Biggs upset on nurseries as “councillors say no”

COUNCILLORS have asked Executive Mayor John Biggs to think again over his plans to close the borough’s last three remaining Local Authority Day Nurseries.

The move came at a special meeting of the Council’s Overview & Scrutiny Committee (OSC), held on Tuesday evening – clashing with England’s semi-final game against Croatia.

Executive Mayor John Biggs had decided at a Cabinet meeting at the end of June that the Council would undertake a formal public consultation on a new proposal to close the three nurseries.

However, five councillors signed a request that the decision be “called in” – in other words, that the decision be scrutinised and debated by the OSC. An Executive Mayor has the power to take almost all the decisions over what the Council is going to do – and the OSC “call in” process is designed to allow councillors to check whether the Mayor’s decisions are sound.

As a democratic process, the way in which the Council can check that the Executive Mayor is using his delegated powers in accordance with councillors’ wishes, it was a pretty poor show. Only one hour was allowed for the debate overall – and it was another example of politics run on the “speed dating” model of quickfire questions and answers rather than allowing councillors to have a genuine debate on the issue.

Three of the five councillors who had requested the call-in had just five minutes to present their case, and ten minutes to answer questions put by members of the committee. They explained their belief that the Mayor had made a hasty decision at the Cabinet meeting. Above all, to allow just 28 days for public consultation – given that the consultation would take place during the school holidays – was not adequate.

This was not their only concern. They compared the rushed consultation proposed in Tower Hamlets with the actions of another Council currently consulting on the future of its nurseries: that council was running a three month consultation, and asking the public to comment on a number of options.

In Tower Hamlets, the “consultation” was more a case of “shall we close them, like we want to, or shall we keep them open – but we haven’t got the money to do that?” Cllr Francis, taking the Chair in the unexplained absence of OSC Chair Cllr Abdal Ullah, referred to this as a “binary option”. The public was essentially being asked to confirm the mayor’s decision, as the only alternative presented – keep the nurseries open though there was no budget set aside to fund them – was not a practical option. The other councillors present agreed with him, with many making points about the consultation being unsatisfactory.

Cllr Danny Hassell (blue shirt) gives nothing away as he listens to the OSC debate.

After the calling-in councillors had put their case, it was up to Cllr Danny Hassell, the Cabinet Member whose portfolio includes nurseries, to defend the Executive Mayor’s decision. He had little new to say and mostly just repeated chunks from the Cabinet Report. However, he did accept the concerns over the length of consultation and its timing. He readily admitted that the previous consultation on nurseries had had to be extended and said he was happy to extend the next one beyond 28 days.

Various other concerns about the Mayor’s decision were put to him, but it was the final question that Cllr Hassell found hardest to answer. It was put to him that in 2014, when the former Mayor Lutfur Rahman had proposed to save money by closing the nurseries, Cllr Hassell had been one of the most strident campaigners against closure – and had even moved a motion at a Council meeting opposing the closure.

Asked why his view had changed, Cllr Hassell kept a straight face and said that times were different now. The Council was facing much larger cuts in government funding than before, and there were now more nursery places in the borough being provided by the Private and Voluntary sectors.

More points came up in the general debate. Councillors felt that the closure decision had been rushed. Officers in the council had been discussing closing the nurseries since at least the beginning of March: it was not clear why the Executive Mayor had only revealed that he was considering the closure option at the end of June. The call-in meeting had been organised quickly, allowing little time for councillors to research and consider the Executive Mayor’s decision.

Some serious questions could not be fitted in to the short timescale for the meeting. There was too little time to explore whether the alternative provision which the Cabinet Report said the would be there for children who lost their nursery places would in fact be in place, in time, and of similar standard – or whether the Cabinet Report was indulging in wishful thinking.

One member spoke up about the lack of information on how much the alternative provision would cost. The Cabinet Report referred to some funding being necessary for the alternative provision, but it did not say how much or where this would come from.

After the meeting one councillor, who felt she was being rushed into making a decision, said that the councillors should perhaps visit the nurseries so that they could really see what was being offered.

The Cabinet Report had pointed out that to date the Day Nurseries had been partly funded by a tranche of money in the Delegated Schools Budget, which was no longer available – leaving a funding gap. Councillors at OSC understood there was a funding gap. What they did not understand was why, having identified the funding gap, the Cabinet Report made only one recommendation – to close the nurseries – without making any attempt to consider whether there were other sources of funding and whether it was desirable to keep the nurseries open.

At the end of the OSC meeting, all members of the committee – councillors and the lay members – agreed to refer the Mayor’s decision back to the Mayor and asked him to reconsider. The Council has not yet clarified when the Mayor will respond.

•Read more about it:
Biggs under fire as he moves to close nurseries
Nursery campaigners have their cake – and eat it!