Harrogate council facing ‘sizeable overspend’ of £2.5m

Harrogate Borough Council is forecasting to spend £2.5m more than budgeted in its final year of existence, a meeting has heard.

The council’s revenue budget for the year is £21.8m and it was predicted to overspend on this sum by £701,000 at the previous quarterly update in July.

But last night’s overview and scrutiny committee heard the figure had increased to £2.5m in the latest quarterly forecast for the period to October.

Gillian Morland, service finance manager at the council, said the “two really big variances” were utility prices and larger than expected staff pay increases.

Gillian Morland, HBC

Gillian Morland speaking at last night’s meeting.

Ms Morland said utility bills were £1.7m above budget and staff pay was £1.1m higher than expected following the 2022/23 pay award.

She told the meeting the council had locked into a 12-month rate for electricity but gas prices were “more complicated and it is possible we could see a reduction of up to £600,000 on the overspend that’s quoted in the report”.

She added the council had budgeted for a 2.5 percent pay increase and the agreed figure turned out to be almost 6.7%.

“As things stand we are looking at a sizeable overspend this year.

“We are hoping overspend will come down but we do have sufficient funds to cover it.”

John Mann, the Conservative councillor for Pannal, told the meeting the overspend was “typical of most councils”, which were dealing with similar issues relating to rising utility bills and pay awards.

Harrogate Borough Council is one of seven district councils, which along with North Yorkshire County Council, will be abolished on April 1 to make way for the new North Yorkshire Council.

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Harrogate council spends £400,000 on bin worker overtime

Harrogate Borough Council has spent £408,000 on overtime for bin workers over the last three years.

The Stray Ferret sent a freedom of information request to the council after a refuse collector got in touch to express concerns about overtime spending.

The council spent £138,246 on overtime in 2019, £135,636 in 2020 and £134,196 in 2021. The figures do not include casual workers.

The council, which will be abolished in just under six months, employed 93 waste and recycling drivers and loaders in 2020, compared with 95 in 2021 and 100 in 2020.

David Houlgate, secretary of the Harrogate local government branch of public sector union Unison, said the council had been “in a recruitment and retention crisis for some time”, adding:

“There are a number of factors for this crisis but primary it is, in our view, because of pay freezes and below inflation pay rises for over a decade or more as a result of chronic under-funding from central government who do not appear to care about public services.

“Consequently, some services such as environmental services have endured staffing issues for a number of years.  Your readers may have noticed on some occasions that their refuse or recycling collection has been late or not happened at all, as a result.

“Staff may have been asked to work overtime to alleviate the problem but more concerning is that there has been an over-reliance on agency workers to deliver some services.”

Mr Houlgate said Unison submitted a freedom of information request around the costs of agency workers in 2019 and later wrote to the council’s overview and scrutiny commission asking it to look into the “excessive” sums.

The committee agreed to undertake a review but this was delayed by covid and in July this year Unison was informed it was “unlikely that the agency workers piece of work will be undertaken”. Mr Houlgate said:

“The staffing situation has arisen because council staff have been underpaid and undervalued for well over a decade and the situation now with the cost of living crisis has reached a breaking point.”

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The Stray Ferret asked the council what the overtime pay rate is for waste and recycling staff and whether it was able to manage the service better to reduce costs.

A council spokesperson said he didn’t have an answer for the pay rate but added:

“Our waste and recycling service has around 30 rounds out per day collecting household waste, recycling, garden waste and trade waste from the 500 square miles of the Harrogate district.

“There are a number of reasons why overtime is required to support the delivery of this service.

“On a day-to-day basis this could range from roadworks, delays or breakdowns leading to rounds finishing late and employees working over their contracted hours. Short or longer term driver and staff shortages also require additional time to be worked by employees to ensure the delivery of this service.

“It is fair and right that additional time worked by employees over contracted hours – that equates to less than five per cent of the overall delivery of the service – is paid at the appropriate rate in-line with our overtime policy. Equally, where hours are worked on bank holidays to ensure rounds are completed, overtime is rightly paid to employees.

“Without the good will and support from staff to work these additional hours we would struggle to deliver the existing quality of service that our residents and business customers expect to receive.”

 

Harrogate hotelier says hospitality grew ‘fat and lazy’ on cheap foreign labour

A leading Harrogate hotelier has said the hospitality sector grew “fat and lazy” on cheap labour from Europe and has been forced to pay better.

Peter Banks, managing director of Rudding Park, said some bar and kitchen staff were now earning £13.70 an hour and could earn almost £29,000 a year for a 40-hour week if they were prepared to work anti-social hours.

Mr Banks’ comments came during a speech at Harrogate District Chamber of Commerce last night about the lessons of covid.

He said the sector had suffered from the impact of lockdowns and ‘furloughitis’, whereby staff that had spent eight months of the year being paid 80% of their wages by government had reappraised their lives and decided against a career in hospitality.

Staff recruitment and retention, he added, was now a “serious issue” and had forced pay increases. He said Rudding Park now paid an extra £1 an hour for working after 7pm and an extra £2 an our for working weekends.

The hotel has also introduced service charges for the first time, further boosting staff wages, he added. Mr Banks said:

“We have grown fat and lazy on cheap labour from Europe. Whether you are a Brexiteer or not, the rules have changed. We are not going back.

“It’s no good raging against covid. It’s no good raging against Brexit. We’ve just got to get on with it.”

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‘Thrown under a bus’

Mr Banks said Prime Minister Boris Johnson “threw us under a bus” during the first lockdown in March 2020 as hotels were forced to close without any support.

Rudding Park came within weeks of closing, said Mr Banks, adding that he told all 320 staff the business might survive until July if they accepted a 40% pay cut.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak then “rode to the rescue’ by introducing the furlough scheme, Mr Banks added.

He said the two years since has been a rollercoaster ride of adaptation.

Mr Banks said Rudding Park no longer accepted cash, which required three person days a week to count. It had also centralised ordering food “because we had five different kitchens and five different chefs ordering their own stock”.

He advised others in hospitality to “stretch the rules a bit, don’t just sit their passively and be creative”. He added:

“Don’t waste a good crisis. there’s always something you can learn from it.”