Local Green Space for Winnersh
Liberal Democrat Councillor for Winnersh ward Learn more
by Prue Bray on 27 February, 2011
There are two cuts the Tories made that I highlighted at the budget meeting. Together with the secrecy, they are among the reasons why the Lib Dems voted against the budget.
And what do the Tories do about that? Surprise, surprise, try to suggest we voted against the budget because of the 0% increase. In other words the Tories are trying to make people think we wanted the Council Tax to go up. They have even sent emails to their supporters on just that theme. For goodness sake. It’s that sort of thing that gives politics a bad name.
But about those cuts.
Concessionary fares . A cut of £140,000 a year. We can see the money has disappeared but are we told what has been done to the service? No. The description “Savings on concessionary travel by targeting to the disabled” actually means that about 5,500 people over 70 years old will no longer receive travel tokens. That includes elderly people living on means-tested benefits. Apparently they can all have a bus pass instead – never mind whether there are any bus services near where they live.
The Liberal Democrats asked a question about tokens at the January council meeting and from the answer deduced that they might be under threat. That is the only clue anyone has had that this cut was coming. Wen asked the question because we know the Conservatives have been hacking away at the tokens for years. This is just another swing of the axe. And it isn’t just a cruel cut affecting some of the borough’s most vulnerable people, but a cruel cut concealed in a cowardly way.
Then there’s cuts to voluntary sector grants. The cut that has hit the headlines already was the axing of the grant to Voluntary Action Wokingham Borough, which the Lib Dems highlighted at January’s council meeting. Once again, it isn’t spelled out in the budget, which simply has a line showing a £57,000 cut in “grants to individuals/organisations”. You would never be able to work out what it was just by reading the budget.
I think you can begin to get the picture: the Tories are happy to trumpet that there was no increase in Council Tax. But they do all they can to hide the things they know the public will not like.
2 Comments
What choice do they have but to make cuts. Wokingham received the lowest Government grant per head of population in the country. We here at Isitfair have always realised that there are parts of the country which need more help in the way of central government grants than others. It is widely recognised that some form of equalisation between local authorities of differing affluence must continue under any form of local taxation. But, and it is a big but, the differences in grants are now so, so huge they must surely be questionable.
And could it be that some of these highly dependent authorities have become complacent, so used to the comfort zone provided by their huge grants, that they cannot see that their loud protests at the cuts in grant for 2011/12 cut no ice with the people in many other areas whose councils’ budgets have been squeezed hard year after year?
I agree 100% with your second paragraph.