Cllr Paul Tilsley speaks about the Birmingham budget

Following Cllr Waseem Zaffar’s comments, I think it’s imperative to remind him that there is a Labour government, a Labour council and Labour Mayor. You’ve got nowhere to hide anymore, the responsibility is with you.

When the section 114 notice was first issued, and the figure of, quite stupidly, £760M was put in the public domain, I questioned it and said there was no way it would be that much. It would be impossible. It would seem that history is about to be on my side when the final settlement is made, and so I question whether we needed to make the section 114 notice in the first place.

It’s very much like having the builder in because you’ve got problems with the roof. The roofer says there’s a few tiles that need replacing and you’ve got dry rot. He shakes head and has a suck of his teeth. 

Had it been just an equal pay problem at my end of the estimate, at the time we could have dealt with it as a city council. And I always made that point. 

However once we get onto the roof and we started taking the tiles off, we see that we have got bigger problems:

A problem with Oracle, £110M over estimate and not ready until next year.

Then we have the commonwealth village on the side. Another sorry story. An estimated loss of £60M in round terms, became £150M then it carried on and on. It’s got to be financed over 40 years.

£480M, and not one athlete slept there.

Then unachieved savings and they go on and on and on too. 

And if we look at the Grant Thornton report it tells us that on 25 June 2024, cabinet was advised that the outturn was going to be £115M overspent. 

How are we paying for all this? We have got a reserve of close on £1 billion, but we have used it as a piggy bank and kept on dipping into it. 

Now we have a situation Lord Mayor where we have made £225M asset sales but they were the easy sales, the low hanging fruit. Now we have to make that figure up to £750M sales. And as Cllr Alden pointed out, when we look into the budget book, we find there is a deficit of £318M over the next 3 years. 

But what really concerns me is the effect of Oracle and the fact now that we have got a deficit of £141M of uncollected business rates, equivalent to a 30% increase in council tax. We need to start tackling it.

I’ll return to Oracle next week.

(There is a special convening of full council next week to address the Grant Thornton auditor report which was released in the public interest recently)