This evening I gave the following speech in support of Cllr Michael Gravestons’ amendment to the budget at Full Council. The amendment didn’t pass and as a Labour Group we abstained on the substantive motion on the budget. The reason for this is outlined in the following speech.

Madam Mayor, this budget has a number of things to commend to it as it is possibly the biggest spend this Council has ever made. It tends to be a Labour thing to work towards big budgets. We tend to look towards finding greater income to enable us spend bigger and provide greater public services. That’s a basic fact of politics. And when my Labour colleagues and I were elected to this Council almost two years ago our promise of doing things differently heavily suggested that this was the approach we want this Council to take.

Admittedly, we did want this process to happen over a slightly greater time span rather than all at once. Feasibility is certainly of the things that causes concern to us, as we’ve made clear over the course of this committee cycle. However, I will accept the point that circumstances beyond the control of this Council have made this faster approach this year necessary.

I welcome money being spent. I welcome the commitment to £500k to be spent on affordable housing and welcome spending in other areas too. We need to make these investments and as a Labour and Co-Operative Councillor, investment in affordable housing is something which I’m absolutely in favour of. The detail though is where it will all matter. I believe that as well as the financial commitment there must be a plan for how this £500k will be spent to support affordable housing. Like my criticisms of the new market spend of also £500k at the last Policy and Finance Committee, which I stand by, it is vital that when making spending commitments, we have a clear plan of how that money will be spent. My concern remains that those plans are not yet clear when making these spending commitments. I look forward to seeing how these plans develop and indeed contributing to that development over the next committee cycle and as a progressive politician I will be demanding progress.

And on the subject of progress I’m keen that progress is made on finally setting the criteria for the Jubilee Fund although it seems that the budget working group is doubling its workload by setting up this new RV version of the SPF to be developed in parallel with the Jubilee fund this year. It will be a failure of this Council if we do not approve criteria for both funds this year. I have projects in mind for my ward which will benefit greatly from these funds including, as I mentioned earlier in this meeting the opportunities for flood resilience and upland flood management projects which I hope will be part of the criteria funding examples.

Madam Mayor, the greatest thing upon which we differ on this budget is the future of Ribblesdale pool.

I feel that, given the discussions we have had around the pool and its short, medium and long term future, the proposals currently in this budget lack the ambition to preserve the pool into the future. Let’s make no bones about it, This is make or break time for Ribblesdale pool and I fully support Councillor Graveston’s crucial amendment, which earmarks an additional £1m for vital works to make the pool sustainable, which will extend the life of the pool and will reduce the risk of the pool’s failure for the short term. It’s clear to me that we’ll need to invest further in future years to maintain this vital asset for the Borough. Without that sufficient funding, we’ll be lamenting the closure of the pool in ten years time and I don’t want to be the one to say then, that in this meeting tonight there was more we could have done.