Harrow Council defends decision to pull £2.1million from adult social care spending
By News England

HARROW Council has defended its decision to pull £2.1 million out of the budget for adult social care as “prudent”.

The authority had been promised money from NHS Harrow, formerly Harrow PCT, to spend on vulnerable adults, but did not factor it into spending plans in case the money fell through.

The money has now been handed over and channelled into adult social care, but the council has pulled the same amount from the department and moved it to a general transformation fund.

At an overview and scrutiny meeting yesterday evening, the interim corporate director of finance, Julie Alderson, defended the decision. The item had been added to the meeting after residents petitioned the council against the cut.

Ms Alderson said: “With respect to Harrow, given the financial state of the local PCT, the council took a view it didn’t have a high level of confidence or certainty that this money would actually come in, so it took a prudent decision in setting the budget for 2011/12 to exclude those funds.

“The council has been proactive. It saw the cuts coming and it embarked upon a transformation programme where it already had a whole load of initiatives underway to address about half of that £60m of annual saving that would be required without significantly impacting on frontline service delivery.

“As I understand it, most London boroughs did not include these PCT monies within their budget.

“I am fully aware boroughs are treating the PCT monies in a similar way to us. It just hasn’t had the exposure and debate through the public domain and in the press we have had.

“I won’t name names of individual councils. It’s not that we don’t have the information, but it wouldn’t be fair on those other councils to disclose full details.

“My advice, which I believe members have accepted, is the council funds that were released through receiving the PCT monies, be used to enhance the transformation and priority initiatives fund thus giving the council more resilience to plan for and implement the changes needed that will be needed across the council in the future.”