e-mail Paul Lewis on paul@deadline.demon.co.uk
Forty six councils in England and Wales have responded to the campaign launched by Saga Magazine in November which exposed the local authorities that took money off war pensioners and widows to pay for the benefits the council provided. But 61 councils have not. They still refuse to find extra money to help war veterans in their area. And among these, 18 councils continue to take the most the law allows off this deserving and vulnerable group.
So if they are not willing to spend money on war veterans just what do they spend it on? In our investigations we have found
These amounts were all spent by councils which treat their war pensioners as badly as the law allows and have refused even to review the position when they discussed their 1996/97 budgets.
By contrast, thirteen councils have definitely decided to abolish their practice of reducing council benefits paid to war pensioners. Another four have increased the amount they let war pensioners keep before penalising them. And 29 councils are reviewing their policy as part of their debates for the 1996/97 budgets. Although their decisions have not yet been formally made, we expect most of those to have changed their policy by April 1.
One council openly recognised the part played by Saga Magazine in this major shift in local council policy. Dacorum council in Hertfordshire allowed war widows to keep just £10 of their pension before reducing the amount they got for housing benefit or council tax benefit. And they had a ceiling on the amount that war disablement pensioners could have. Councillors will meet shortly to decide to abolish both these restrictions. Robin Brooks, finance officer with the council, told us
"As a result of the Saga campaign they are going to disregard fully all war pensions. Thanks for helping us realise that we weren't doing it. We thought we were. In 1988 members took a decision to ignore war pensions and for some reason it hadn‘t been fully done. But now they will be recommending that they are all ignored. Although it is subject to the budget review it is a common matter between the parties."
And the recognition of what we do extends to other organisations. The Royal British Legion has been campaigning for many years to make councils behave responsibly to war veterans. Pensions Officer Tom House said
"I am so pleased that the campaign is having such an effect. The changes will benefit a section of society which in the past has bit the bullet. The voice of Saga has been brilliant but local successes by themselves do not win a war. It is for central Government to address the issue and let us win the campaign."
The issue of councils and war pensions has been raised before and by others. But Saga's survey last September of all 458 local councils was the first non-government survey and one of the most comprehensive. Our results are being used by campaigners and politicians.
We divided councils into the good, the bad and the ugly. In our survey we found that most councils, 350 out of 458, let war pensioners keep all their war pension on top of any help the council gave with rent or council tax, even though the council had to pay the extra costs from their own resources. But 29 councils - the ugly - did only what the law made them do. They let veterans keep only £10 of their pension. The rest they used to reduce the help they got with their rent and council tax. Another 79 councils were somewhere in between. These 79, who did something, but less than they needed to, we dubbed 'the bad'. Ten of the bad have now joined the good. Another four have improved and no less than 21 are reviewing their policy.
Of the 29 ugly councils, three have decided to join the ranks of the good. North Devon, Rotherham, and West Dorset will be completely ignoring all war pensions from April this year. Frank Wilde, West Dorset's Revenues Manager said the change was due to "representations from the public, and requests from pensioners themselves." Another eight are reviewing their policy. But there remain a hard core of 18 councils which refuse even to reconsider their policy.
What do they spend it on?
One of these is Sheffield. The City Council has not formally considered extending the help given to war pensioners since it last rejected the idea in 1988. The council now says it would cost £315,000 to treat war pensioners fairly and let them keep their war pensions in full. It sounds a lot of money. Especially for a council which says it may have to sack teachers because of a low settlement by the Government this year. Out of a budget of £415m Sheffield is £35m short even if it raises its council tax by the maximum allowed by the Government.
But a closer look at Sheffield shows that it has been much freer with local tax-payers money in the past. In 1991 the council hosted the World Student Games. It borrowed £194m to build facilities including a stadium and an Olympic swimming pool. The interest on this debt costs Sheffield tax and rate payers £23m a year.
At the other end of the scale, Sheffield admitted last spring that it had lost track of around 200 buildings which it owned. These included Unstone Grange, a detached Victorian mansion in a country village bought by the Council just after the war. In 1980 it let it out. A lease was prepared and as the building was in bad repair it allowed a peppercorn rent for five years. After that the rent would be re-negotiated. But it did not happen and the rent was never increased. Local experts say that £20,000 a year for ten years could have been obtained on the market. The council is now selling the Grange for an undisclosed sum to the trust that runs it.
