Tomorrow is Southwark councils budget setting council assembly.
If anyone has a particular issue they’d like me to raise please do let me know.
The Labour proposals see huge squirelling away of money into contigency and unallocated reserves. The reserves were already standing at nearly £90M but under Labour proposals will soar to well over £100M. The proposed Labour cuts would see a dirtier meaner borough – not good going into the Olympic year 2012. In fact unallocated reserved and unallocated contingency funds already stand at £22.2M and will rise rapidly under Labours ‘saving for a rainy day budget’ to £49.2M.
The proposed budget can be seen here:
http://moderngov.southwarksites.com/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=132&MId=3454&Ver=4
The Lib Dem proposed amendments which will fail are attached….but always a chance Labour councillors, as per the 8 in Lambeth, wont have been paying council tax and therefore wont be able to vote….
Broadly the Lib Dem proposals would see no cuts to: 5-11 play service, no cuts to play centres for 0-5 year olds, preserve funding for older peoples day centre, older person assisted shopping service, taxicard scheme fully kept, keep all eco grants, keep community recycling scheme, all CGS kept, keep sport development and the community games, don’t cut street cleaning, fully preserve SASBU the award winning anti social behavioural unit, fully keep the noise team working 24/7 and not reduce it to day etc, keep lolly pop people protecting all our kids getting to and from school, keep current events programme (especially important going into the Olympic year), mainatain South London Gallery support, keep all libraries, mobile library, housebound library service, keep all night time and current street cleaning.
So you’re a deficit denier are you James? We can’t go on paying £120trillion billion in interest payments every second, THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE, the 5-11 play service must be cut as we can’t pass debts on to the next generation so we must cut the next generation’s play service.
Are you going to block this comment as well? Censorship is hardly in the liberal tradition!!!
Hi Cat,
Southwark Labour are making huge avoidable cuts. Whether they stack reserves ever higher or not doesn’t feed into the national debt.
Labour locally have local choices and they’ve made some daft ones that will see many services needlessly slashed so they can build up an electon war chest.
@James
LOL! That is exactly what you and George Osborne are doing nationally. But you’re suggesting that Southwark Labour blow the reserves on keeping services going, you can only do that if you assume that funding levels will go back up again within a few years. Which isn’t a very sensible assumption given that government of any colour will have to be fiscally conservative for the next decade to reduce the national debt.
Hi Cat,
Southwark isn’t legally allowedto run a deficit. So not the same at all. Labour Southwark are choosing to more than double the unallocated reserves from currently £22.2M to £49.2M over 3 years. Absolutely no reason to do this unless they want to cut services significantly more than they need to.
Next financial year we have proposed to reduce the reserves by circa £2.5M but restore this the following year as further extra reveneue stresm Sotuhwakr Labour have cynically decided to ignore.
ALL our proposals were checked and verified by the Finance Director as being workable and fiscally prudent.