complete the racial profile section.

As far as I am concerned I am British.

Of course it costs some money, and you're right that it's important that we should all be able to consider ourselves British, which is why I'm not keen on forever spending Council money on translating into all the various languages spoken here - much better to support teaching English as a second language.

But I do think it's worth doing some such monitoring. It's not just 'political correctness gone mad'.

[Eagle]

Yes Tim , that is another money wasting activity both for the council and NHS.

People wishing to communicate with either should either arrange their own translator or paying the going rate.

[Tim Lund]

There was a presentation about this at the Perry Vale Assembly last night.

...

So, my follow up question for Robyn Fairman is whether she can share the CIPFA Value for Money information which she will be using in formulating proposals for Lewisham's Budget Challenge with us as members of the public.

I had the chance to raise this again with one of my local councillors earlier this week, and was told there was all the information I could possibly want available on Lewisham's own web site, and later relied to my follow up email about it with this link

http://www.lewisham.gov.uk/mayorandcoun ... mance.aspx

and concluded as follows:

Rather than just 'knowing' of these, through years of experience, I find it's much easier to make use of this Google-thingy. For example,
https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid ... 20councils
...found me the sort of thing you seem to be looking for. You should try it yourself sometime. I'm sure it will catch on.

It's possibly I am being a bit dim here, but it still hasn't led me to numbers to show how, all due factors taken into consideration, public spending on service X in LB Lewisham compares with spending on X in other local authorities - which is what I think we need.

What that Google search brings back is interesting nonetheless



for the prevalence of links to NHS and Scottish data (my paste here doesn't show it, but just below there's a link to the 'Scottish Local Government Benchmarking project'. I'm reminded of the reference in Vernon Bogdanor's recent piece in the Standard, where he wrote

In Scotland, First Minister Alex Salmond ended local responsibility for the police, and established a single national police force. Devolution has meant centralisation and a weakening of local government.

The NHS is also a highly centralised organisation, with an identifiable Chief Executive, for England at least.

But following those links which do relate to English local government, the one from Leicestershire takes us back to the LGA link and Cipfa

Benchmarking is an important part of the way that Leicestershire County Council ensures it is providing good value services for the people of Leicestershire. It is used by most of the services the Council provides.

Leicestershire County Council has used a number of benchmarking arrangements in the past, including informal information sharing arrangements with other councils and specific tools provided by organisations such as the Chartered Institute of Public Financial Accountants (CIPFA).

LG Inform will be an important source of benchmarking information for the council in future. This is a web-based tool that brings together data on Local Government performance to support improvement across local authorities. When LG Inform is fully operational, benchmarking reports from the site will be published here.

but data from LG Inform, which may at some point in the future - "when fully operational" - be shared with the public, is not the whole story, since as well as LG Inform, there is LG Inform Plus

LG Inform Plus is a subscription service that allows authorities to drill down from top level strategic metrics in LG Inform to small area reporting information.

Returning to the first link sent, what's available from Lewisham on how they are meeting their targets, or not when they are not, is voluminous, and of possible interest to a highly localised policy wonk who is happy to enter the same mental world as inhabited by local councillors. But, as far as I can see, it includes nothing about why the targets are set as they are, which is where comparisons with other local authorities would be of interest.

[JohnPaschoud]

Tim Lund:

what's available from Lewisham on how they are meeting their targets, or not when they are not, is voluminous, and of possible interest to a highly localised policy wonk who is happy to enter the same mental world as inhabited by local councillors. But, as far as I can see, it includes nothing about why the targets are set as they are, which is where comparisons with other local authorities would be of interest.

Tim may regard the world inhabited by local councillors as "mental". I'd argue that actually, somebody has to do this, and Tim is being disingenuous in (mis-)quoting me as telling him, that "all the information he wants is available from the Lewisham Council website" (I did not). All the information he might want, qualified with reference to the demographics of Lewisham and the strange logic of how Government allocates funding to local authorites (£85m less to Lewisham, a small amount more to Surrey Heath in the same period, etc, etc) is available if he chooses to attend all of the in-public meetings that councillors have to attend in our "mental" world, and reads all of the published reports councillors have to read, before making very difficult decisions about what to cut, and what to keep.

I'm not asking for sympathy because I choose to do it. But so can anyone else, at least every 4 years, if they just persuade enough people to vote for them.

So yes, Tim, you are being a bit dim. But it's quite understandable.

[Tim Lund]

All the information he might want, qualified with reference to the demographics of Lewisham and the strange logic of how Government allocates funding to local authorites (£85m less to Lewisham, a small amount more to Surrey Heath in the same period, etc, etc) is available if he chooses to attend all of the in-public meetings that councillors have to attend in our "mental" world, and reads all of the published reports councillors have to read, before making very difficult decisions about what to cut, and what to keep.

What better adjective than "mental" can be suggested for a world where to have access to necessary information to make decisions you need to attend a meeting? Antediluvian? Web minus 2.0?

[Eagle]

I would have more time for councils trying to save money if I was not asked on every form for my ethnic origin and religion.

This has no relevance to the need or otherwise for a particular service. I , like many , ignore it anyway.

[stuart]

Eagle, two points here:

1) The form filling cost is not significant in terms of the impact of decisions being made and hence you are going off topic or onto a topic better discussed elsewhere - like the pub

2) Notwithstanding what I have just said - AFAIR Lewisham has never asked me my religion. The national census does but that is another matter. Asking for gender, age and ethnicity is important to sample who they are communicating or providing a service for. If, for instance, you are consulting on care for the elderly and the response is predominantly from white middle aged middle class males - then given the service is primarily provide for and by women you are missing the target and may need to re-consult. People generally do things for reasons. Because you can't see it or research the reasons for it then you can't really criticise it. Refusing to fill in is just unhelpful to the rest of us.

Hope that explains all. If you want to discuss it further please meet me down the Pub. So we can get back to the rather more important issue here as to what is going to happen to the budget for things like elderly care. Something that may impact you severely.

Stuart