Scrap the mayor, cut Tŷ Pawb spend, reduce councillor numbers and run a car boot sale – public offer feedback on how Wrexham Council could balance the books

Wrexham Council is pleading poverty to such a degree the Chief Exec recently said there was ‘no money in the bank‘, but luckily councillors have been supplied with a long list of your ideas to help raise some cash or do things different.

Scrapping the role of mayor, cutting Tŷ Pawb spend and reducing councillor numbers and the amount they’re paid are some of the unsurprising suggestions on how Wrexham Council could make savings.

The feedback lists are part of a round-up of responses to the local authority’s recent Difficult Decisions process, which saw over 3,320 people take part in the process during last autumn. Wrexham Council say this generated 6,754 comments across the respondents.

The number is down 535 responses on the previous year’s consultation, but Wrexham Council have evaluated it at a 95% confidence level, meaning they believe the exercise results is a fair reflection on the overall population locally.

Anyone who has ventured onto online comments about Wrexham will know the number of councillors and how much they get paid – along with the new addition of the amount spent on Tŷ Pawb – are recurring suggestions or responses from members of the public when public money spending is mentioned – regardless of if it is a council budget.

The suggestions themselves feature as part of a consultation question on how Wrexham Council could generate income – with 55 respondents using the opportunity to comment on the new paving on Hope Street and Queens Street in the town centre.

Sadly the detail of each comment is not provided, however a sanitised ‘theme’ group is used to count the relevant responses, with many such themes replicated or overlapping eg. “Sell/shut/stop spending money on Ty Pawb”, “Prioritise essential services and stop wasting money on unnecessary projects – e.g. Ty Pawb, Town Centre Paving, Car Park Signage”, “Reduce spend on Ty Pawb / Ty Pawb – criticism” or “Remove the role of Mayor” “Remove the mayor / reduce mayoral budget” “Make the Mayor role voluntary” “Abolish the role of Mayor” “Remove the Mayoral role”

One of the most popular suggestions with 123 respondents surrounded reducing councillor salaries – something echoed by a further 225 people in the ‘any other suggestions’ section of the consultation.

It was a similar case for removing the role of mayor and reducing the mayoral budget, which was suggested 111 times for income generation and a further 122 times in general suggestions in how the council could save money.

The likes of reducing staffing levels, cutting senior salaries and reducing the amount spent on Tŷ Pawb also featured throughout the consultation – with the latter being mentioned 66 times alongside car parking signage and town centre paving in the council tax increase section.

Some over estimate the powers of Wrexham Council in setting its budget with three people suggesting that free prescriptions are stopped, ‘Scrap/reduce the National Assembly’ and others suggesting ‘get prisoners to do environment work’.

Specific groups or areas were targeted by some, with four suggesting that the local authority “reviews benefits for immigrants and stop the influx of migrants to reduce population”, and other comments counted under a heading “stop investing so much in Caia Park / Plas Madoc”.

Is there a Wrexham version of Godwin’s law that everything comes back to Eagles Meadow being built?

— Wrexham.com (@wrexham) November 20, 2018

Eagles Meadow got its usual mention in anything relating to the town centre / how to save money, along with eight suggesting the council stop chasing city status, four people calling for the council to stop funding Christmas lights and for the local authority to stop taking unspecified and unknown ‘trips abroad’.

Three people also took the chance to praise Wrexham Council, along with 94 comments of just ‘general criticism’ to the local authority.

A breakdown of the the number of participants per ward are also provided, with 1779 participants choosing to disclose the village / area where they live.

Participant numbers range from 103 in Brymbo, down to just nine in Penycae and Ruabon South and eight in Wynnstay.

Whilst the data only accounts for around half of those who chose to disclose the location, it does show that the majority of the population does not engage in formal consultations.

Only 19 of the 52 councillors are noted as having taken part – however this could be due to them choosing not to disclose the information or classing themselves as a local resident.

1860 people responded to the question about their age, with those aged between 45-54 falling into the category with the highest respondents. This is closely followed by 410 people aged between 35-44 and 342 aged between 55-64. Only 44 people aged between 16-24 took part.

More women also responded to the consultation then men; with the 66 per cent of participants married and 81 per cent not in receipts of any benefits.

This year the consultation itself was a shorter questions set than previous years however social media comments – which aren’t counted as a formal responses but are apparently ‘collated’ – suggests that there is plenty of interest from members of the public about local services and how their council tax is spent, this is not reflected in increased numbers of people taking part formally.

Wrexham Council have previously promised to ‘close the circle’, so it is possible senior councillors will explain formally suggestions are not being carried out.

Back in October at the launch of the Difficult Decisions consultation we correctly guessed the top comments from the local public, and asked the Council Leader and Chief Executive about the mayor, Tŷ Pawb and salaries for councillors and staff.

Wrexham.com related to Wrexham’s Chief Executive, Council Leader and Deputy Leader how common points made by readers when budgets cuts are mentioned usually revolve around questions on the cost of having a Mayor, councillor or senior council staff. The latter in the context of increases to numbers of councillors and pay rises proposed recently plus the possibility of the number of Executive Board councillors being reduced.

Further we noted the Tŷ Pawb development had a headline £4.5m investment, part from Wrexham Council, with the capital spend and revenue budget previously defined as the ‘cost of culture’. We asked if any of those were off limits in the consultation and future cuts.

Mr Bancroft spoke on senior salaries noting a ‘senior management review’ outcome due to be discussed publicly next month, with the indication that will show the council ‘making a significant saving’ – as above now noted as being £130k

Both Mr Bancroft and Cllr Pritchard both tackled the topic of the Mayor.

Mr Bancroft said: “I will give an Officer view of the Mayor. We are the major urban place in North Wales, to not have civic function would be really really poor showing a lack of ambition and civic pride.

“I can’t speak highly enough of the work that is being done this year from an officer perspective, to show just the value and impact a Mayor can have touching peoples lives in terms of rewarding and recognising contributions people make to our local community.

“In terms of getting people people interested in local democracy by making it an open thing, and in terms of major events that we should be hosting as being the major urban place in North Wales , giving that an independent neutrality as a council to says ‘this is important’ ”

“I think those types of things are even more important at times like this when we face this level of severity in terms of cuts, we still have to have pride and recognise what an important place we are as Wrexham.”

Cllr Pritchard described the topic of the Mayor, and the numbers on the Executive Board, as a ‘political hot potato’, adding: “We have already reviewed the department, and have made substantial savings in there, and now that mayoralty is a fantastic contribution to Wrexham.

“We deliver it for very little money in the scheme of things, we have taken money out of there, and I think we have done what we can with it.

“As for the Executive Board, yes we will consider it, we will consider everything. No stone will be left unturned because of this wicked settlement.”

Cllr Hugh Jones pointed us to look at the business plan of Tŷ Pawb (that has been altered, however that is not public, so we can’t) adding: “Over a three year period the cost of delivering that is going to be less than the cost was to deliver our arts and culture service previously’, ‘Tŷ Pawb is effectively going to costs us less than the Oriel did’.

You can read the full article from last year by clicking here…

Councillors will be considering your feedback to the consultation at the Executive Board meeting on Tuesday, you can view the full (and sometimes entertaining eg. council should ‘run a car boot’) comments in this PDF document!