Thursday evening brought Constituency Committee. There were a number of discussion points:

• A financial update – as may have been expected we will once again face a significant challenge meeting our budget this year. That said, we usually seem to start the year with a major challenge – currently a potential slippage in savings of £533k, and then get close to a balanced budget by year end. Last year we ended up with a deficit well under £100k, or less than 1% of our spend.
• A presentation on the street lighting improvements now well underway as part of the Amey PFI contract. As well as modernising the street lights, this will, we were told, deliver savings of 38% in electricity use, which equates to £1.8m pa at today’s costs, by the time they have been fully implemented.
• A discussion over consultation on a trial for the introduction of wheelie bins in Birmingham. This is actually quite a complex equation. A crew collecting rubbish via wheelie bins is roughly half as fast, though you only need 3 in the crew (compared to 5 now, though this may reduce to 4, collecting black bags). We were told that the overall running costs are similar but there is a significant capital cost in switching to wheelie bins, including the extra rubbish lorries and the up front costs of the bins themselves (£15 each or £6m+ for every household in Brum, or 2% on Council Tax for a year). Wheelie bins are attractive where there is plenty of space to store them as they reduce spillage during collection. However in terraced housing, where they are much less convenient to store, or in hilly areas, where houses have several steps up from the road, they are much less suitable. They can also be hard to keep clean inside. Because of the up front costs there are often associated with a shift to fortnightly collection which has always been very unpopular in Birmingham. It will be interesting to see how the debate develops.
• A presentation on Neighbourhood Offices. I expressed concern that Acocks Green Neighbourhood Office has sometimes run out of appointments for local residents. While there are now many other ways for people to contact the Council, and many do this by phone or internet these days, its very important that those who need to can contact an advisor face to face. We therefore asked for a progress report to be given to the next Committee meeting to assess the problem and see if enough is being done to tackle it. In the meantime if anyone does have a problem getting an appointment at Acocks Green Neighbourhood Office please let me know.