But Sheffield still says that out of a budget of £415m it cannot find less than one tenth of one percent to provide £315,000 to help 459 local war veterans and widows.
Its neighbour in South Yorkshire, Barnsley Metropolitan District Council, does know where to find the money. It estimates that it would cost around £100,000 a year to let its war pensioners keep all their war pension when they claim housing benefit or council tax benefit. Last year Barnsley councillors found rather more than that to pay themselves for their time in attending meetings. The budget for councillors' allowances and expenses rose from £202,000 to £331,000, an increase of £129,000, more than enough to help the local war pensioners.
And Barnsley's generosity does not stop at the borough boundaries. The town is twinned with Gorlovka, a mining town in Ukraine, north of the Black Sea. The budget for twinning is £50,000 a year. And the council has agreed to give £25,000 to the town to finish Cafe Barnsley, a genuine Yorkshire hostelry in the centre of Gorlovka.
Twinning officer Nigel Bath explained why he thought the cafe, which has been under construction since 1987, was important.
"About 5pc of the cost is specialist stuff that you can only get in England. We are supplying equipment and technical advice on how to design it so it looks British. Two years ago the council agreed to spend up to £25,000 from the twinning budget to enable them to finish it off. It's on the main street and will be a focal point of the twinning."
No-one knows when it will actually be finished.
Another of the hard-core councils is Manchester, the City Council which has spent well over a million pounds on [time and effort on] two failed bids for the Olympic Games. For less than half that it could have allowed its war veterans to keep all their pensions. Benefit Manager Peter Cosgrove told Saga Magazine that it would cost around £500,000 to offer a full disregard of war pensions. "The political message I get is that the City Council isn‘t prepared to pay for something the Government isn‘t willing to pay for."
But councillors are, like their Barnsley colleagues, willing to vote money to pay themselves. This year they will spend £458,870 on councillors allowances and expenses. Next year that will rise to £770,830, an increase of by £312,000, almost as much as the money the council 'is not prepared to pay' for war veterans. Last year they spent Last year they approved an increase in the amount paid in allowances from about £300,000 to nearly £600,000. And buried away in their accounts is another surprise - £1.6 million to compensate people who trip over pavements. A lawyer who specialises in such accidents told Saga Magazine
"In general what you trip over must be over about one or one and a half inches in height. And as long as the council has inspected the pavement within the last three months and corrected any defects that is a defence to an action. Most councils in my experience have insurance to cover these accidents rather than pay it themselves."
Perhaps a better standard of service in looking after its pavements together with an insurance policy could save it some of this £1.6 million a year. Enough perhaps to allow the veterans in its area to keep all the pension paid to them as compensation for their injuries, not tripping up but fighting for their country.
Against these amounts, an item of expenditure by another of the hard-core councils may seem trivial. Middlesbrough councillors, who cannot even say what treating war pensioners fairly would cost, treated themselves in November to a weekend away at a local hotel. The total cost of around £8000 is not that significant. But why did they need to be closeted together in the country for two days? To discuss budget cuts!
These stories are just the tip of the iceberg of local government spending. When councils say they cannot afford to help local war veterans what they really mean is they are choosing to spend it on something - or someone - else. Often themselves.
Who does it affect?
John Wickham lives in Houghton Regis in Bedfordshire. He is 100pc disabled after his service in the fleet air arm which he left in 1962. He would like to move to Norwich where his wife's parents live. Indeed they found a perfect little flat, adapted for his disabilities overlooking the cathedral. But when he found out that Norwich council would count the whole of his war disablement pension and that would stop him getting help with his rent or council tax he decided that he could not go.
"We're trapped here because of this policy. The Government should ignore totally war pensions. It's about two hours drive to visit my parents in law and I suffer a lot of pain on a drive like that, being paralysed, so we have to stay overnight and that means a hotel. If we moved to Norwich I‘d be about £65 a week worse off so we can‘t do it."
