Mayor’s casting vote prevents Peterborough Conservatives from relinquishing control at budget meeting

The casting vote of Peterborough’s Mayor passed a tough new city council budget at a dramatic meeting and prevented the authority’s Conservative group from being forced to ‘resign the administration’.
The vote in progress.The vote in progress.
The vote in progress.

Members of Peterborough City Council have approved a balanced budget at their meeting of the Full Council (2 March).

However, the vote could not have been closer and after two hours of debate when a count was taken the votes stood at 28 in favour of passing the budget, 28 against, and one abstention.

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With the future of the entire council quite literally at stake, it came down to Mayor, Cllr Steven Lane to cast the deciding vote – as was constitutionally correct for him to do so – and he voted in favour of passing the budget.
After the meeting, Leader of the Council, Cllr Wayne Fitzgerald said: “Had the vote gone against us tonight, I would have had no other option than to call the Conservative members into another room and tell them that we were going to resign the administration.”

It was vital that the council approve a balanced budget as the alternative would have been to relinquish all financial power to central government, effectively cancelling every project current in the planning stage.

The atmosphere in the chamber at Sand Martin House was charged from the very beginning as Cabinet Member for Finance, Cllr Any Coles, who, along with many council officers have worked tirelessly to find savings through cuts in public services in order to balance the budget, asked for support for all political groups.

Immediately the debating began it was obvious that was never a likely outcome.

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Leader of the Green Party, Cllr Julie Howells said: “Although the persistent and unfathomable criticism of opposition groups in the press by the Leader of the Council [Cllr Wayne Fitzgerald], we haven’t allowed this to distract us from the important task at hand.

“We’ve made every effort to support the administration in its aims to present a balanced budget today.

“So, it is with a heavy heart that our group will not be supporting this budget. Although we feel that we have upheld our side of the agreement, we’ve been bitterly disappointed by the short-notice postponement of the most recent meeting and the late receipt of critical documents prior to meetings.

“Documents which we are supposed to scrutinise thoroughly in advance of each meeting so that we can ask the questions that need to be asked.

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“In a democracy the role of the opposition is to provide scrutiny and to give critical feedback; but when we haven’t received that information in a timely manner, we haven’t been able to scrutinise it to our groups’ satisfaction.”

Cllr Ed Murphy added: “How can I vote for a budget when we don’t even understand or can demonstrate to councillors what our budget is for leisure services?

“We don’t seem to know what we’re spending and why; the budget doesn’t add up because the logic of the next stages are not behind it – they’ve certainly not been demonstrated to members.

“We’re a bit ‘clueless’ here tonight. It’s a bit of a ‘wing and a prayer’, and there are some things within it that really are going to cause us more financial calamity if we go along with them.

“That’s why I can’t support it.”

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Cllr Christian Hogg was more direct, saying: “We keep on getting told that central government are keeping an eye on us – well I hope that they are watching this meeting and I hope that they’re seeing that once again this council is ignoring their advice.

“What I have to ask is ‘is the Leader and the Cabinet driving the ship, or are they passengers’?

“I’m not seeing leadership here, what I’m seeing is chaos. Our local MP for Peterborough is always talking about ‘the coalition of chaos’, well, what I’m seeing here is the Cabinet of Chaos.”

Cllr Kirsty Knight was quick and to the point, saying: “This is my first year as a councillor and I’ve learned more about politics in the last six months than I have in forty-one years.

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“How can we vote on the budget when we haven’t been given all the correct information?

“Would you sign a contract to buy a house without viewing it first? Because that is what you are asking us to do – I will not be supporting this budget.”

However, Leader of the Council, Cllr Wayne Fitzgerald was unmoved, responding: “I’ve listened to the comments that have been made tonight but I just won’t enter into a dialogue with those councillors who appear to have misunderstood my criticisms, particularly of Cllr Sandford for his failure to accept responsibility for setting the budget.

“Its not that they haven’t contributed because I know Cllr Sandford has, but what I find frustrating has been the unwillingness to accept that it is 60-members responsibility of this council to set a budget, not just the 28 of us in the Conservative administration.”

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Cllr Sandford replied: “At the budget scrutiny meeting I quoted from the council’s constitution: ‘It is the responsibility of the Cabinet to put forward budget proposals which are then scrutinised and get voted upon at Full Council.

“It is not the responsibility of the opposition to actually produce the budget’.”

Cllr Fitzgerald came back: “Cllr Sandford, you can quote all you like – that doesn’t change the fact that there is an expectation on you and others by government and people watching this meeting – they have the power to intervene, and if they think that you’re not up to the job and we’re not up to the job then they will intervene.”

When it came to the vote it was recorded as 28 votes for approval of the budget; 28 votes against the approval of the budget and one member abstaining.

That left Mayor, Cllr Steven Lane to cast the deciding vote – as is the correct constitutional procedure – and Mayor Lane voted for the approval of the balanced budget.

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