16 April (Part 2) - Leaf’s last Cabinet?
With
the obvious implications for Finance it was reported at the Cabinet meeting on 9th April that the demand for
Children’s Care had fallen and there was a decline in the number of care leavers able to enter Education or
Training, presumably reflecting the state of the national economy.
At the end of January the finances were overspent by £1·361 million, less than
0·5% of the total budget and better than at the end of the previous quarter.
Cabinet Member Richard Diment reported that Bexley is one of the very few
boroughs to see a reduction in fly tipping. Bromley has twice as many incidents,
Greenwich four times and Croydon more than ten times as many as Bexley. Bexley
is the only London borough to have improved recycling rates last year and is now only
one percentage point behind Bromley who only a year ago were 5% ahead.
Councillor Diment confirmed that he had “spent every penny” of the government’s
road repair grant and already begun “to dip into this year’s allocation”.
£899,000 was spent against the grant total of £895,000. The grant was less than
15% of the total expenditure on road repairs. The Mayor of London, as in the
previous ten years, failed to provide any money at all to maintain principal
roads. Sixty major resurfacing schemes are scheduled for the coming year.
Richard was far too polite to suggest this made a monkey of the MP who told the
Prime Minister that Bexley wasn’t spending its grant and asked that funds be
withheld from his own constituency.
Council Leader
David Leaf was less reticent about those who “deliberately spread
misinformation about our borough”. The Labour Leader protested. Councillor Leaf
rubbed salt into the Labour wound with his usual array of statistics. Among them
that Councillor Borella had himself calculated that Bexley was 34th best in
England for the condition of its roads. The Conservative calculation put them in 7th place.
The Leader said he was disappointed and frustrated by the fact that the Mayor
Sadiq Khan was the only Police and Crime Commissioner in the country not to take a share of
the additional funds provided by the Conservative government in 2024 which led to the
loss of about 1,000 police officers in London.
Labour Leader Borella said that Prime Minister Theresa May cut police numbers too.
The meeting was commendably short at 44 minutes precisely.