Greens demand warmer homes, advice to help with the cost of living and better tree coverage across the city

Green councillors want to change the city council’s budget to make more homes warmer, provide face to face help through Norfolk Citizens Advice, make sure the council makes more of its assets and add to the number of trees in the city. The Green Party budget amendment will be put at tonight’s meeting of Norwich City Council.

Councillor Jamie Osborn will propose the amendment, showing how the council could create a long-term funding stream and help people in fuel poverty immediately by insulating homes and installing renewable energy sources.

Councillor Osborn said:

“Thousands of people in Norwich are living in homes that are prohibitively expensive to heat. Our proposals would scale up action to insulate homes and install cheap renewable energy, to reduce bills permanently. This is the progressive investment we need the city council to be making.”

The Greens’ proposal to increase retrofitting the city’s houses with insulation and renewable energy comes in two parts. Firstly, to retrofit a small number of homes in order to show how this can be done in Norwich and to develop the crucial skills that are needed. Norwich would then have a trained workforce in the city, and the city council could have an important new income stream. In addition, the Greens would like to extend the council’s Solar Together scheme to include heat pumps, insulation and electric vehicle charging points so more people can buy them to add to their own homes. Together, these measures will keep people warmer and help to lower Norwich’s carbon emissions. They can be partly paid for by not installing new domestic boilers because gas boilers wouldn’t be necessary if we had these other ways of keeping warm.

Councillor Denise Carlo will explain the urgency of planting more trees now, when the city is losing trees, through disease and other causes, all the time. Mancroft ward in the city centre has barely half the recommended 20% cover minimum provision. Trees and green spaces are essential to health and wellbeing, cooling the city as it heats, and cleaning our air. More trees and green spaces are needed in poorer areas. That’s why the Green amendment includes an ongoing sum to be spent on the maintenance of new trees, so they will be looked after in the future.

Greens also want to ensure that the council’s money is spent better in future, particularly the money spent on capital programmes which include security doors and communal bins. The opposition group wants to invest in a Capital Strategy Manager in order to save money in the long run by making sure that budgets are used efficiently and the council obtains value for money for the people of Norwich.

The cost of living crisis is a theme running through the Green amendment. It’s highlighted by the proposal to award a grant to Norfolk Citizens Advice to support people with advice, particularly about financial issues.

Councillor Lucy Galvin. Leader of the Green Group said:

“Our amendment makes practical, costed changes to deliver vital carbon and money saving now, rather than accepting a budget which doesn’t take enough action on the cost of living and climate crises.”

Our proposals in detail

Proposals to increase the following revenue budget items:-

		2023/24£000
Investigating both the immediate commercialisation opportunities of retrofitting insulation and renewable energy in homes, and a medium-term strategy to similarly retrofit the council’s housing stock 1		60		This £0.06m would come from the invest to save reserve and would support development of the business case to demonstrate the costs and benefits from the proposed approach. We would seek to establish the principle that some of the benefits of such measures would generate commercialisation opportunities which would initially replenish the invest to save reserve and then provide a future income source for the council.
Scoping an investigation to extend the collective bidding scheme currently applied to Solar Together to other decarbonisation investments such as insulation, heat pumps and private electric vehicle charging points 2		30		The scoping investigation would be funded by £0.03m from the business change reserve and would also provide procurement activity in support of collective bidding schemes.
Capital Strategy Manager 2		80		This £0.08m would come from the business change reserve. It will provide a resource to establish a better strategic overview of capital spending
Grant to Norfolk Citizens’ Advice to provide face to face advice 3		30		£0.03m would be funded from general reserves. As this would be funded from reserves this would be a one-off grant to meet the immediate additional need created by the cost-of-living crisis. Any on-going support would need to be considered as part of future years’ budgets.
Ongoing tree maintenance 4		20		This proposal should be considered alongside the additional capital investment set out in our capital programme proposals. This £0.02m would ensure that the on-going cost of additional tree planting was included in the revenue budget on an on-going basis. It would be funded through the proposed £0.1m permanent decrease from the environmental services contract for grass cutting (See Table 4).
Total revenue budget increase		220

The additional one-off revenue costs of the above can be met as follows

Table 1

One off items		2023/24£000
Invest to save reserve 1		60
Business change reserve 2		110
General reserves 3		30
Total		200

The additional on-going revenue costs of the above can be met as follows

Table 2

On-going items		2023/24£000
Permanent budget reductions 4 (see Table 4)		20
Total		20

Proposals to add the following items into the capital programme:-

		2023/24£000		2024/25£000
Developing a pilot project for enhanced retrofitting of social housing for 20 homes. 1,5,6,7[HRA and General fund capital programme]		250		750		£0.5m would come from government Wave 2 funding. A further £0.325m would be funded by a newly-created municipal bond scheme and £0.150m would be a contribution from the invest to save reserve in recognising the opportunities for commercially retro-fitting private housing which would be unlocked. The sum drawn from the invest to save reserve would be replenished from the additional incomes generated from private sector housing. The remaining £0.025m would be saved by not having to replace so many domestic boilers. Fewer domestic boilers would need replacement as opportunities were taken to retrofit alternatives such as air source heat pumps.
Capital project to plant new trees on council-owned land and on-going from permanent reduction to grass cutting provision. [General Fund capital programme]		80		80		This £0.08m spend would be funded as a revenue contribution to capital in both 2023/24 and 2024/25 following the proposed £0.1m decrease in the environmental services contract for grass cutting on an ongoing basis. Grass cutting would be reduced in areas where biodiversity would be improved as a result and grass would continue to be cut where reducing this service would have a detrimental impact on the appearance of an area.
Total capital budget increase		330		830

The additional capital costs of the above can be met as follows

Table 3

		2023/24£000		2024/25£000
Invest to save reserve 1		150
Wave 2 social housing funding 5				500
A newly-created municipal bond scheme 6		75		250
Permanent budget reductions 4 (see Table 4)		80		80
Reallocation of existing capital items 7		25
Total		330		830

The capital proposals would be met by the following reallocation of items in the existing capital programme

		2023/24£000
HRA upgrades Heating / Boilers Domestic 7		(25)		Fewer domestic boilers would need to be replaced as opportunities were taken to retrofit alternatives such as air source heat pumps.
Total		(25)

To decrease the following revenue budget items on an on-going basis:-

Table 4

		2023/24£000
NCSL contract for grass cutting 4		(100)		This sum would be used to pay for additional trees to be planted and maintained on an ongoing basis. Grass cutting would be reduced in areas where biodiversity would be improved as a result and grass would continue to be cut where reducing this service would have a detrimental impact on the appearance of an area.
Total		(100)

Financial Implications

The council’s S151 officer has considered the proposals submitted above as budget amendments and confirms that the proposed approach to funding those items are sustainable in the context of the council’s overall level of resources including reserves where identified.

There are risks associated with the generation of commercial income from some of the proposals which should be considered fully as part of developing the business case for investment in those areas. The municipal bond scheme is a mechanism of funding capital expenditure that is in essence borrowing and, as such it will if agreed, need to be included as an amendment to the council’s treasury management strategy.

This amendment was prepared based on a full understanding of the budget and with the assistance of council staff in checking its financial soundness.