Rugby Borough Council – Decisions made by Cabinet on 2 February 2015

On 2 February the town's top tories met in Cabinet (see http://rugby.lib.dm/a0Rfg ) and made the following decisions.

First they made a number of decisions about the budget they are going to propose to the full Council on 24 February 2015. The big decision here was to raid the Council's reserves for £915,000 to keep down Council tax.

Secondly they forecast how much national non-domestic rates they will collect next year.

Thirdly they reviewed the Council's performance. This is, as you would expect, a mixture of good news and bad news items. Amongst the good news items are that fewer people in the town are on benefits, that visits to Rugby's art gallery and museum are up and that the amount that people are re-using, recycling and composting is now over half of what was once just thrown away. The Rugby Liberal Democrat website is not backward in coming forward with criticism of the town's tories when they deserve it - but to be fair we should note that Rugby is now recycling twice as much of what used to be thrown away as Brighton and Hove [which is a local council run by the Green Party]!!! Amongst the bad news is the decline in footfall in the town's shops - see http://rugby.lib.dm/a8SLN and an increase in sickness amongst the Council's own staff. Perhaps the most worrying news is that the Council does not know whether the delays in housing repairs are getting better or are getting worse.

Fourthly they decided to go with outdated figures on the town's housing need. A high risk decision - see http://rugby.lib.dm/a7SMk .

Fifthly they decided that no more streets would be named over living people. Probably a very wise decision. Somewhere in England there must be a local authority deciding what it will do about a street it decided to name after Jimmy Saville.

Sixthly it decided how it would respond to a consultation from Warwickshire County Council about how it would cut its services to charities and parish councils. This decision has probably been overtaken by later events - see http://rugby.lib.dm/a3SMk .

Seventhly it decided how it would manage its investments and borrowings. The Council expects to end the year with £20 million in investments and £85 million in borrowings. We hope that political turmoil in Belgium, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong does not intervene to prove the decision that these countries were a safe haven for citizens' funds wrong.

Then it voted to kick the public out of the public chamber whilst it took decisions on the following items:

Restructuring the Council's ICT services. Excluding the public was a reasonable decision for this item as if anyone is to be made redundant they should hear this first from their line manager and not the Rugby Advertiser.

Writing-off debt. Excluding the public may have been a reasonable decision for this item as it may have involved discussing the personal affairs of individuals.

Discussing problems with the award of the management services contract for the Rugby World Cup celebrations - see http://rugby.lib.dm/a9SMk .

For obvious reasons we can't give the details of what was decided about these last three items.