Cost of living: Sheffield Council agrees £400,000 extra funding to help communities at budget-setting meeting

The decision came at the last minute during a meeting of Sheffield City Council on Wednesday (March 1). Although the budget for 2023/24 has been agreed by a high degree of cross-party cooperation, amendments from each party allowed them to argue for policies that are important to them.

Following a lengthy debate, amendments proposed by all four parties – Labour, Liberal Democrats, Greens and one Tory – were voted down. At present no party has overall control – of the 84 members, 39 are Labour, 29 are LibDem and 14 are Green. There is also one independent councillor.

The meeting was halted for five minutes, then a fifth amendment that had been agreed in advance was unanimously accepted. It spoke of “further devolving power away from the Town Hall into neighbourhoods”, rooting service delivery at a local level and giving a greater voice to communities.

The extra £400,000 for the city’s seven local area committees (LACs) will be ring-fenced for cost-of-living spending. The amount allocated to each committee will be decided by looking at poverty level indicators for each area.

Funding pots

In their amendment, proposed by finance sub-committee co-chairs Couns Bryan Lodge and Zahira Naz, Labour argued for a Neighbourhood Investment Fund totalling £1.4 million. This would include funding pots for community organisations and a bus feasibility study to help fix the city’s “broken” public transport system.

Other ideas for the fund included a bike library, a food access plan and expanding the district heating network.

Coun Lodge said: “We are all here to do the best for Sheffield. We may have differences of opinion but we are committed to delivering for this great city.”

Cross-party involvement had helped the council to come up with a budget in good time, he said, although it was “not a budget any of us wanted to deliver” because of the savings that had to be made.

He said the city had lost £3.3 billion in real terms since 2010 through government funding cuts.

Coun Lodge called the Green amendment a “taxing everyone” budget, naming them the “happy police” for suggesting taxing the night-time economy. He said LibDems wanted to attack trade unions by withdrawing £200,000 funding for union representative secondment.

‘Game show’

He derided LibDem proposals for the first five per cent of Sheffielders who ask for them to get bigger blue bins as a “game show – fastest finger first wins”. Coun Garry Weatherall waved around a blue recycling box, which Coun Lodge said the LibDems brought in “with a hairnet on top to stop things blowing out” and then scrapped.

Coun Nas said: “This budget is the most difficult one that the council has had to do in decades, however our amendment is based on the core priorities according to the people of Sheffield.”

She said it was “necessary to spend money where it is needed to fix the broken promises of the Tory government”. She said she has seen demand rise at a food bank where she volunteers and hears how people in her Darnall ward are making “horrific sacrifices” just to survive.

Coun Nas added: “This will be a bumpy ride. We’ve got to be prepared to step up and not step back.”

Coun Mike Levery proposed the LibDem amendment, seconded by group leader Coun Shaffaq Mohammed.

Coun Levery commended the work that had gone into setting a balanced budget this year. He accused the Labour-Green coalition of wiping out £35m of £70m reserves last year “at a stroke” by using them “just to set the budget”.

‘Cheap jokes’

He said in the past projects that have not gone ahead were in the budget, adding: “The LibDems have insisted that we will not accept a budget again that allows fantasy numbers to go in which cannot be delivered.”

Coun Levery said that LibDems were used to “cheap jokes” about blue bins but increased deliveries mean that bins are getting filled up faster with cardboard and more is going in black bins.

He said that offices, community buildings and heritage sites have had no investment for many years. LibDems argued for “creating a new Heritage, Parks and Community Assets capital maintenance fund, which will fund the repair of public buildings which have been neglected by the council such as the Rose Garden Café”.

Coun Mohammed pointed to other places such as Birley Spa and Stannington Park.

LibDems also wanted to spend £100,000 to fund enforcement work on fly-tipping, litter, graffiti and pest control, a council tax reduction for foster families, £103,000 for young carers’ bus costs and £50,000 Citizen’s Advice Bureau funding.

Climate change-related ideas included providing businesses with e-cargo bikes, investigating mid-terrace gennel insulation and investigating a system to pay cash for recycling cans and plastic bottles.

Consensus praise

The Greens’ amendment was moved by Coun Angela Argenzio and group leader Coun Douglas Johnson. Coun Argenzio said that parties had worked constructively together and “achieved a remarkable degree of agreement.

“Necessity has truly been the mother of consensus rather than invention.” She refused to be negative about other groups’ amendments.

Their key points included investment in transport through an employers’ workplace parking levy, methods to address health, warm homes and the cost of living through large-scale housing retrofitting and energy generation schemes and developing community care co-operatives to “reduce reliance on profit-making staffing agencies”.It also advocated offering improved paid services to householders, such as gardening, household repairs, heating system servicing and replacement and retrofit works.

Conservative Coun Lewis Chinchen’s amendment criticised wastes of taxpayers’ money such as the “estimated £600,000 cost of the failed container park on Fargate”.

Among his proposals, he wanted to reject the red line plan for Abbeydale and Ecclesall Roads and £1.8m of funding “to provide more traffic-calming and road safety measures that are based on risk and local intelligence, rather than just accident statistics”.

Read this: Culture strategy aims to bring millions in investment to city

Read this: Councillor brands Northern Powergrid ‘extremely poor’