Governance & Finance
Flintshire People’s Voice has ambitious plans for a better council and a brighter future for our county. However, these have been developed to be deliverable within the currently available resources of the council. We do not believe that large council tax increases are necessary.
Instead, we would seek to target council spending where it is most needed. There are areas of spending at present which we believe are either actively wasteful, or which deliver less benefit to the people of Flintshire than that same amount of money could manage if it were used differently. This includes an end to subsidising financial advice for big companies on how best to dodge taxes, stopping the culture of buying bespoke items with the Flintshire logo on at higher cost where this isn’t necessary, and clawing back money where this is being spent to avoid an underspend showing in the end of year finances.
We would further save money by instituting a council-wide ban on the use of management consultants. Consultants produce lengthy reports, at great expense, which generally state the obvious and end with a recommendation that we commission more reports from them. Cabinet members are paid to make decisions, they should do their jobs rather than try to farm out the tricky questions to consultants at the public’s expense.
There are areas where we would seek to increase the council’s revenue. We support an increase in the council tax premium for houses which are being deliberately kept empty. We would invest in additional enforcement officers to crack down on dog fouling, fly tipping, and illegal parking at schools, improving our communities and generating revenue at the same time. We would seek to better promote Flintshire’s chargeable services, such as leisure centres, and invest in these to improve the quality of facilities and increase the number of users, reducing the cost to the council. We would end, where possible, Flintshire residents subsidising residents of neighbouring councils for regional facilities such as the Deeside Ice Rink, Theatr Clwyd, and the Lord Lieutenancy. We would seek to negotiate agreements with neighbouring authorities for contributions to these services, or, failing that, introduce a discounted rate for Flintshire residents and a higher rate, with full cost recovery, for residents from outside the county.
We also believe that unlocking the unused potential of the residents of Flintshire is crucial to the success of our area. At present, when the council borrows money, for example to build new schools, public buildings, or council housing, it borrows from big banks or City of London financial institutions. The interest paid on this debt is sucked out of our community into their pockets, where it can no longer benefit local people. This interest ultimately gets paid through council tax, by you.
Flintshire People’s Voice will institute a new model of financing for projects in our area – local bonds. We will enable local people to invest savings in specific projects in our area. Interest payments, set at a lower rate than the council would have to pay to banks, saving taxpayers money, but at a higher level than the banks pay savers, benefiting local residents, would go instead to local people who have chosen to invest in our community. This would allow the council to borrow more cheaply, enabling the more rapid rebuilding of our crumbling infrastructure, and keep your council tax in our local economy rather than having it sucked out to the tax haven bank accounts of billionaires. It would benefit every resident of our county.
The first project we anticipate opening for local bonds is the establishment of a municipal bus company.
We believe that local people deserve a real say in how public money is spent. We believe that the participatory budgeting model in Scotland is a success that should be copied here. This gives control of budgets to the whole community, ensuring that the services prioritised are those that local people truly support, and that any council tax increase is genuinely backed by the community. Over the course of a council term, we will move from pilot projects with Community Council grant budgets in year one, to full public involvement in every aspect of the county council’s budget by year five. We believe that the residents of Flintshire are best placed to decide what our priorities are, and participatory budgeting means exactly that. Full transparency, and real democracy, are the answers.
We are deeply concerned at the Welsh Government’s plans to water down the proposals for revaluation and rebanding of council tax. Flintshire is one of the worst affected councils in Wales by the current system, with residents here receiving less and paying more than our notional entitlement. Revaluation would have fixed this, and restored fair funding to Flintshire. We will press for a fair banding for council tax to be a priority for the Welsh Government, and will explore alternative, innovative ways to deliver fairer solutions if the Welsh Government does not cooperate.