The Leader of the Councillor, Councillor Stephen Alambritis, and the Chief Executive, Ged Curran, addressed the meeting to set out the Council's priorities for Merton in 2014/2015 and beyond.

The Leader stressed that continuity was at the heart of the Council’s plans for the next four years. The July 2011 principles continue to provide a strategic framework – maintaining statutory services whilst protecting services for vulnerable elderly residents and children, clean streets, low council tax and good local schools. He re-iterated the Council’s commitment to keep accident and emergency and maternity services at St Helier Hospital. Health and wellbeing is high on the Council’s agenda and the work to bridge the life expectancy gap between residents in the east and west of the borough would continue.He said that good partnership working would continue and the Council would continue seek opportunities to be entrepreneurial and to duplicate, where applicable, successful initiatives from other places.

The Leader and the Chief Executive both referred to the financial pressures facing the council and cited an article by Professor Tony Travers, Director of the London School of Economics’ London Group, in which he predicted that London council budgets would be 50% smaller in 2020 than they were in 2010, regardless of the outcome of the 2015 general election. The Chief Executive said that some of that has been factored in to the Council’s Medium Term Financial Strategy and there will be adjustments made after the 2015 election. He stressed that Merton is actually in a relatively good position.

The Chief Executive outlined some of the challenges facing the service departments:

• pressure on school places caused by growing number of children resident in the borough. This will result in significant capital expenditure in 4-5 years time.
• discretionary services such as early years and youth services, which work on the well established principle of early intervention, are in danger of being squeezed
• transfer of responsibility for health provision to 0-5 year olds from the Clinical Commissioning Group to the Council in 2015
• difficulties in recruiting senior, experienced social workers
• provision of affordable housing is problematic in all housing sectors and is a particular challenge for London
• number of homeless people is likely to increase
• changes to the framework for provision of adult social care and support to older people will result in major changes to the Council’s systems and processes
• completion of the four borough energy to waste plant will lead to significant financial savings – still some uncertainty, awaiting judicial review at present
• council will be considering ways of collaborating with other boroughs on other services such as waste collection in order to continue to drive out efficiencies and make cost savings
• parking and transport management remain challenging, particularly in terms of balancing the needs of various groups
• there will be development and investment in volunteering, particularly for environmental services

In response to questions about whether the long term work on bridging the gap in life expectancy has been successful, the Leader said that the focus was on increasing life expectancy in the east of the borough. He said that the transfer of the public health function to the Council had provided opportunities to tackle obesity, smoking and other factors that impact on life expectancy. The Chief Executive added that the other major factor impacting on life expectancy is poverty and this in turn is impacted by worklessness, which has been successfully tackled in Merton through a combination of work by the Council and its partners and also by economic growth. The Chief Executive said that although each intervention helps to increase life expectancy, there is a population turnover and new residents move in to the borough with low life expectancy and they in turn will need help.

In response to a question about the asset management strategy, the Chief Executive said that Merton has few assets in comparison with other authorities and so its focus has been on attracting private investment and working with partners. Assets can only be sold once and so the Council has to be sure it is the right time and the right use to maximise the opportunity.

The Leader made a number of further points in response to questions:

• money has been set aside for Morden Park Pool and there will be public consultation on a new pool
• the weekly refuse collection will continue
• around 2000 extra primary school places were provided over the last four years and a similar number will be provided over the next four years by expanding existing good schools throughout the borough
• there are aspirations for each of the town centres, with Rayne’s Park serving as a model of success, begun by the Conservative Administration and continued under Labour
• Merton is a London Living Wage authority
• he undertook to consider the costs and benefits of the provision of a welcome pack for new residents
• the possible regeneration of 3 estates by Circle Housing Merton Priory will create an extra 1000 properties
• the shopfront grant available to small businesses has to be matched by the business and there are other conditions to ensure that public money is spent responsibly
• successful court action is publicised in local media in order to support enforcement activity

The Chief Executive responded to questions about the council’s transformation programme, saying that the programme was ongoing (including the customer contact work and other projects) and that there was still scope for further efficiency savings. He confirmed that around 50% of the predicted savings from the energy to waste plant had been included in the Medium Term Financial Strategy.

In response to a question about what the Local Government Association was doing to lobby in relation to tax rates and council tax banding, the Chief Executive said that the focus of lobbying was on devolving resources to local government rather than changing tax levels. He undertook to send Commission members the text of a speech made on this subject today by the LGA Chair. ACTION: Head of Democracy Services

In response to a question about what the Council was doing to save St Helier Hospital, the Leader said that they would learn from the approach taken by Lewisham. The Chief Executive added that newly issued guidance on health scrutiny made it clear that there was a role for councils to represent residents’ views to health providers and commissioners.

RESOLVED: The Commission thanked the Leader and the Chief Executive for attending and giving thorough responses to its questions.