Finally, the council is being businesslike

Given the option, most of you would prefer just to ignore it and focus on something more useful, like washing your hair.

But for me, on one particularly bleak evening every February, it’s the same story – sitting with a large glass of malt while trying to make head or tail of Brighton and Hove City Council’s budget plans.

It’s not an easy job. Some of you may think I’m sad to even bother. bBut someone has to do it.

As hidden in those 200-plus pages are details of £700 million of spending that will affect allevery single one of you who live, work or play in Brighton and Hove.

This year’s proposal was a bit of a struggle really because it was all much of a muchness. Once again the local authority has put forward plans to make more than £20 million savings in the next financial year.

Once again there is reasonable opposition from staff, unions and some groups in society at the reduction of certain services.

And once again 99 per cent of what is put down on paper at the moment will get ratified when all 54 councillors make a decision at the end of this month.

Even though there’s still a few weeks to go, I’ll take a guess at what will happen.

The ruling Labour minority administration will tell everyone that it’s not them but the Government that is forcing these cuts on Brighton and Hove as Whitehall reduces the council’s funding.

The Conservative councillors will then say that it’s Labour that is actually deciding how the money is spent so they are the ones to blame.

The Greens will then argue that actually the council shouldn’t be making any savings at all and anyone voting for the budget is irresponsible.

Then a vote will be taken and, give or take a few thousand pounds here or there as amendments, the Labour budget will be voted through largely intact.

Even for someone that gets excited about these sorts of things, it’s difficult to try to get revved up for what is little more than a groundhog day.

That’s evident as a six-week long city-wide consultation run by the council before the final budget plans were produced last week had only 451 people respond.

That’s 451 people in a city of 270,000 people.

Perhaps the lack of interest is down to the fact that no one actually knows what the council does – and I include the council itself when I say that.

For instance, did you know the council spent £1.6 million every year on the “Information Signposting Triage, Financial Assessments and Welfare Rights, and Care Matching Team”.

That’s 50 people doing a job in the adult social care department that even those employed to do it would struggle to explain.

And then just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, there are some plans which are so bizarre they’re laughable.

For instance, in the 178-page document detailing exactly how the money will be allocated this year, one of the plans put forward by the customer services teams to save money was, and I quote, “reduce reliance on paper and paper files”.

This is the local authority representing the number one digital city in the UK thinking reducing paper is one way they can save £20 million this coming year.

If that would have been presented to Lord Sugar in the board room there would be a two word answer, one of which starts with the letter F.

While I have a heap of respect for everybody who works in the public sector, there needs to be a realisation that it’s a big bad world out there full of men and women like Lord Sugar.

Knowing that local government spending was to be heavily reduced, other town halls made radical plans years ago meaning the cuts they are having to make are having less of an impact.

Yet Brighton and Hove – hampered by it’s political uncertainty and adherence to the status quo – failed to act and instead trundled down the same well-worn path of trimming bits of budgets here and there every year.

But this year, is a little different Finally, the local authority is now seeing itself through the eyes of a businessman by asking questions like “what can we do better for cheaper?” and “what can we make money out of?”.

Among those 200-plus pages is a four-year plan for every service. And next to each department is a list of how much of it can be commercialised.

Equally, those services which are not legally essential have been told they must be trimmed or eradicated.

It’s a harsh reality but those are the decisions that business leaders have to take every single day.

So while this year’s city council budget may seem like groundhog day on the surface, I can assure you it’s not.

And while it’s not sexy, it seems that this year’s budget is the start of a new era when it comes to town hall spending.