OXFORD City Council is heading for an underspend of about £1.5m for the year 2012/13.

Some of this was a windfall in the shape of increased rents from commercial property owned by the council – some was due to budgets being higher than needed to provide services.

The council proposes to squirrel this away into a ‘capital reserve fund’ to support future capital works – which are already budgeted for.

We know that the Conservative-driven welfare cuts will impact hard on some Oxford residents and that more and more people are running into debt or facing hard choices on heating or eating. More advice on how to manage money, where to get good advice on energy costs and how to take advantage of the Green Deal to reduce those energy costs is desperately needed.

I suggested at council on April 22 that the Labour administration should consider using some of its windfall to help citizens; more grants to debt advice agencies, to the Citizens’ Advice Bureau and to energy-saving advisers.

They could add to the Government grant of about £500k for Discretionary Housing Payments to help people unable to meet current housing rents. Transitional support will make a huge difference to people. Labour’s response was to say that they are saving for a rainy day, that they could use the Homelessness contingency grant to top up the DHP; but will that not be needed to tackle homelessness?

Some funds could also be used to fill the worst potholes, as we suggested at Budget time. Labour refused to consider any of these options. Was it just that they had not thought of it themselves?

It is raining now.

JEAN FOOKS, city councillor for Summertown, leader, Liberal Democrat group Oxford City Council, St Bernard’s Road, Oxford