A money-saving recruitment freeze at Bristol City Council has caused fears that a lack of back-office staff and managers could affect elderly people in care homes.
Several vacancies will remain open across the council, in a bid to stop departments spending more than they have budgeted for. Social care, temporary housing, and improving education are predicted to have collectively spent millions over budget by March 2023. Frontline care home staff will be exempt from the freeze.
Bristol mayor Marvin Rees faced questions about how recruitment controls could impact on vulnerable people who rely on council services, at a cabinet meeting on September 6. He then criticised Councillor Heather Mack, Green group leader, and said the council couldn't afford to “float off in the clouds” with its approach to budgeting.
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As the council is forecasted to have spent millions more than it budgeted this year, bosses will take “mitigating actions” on some services. Responding to Cllr Mack’s questions on this, mayor Marvin Rees suggested she receive more briefings on the council's plans.
During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, September 6, Mr Rees said: “I don’t want us to end up floating off in the clouds, thinking we’re going to sit around a campfire and come up with some kind of holistic view that has nothing to do with the financial responsibilities we have.”
By next March, the end of the financial year, the council is forecasting it will have spent £7.7 million more than it budgeted for its general fund, as well as deficits of £1.4 million on housing and £44.2 million on schools. Capital spending, used mainly for big infrastructure projects rather than day-to-day bills, is forecasted to be underspent by £40.5 million.
These forecasts change throughout the year, and have already reduced from this summer. Council bosses in charge of department budgets, who are predicting they will spend more than they planned for, must tell finance chiefs how they set out to bring their spending back towards their budgets.
Recent cabinet papers refer to a “recruitment freeze” as a way to help achieve this, although it’s unclear which departments this would affect. However, responding to the councillor's concerns, Cllr Helen Holland said no services in adult social care will see any cuts.
Departments spending more than their budget include: social care, education improvement, digital transformation, and temporary accommodation for homeless people. The cabinet report gave brief details of the plans for these departments to bring their spending back down, known in council jargon as “mitigating actions”. One of these include recruitment controls, as bosses save money by not hiring new staff for any vacancies.
During the cabinet meeting, Cllr Mack asked how a recruitment freeze would affect elderly and disabled people in care homes, raising fears that they could “suffer unnecessarily”, and that the freeze could end up costing the council more in the long term. She added the council has a “huge chunk” more in its general reserves than is planned for.
She said: “We currently have a large amount in reserves and I hope we’re asking about the future costs of these [mitigating] actions. A hiring freeze will seriously impact our services, and I’m especially concerned about adult social care. Reducing these services now while we have significant sums in reserves could make both people suffer unnecessarily and cost us more in years to come.
“Equally, cutting spending now on our response to the climate emergency will just make the actions that we need to reach carbon neutral by 2030 more expensive in future years. On transport, we are so far off delivering liveable neighbourhoods, cycling infrastructure, appropriate bus services and reducing car use. These won’t be cheaper if we delay. If we look holistically at the city and not just at our bank balance for the next year or two, is it prudent to hold so much in reserves and cut our spending on services, at this time of need?”
No details of the current levels of reserves were given in recent cabinet reports. While some reserves are earmarked for particular projects or potential risks, about £35 million is sitting in the general reserves, according to Cllr Mack. She said this was a “significant chunk” above what the budget strategy suggests the council should keep.
Council chiefs do consider the effects of any changes to the budget, according to the mayor, and plan for problems that might appear in future, like floods for example. Mr Rees added that cuts to local government budgets, Brexit and inflation meant the council needed to be prepared for any potential crises, partly by keeping well stocked financial reserves.
He said: “The point of resilience is to look at the drivers of future shocks. Now those could be explosive shocks in the moment, like a flood, or they could be slow simmering shocks that build up over time, like a growing nag in society that comes out as a growing mental health crisis in our population. But these are all things that we’re grappling with all the time.
“It’s all very well having a ‘holistic worldview’, but stuff’s gotta get paid for. And it’s not that having an eye on balancing the budget and operating within our responsibilities is somehow lacking a holistic view. It just means that as a local government leader, you have to work in a world in which you have to return a balanced budget. There is no alternative.
“Unfortunately there is a context to that, which is 12 years of austerity, the impact of Brexit, growing population needs, and the impact of the cost of living crisis. Remember that word: it’s not the ‘feeling of living crisis’, it’s the ‘cost of living crisis’.”
Responding to Cllr Mack, Cllr Helen Holland, cabinet member for adult social care, said: “I’m very concerned about you scaring people in our adult social care recipients by saying that we’re cutting the services. We’re not cutting any of the services. We’re working really hard to protect services. We haven’t made any cuts to services in the last four or five years.
“What happens is you make a comment like that and I get emails from people worried that their services are going to be cut. And I have to write back to them and reassure them that they’re not. So please don’t talk in that way because it’s shroud-waving and it scares the people who are most vulnerable to any potential cuts in services.”
