Saturday 21 January 2012

Brighton and Hove Green Led Council - Budget Consultation Farce

Having spent significant amounts of council taxpayers money, and consumed a vast amount of public time and effort, the Green led Council has come clean and admitted that the figures in their budget were wrong.

In a hugely embarrassing u-turn Jason Kitcat, the green councillor behind the budget was forced to confess that there was considerably more money available to the council than he had said in the budget proposal, and many of his proposed cuts (that had been the source of much expensive and time consuming debate) were entirely unnecessary.

This new information came to light only after an extensive period of consultation and debate. Unfortunately that debate only engaged a very small niche of the Brighton and Hove taxpayers, but was at considerable expense and time consuming for the few who did participate.

This embarrassing Green confession also calls into question a fundamental and key element of the Green councils budget policy.

Kitcat has declared that he is setting a two year budget to provide 'stability', this policy has been seriously challenged from many quarters (Labour, Conservative and UKIP) - especially as it forms the basis of the Greens decision to reject 2.5% budget increase from central government, an instead demand a 3.5% increase in their charge to Council Tax payers.

As this episode shows, the Greens got their figures hugely wrong over the one month budget consultation period - how on earth do they believe they can accurately predict figure over a two year period? Council taxpayer being landed with a projected 10.5% rise in council tax will be asking what credibility the Greens still have on finance... if any.

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