Governance in name only?

The Council’s own reviewer says its problems aren’t really about money at all.

CIPFA – the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy – published its independent review of Hillingdon Council on 30 July. It was commissioned by ministers as a condition of the Council’s Exceptional Financial Support (EFS) request, and its findings were referenced directly in July’s Best Value Notice from MHCLG. Read the report itself, though, and the money is almost beside the point. CIPFA’s real subject is how the Council is actually run, and its verdict is damning.

“No political will,” and no plan B

Officers had already drawn up the hard choices facing the Council: fortnightly bin collections, reviewing the library network and its three theatres, a bigger council tax rise. CIPFA’s verdict on what happened to that list: “there appears to be no political will to take these decisions and, perhaps more importantly, if not the measures on the list then no credible alternative.”

CIPFA doesn’t let the political leadership off lightly elsewhere either. Its report notes that “although the Leader believes that there are further service efficiencies to be realised, it is not clear how a balanced budget can be delivered without recourse to some potentially unpalatable decisions.” Two of the report’s eighteen risks – both rated at the highest severity CIPFA uses – are built entirely around this same point: that without political will to make hard choices, “the council remains reliant on exceptional financial support/borrowing.”

Scrutiny “on party-political lines”

Even where the Council does face challenge, CIPFA questions whether it counts for much. Its scrutiny committee, the report finds, “appear to act more on the basis of party-political lines rather than on trying to determine whether policies or decisions reflect good governance or value for money” – overall, CIPFA concludes, there is “a lack of depth in the scrutiny arrangements.”

The same problem, in the Council’s own finances

That same absence of political will runs through Hillingdon’s finances too – not as a separate failing, but as the clearest evidence of the same governance problem. For fifteen years, Hillingdon’s council tax has fallen further behind its neighbours: not because the option to raise it wasn’t there, but because, year after year, nobody chose to take it. Compared to its neighbours, Hillingdon’s Band D tax has fallen from just £6 below the outer London average in 2010-11 to £234 below it today. That gap is now worth more than £26 million a year – more than enough, on its own, to close a large part of the current budget gap, and a shortfall CIPFA says cannot be closed by savings alone.

CIPFA goes further still, forecasting that “it is highly likely that an application to increase council tax above the current referendum threshold will be required in the future.” We’re not making any argument here about whether residents should welcome that or resent it – that’s a fair question for people to disagree on. The point CIPFA is making is a governance one, not a fiscal one: a decision to keep tax low for over a decade was never matched by any visible plan for how the resulting risk would be managed if things went wrong.

Governance “in name only”?

CIPFA’s brief asked whether the Council’s strategic direction was real, or existed only “in name only.” Its own findings answer that question without quite saying so out loud: “the strategic direction of the authority is not clear or understood.” Elsewhere, the report notes there is “no golden thread linking the council’s overarching strategies with the MTFS and service plans,” and that leaving individual departments to transform their own areas “without an overall corporate strategy or approach must be regarded as a key weakness.”

No strategy, no plan for the assets that could pay for it

Hillingdon still has no corporate strategy, no council-wide procurement or transformation policy, and no Asset Management Strategy setting out which of its own assets could be sold to help close the gap. CIPFA is blunt about the consequence: until that changes, “the Council will have to continue to rely on EFS” – not free money from central government, but permission to borrow, secured against future Council Tax bills and repaid with interest over the next twenty years.

The risk ratings, in full

CIPFA rates every risk it identifies on a nine-point scale, combining likelihood and impact. Its own definition of the highest rating, “Critical” impact, is one that could require “subsequent intervention by MHCLG or other 3rd parties,” reach “national press interest,” and cause “major political embarrassment for members.” Of the eighteen risks CIPFA identifies at Hillingdon, eight sit at exactly that level – including the risk that the Council’s Improvement Board itself “lacks rigour and challenge and fails to drive positive performance improvement,” and the risk that, without political will, “the council remains reliant on exceptional financial support/borrowing.”

What this means

None of this is speculation. It is the government’s own commissioned assessment of how Hillingdon is run. Officers drew up a list of hard choices; there is “no political will” to make them. Scrutiny committees that argue on party lines rather than asking whether decisions are any good. Council tax has fallen behind its neighbours for fifteen years, not for lack of an option, but for lack of a decision. There is no corporate strategy, no asset management plan, and – CIPFA warns – continued reliance on borrowed money until that changes. That is the pattern: not one failure, but structures that exist on paper and stop working the moment they’re actually needed.

Silence from the Civic Centre

We wrote to the Chief Executive, the Leader and the Cabinet Member for Finance, giving them the opportunity to respond to CIPFA’s findings ahead of publication. By the time we went to print, a week later, none had replied.

Read the report yourself

CIPFA’s full report – all 41 pages of it – is available on GOV.UK