12:33pm Friday 22nd July 2011
Spokesmen for the civic centre are currently presenting their unrelenting sales pitch at the latest round of consultative forums.
I have attended two forums this month and had no satisfactory answer to my question about how the £100 million expense is to be made up from annual savings.
In particular, Aktar Choudhury, assistant director of the project, was left with the task of addressing these highly consequential details, even though he is not democratically accountable to us.
Mr Choudhury, echoing leader Ann John, stated that £100m would be borrowed from the Government and paid back over 25 years, using £4m annual savings from discontinuing the current occupation of 14 office buildings. Moreover, he added, £2m would be saved in the long run.
Unfortunately, Brent council taxpayers cannot be expected to have to rely upon such back-of-the-envelope, in-house assertions for such a costly exercise, particularly when such assertions contradict earlier claims made by the council and the conclusions of a feasibility study.
The feasibility study, commissioned in 2003 at a cost of £75,000 and never put in the public domain, concluded that the project would not become cost neutral for at least 25 years, and only then after “efficiency savings”. This means the project will be more expensive than the status quo for at least 25 years.
The council cannot just ignore this study because it finds its conclusion politically inconvenient. Moreover, the £4m purported annual savings seems to have grown to suit the council’s sales pitch.
In November 2010, a council press release stated £2.5m. In January this year, Brent magazine stated £2m. The current £4m figure seems to be made up of two parts – £2.4m for moving out of other buildings and £2.6m for “efficiency savings”. All this to bankroll £100m plus interest. Go figure.
“Efficiency savings” means cuts to services, like the unconscionable axing of half the borough’s libraries, which will affect the life chances of our children for a generation. Efficiency savings means cutting back lollipop people. There will be more shocks to come if we let the council get away with completing their glass, steel and concrete edifice, which nobody but the political elite wants. The proposal must be scaled back or stopped entirely.
I am currently awaiting the results of a freedom of information request to have the basis for the Council’s latest back-of-the-envelope calculations made plain. From the council, which invested in the ill-fated Icesave, I do think we are entitled to be able to scrutinise their maths, and not to have this concealed under cover of “breach of confidentiality” – which is the reply I got at the meeting.
Dr Shahrar Ali
Green Party GLA candidate for Brent and Harrow
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