Walter Grayson spent just 24 hours in Sicily guarding a newly captured aerodrome when he was strafed by German war planes. Six died and Walter was one of two survivors, his legs badly injured. He now gets a war disablement pension of £20.22 a week. But thinks he could get more.
"I got bullets in the legs, very bad scarring and the side of one foot is dead. If I catch it then I get a terrible pain. I was going to have it re-assessed but what's the point if I have to give most of it to Wigan council? I lose council tax and housing benefit so it's a double header."
Under Wigan's complex formula used for assessing war pensions, Mr Grayson he is allowed to keep about £1.50 of his £20.22. If he claimed any extra pension he would lose 85pc of it.
"I've been fighting it through the Royal British Legion but it's a funny thing with these Labour mining councillors, they say if the miners have to pay then you have to pay. So you can‘t expect them to fight your case when you‘re treading on their toes."
Just what is the problem?
When someone applies for housing benefit to help with their rent or for council tax benefit for help with their council tax the council assesses their income. The lower the income the more help they will get. If their income is only a few pounds above the basic pension nearly all their rent or council tax is paid. When income is assessed there is a special concession for war veterans. By law £10 of a war disablement pension or war widow‘s pension (and all the special payment to a pre-1973 war widow) has to be ignored or, to use the correct jargon, disregarded. But councils have the freedom to ignore more than £10 of this income. Indeed, they can ignore all of a war pension or war widow‘s pension if they choose. If they do it means that the war veteran or widow can enjoy their pension in full as well as getting help with their rent or council tax. If they don't it means that nearly 85 per cent of the pension is lost as council benefits are reduced. If the council does do more than the law prescribes it has to pay the extra cost of doing this. There is no Government help with it.
BECOME GOOD
North Devon (LD), Rotherham (L), West Dorset (NOC)
IMPROVED
Wrekin (L).
REVIEWING
Brecknock (NOC), Bristol (L), South Hams (I/Coop), Derwentside (L), Wear Valley (L), Weymouth and Portland (LD*), York (L).
THE BAD
STILL BAD
Barking and Dagenham (L) Barrow-in-Furness (L), Bexley, L*), Bolton (L), Brighton (L), Bromley (C), Bury (L), Crawley (L), Doncaster (L), Eastleigh (LD), Great Yarmouth (L), Harrow (LD*), Hastings (NOC), Havant (NOC), Kensington and Chelsea (C), Leeds (L), New Forest (LD), Newport (L), North West Leicestershire (L), Oxford (L), Portsmouth (L), Preston (L), Restormel (LD), Salford (L), South Kesteven (NOC), South Somerset (NOC), Surrey Heath (C), Thamesdown (L), Torfaen (L), Wigan (L), Wyre Forest (LD*).
BECOME GOOD
Bassetlaw (L), Bournemouth (LD*), Dover (L), Gravesham (L), Great Grimsby (L), High Peak (L), North Dorset (LD), Preseli Pembrokeshire (I), South Pembrokeshire (NOC), Stevenage (L), Teesdale (I), West Devon (LD).
IMPROVED
Congleton (LD), Greenwich (L), Lliw Valley (L), Salisbury (LD).
REVIEWING
Adur (LD), Amber Valley (L), Barnet (L*), Cambridge (NOC), Caradon (NOC), Carrick (NOC), Corporation of London (I), Dacorum (L), Darlington (L), East Hampshire (LD), East Lindsey (I), Eastbourne (LD), Harrogate (LD), North Shropshire (NOC), Poole (LD), South Norfolk (L), Swansea (L), Tynedale (L*), West Somerset (LD).
NO INFORMATION
Breckland (NOC), Coventry (L), Exeter (L), Fenland (L), Gloucester (L), Kirkcaldy (L), North Kesteven (NOC), Renfrew (NOC), Ribble Valley (NOC), Scarborough (L*), West Oxfordshire (NOC), Woodspring (LD).
Politics: L = Labour; LD = Liberal Democrat; C = Conservative; NOC = no overall control; I = Independent or no political allegiance; Co-op = Co-operative Party; * = minority control.
This research was conducted by Saga Magazine in January 1996.
March 1996
e-mail Paul Lewis on paul@deadline.demon.co.uk