Monthly Archives: November 2010

'Divesting' services, Council spending, New Strategic direction, Your councillor

Have you signed the Save Suffolk Services petition yet?

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For the last six weeks I and my fellow Lib Dems can have been  found standing outside libraries and shivering in water-sodden streets trying to bring news of the New Strategic Direction in all its horror to as many people in Suffolk as possible.

After all, the conservative administration has done very little in that direction, as you can see if you click the following link:   Consultation – what consultation?

As a Suffolk resident wrote to me:

We certainly have not been consulted in any shape or form by SCC re the New Strategic Direction. Surely, they should have started by a direct letter to everyone rather than sandwich boards in the shopping precinct!

Our own consultation was not without incident: tragically I got nipped on the leg by an ill-tempered dog in Yoxford, only last week, while delivering leaflets with a broken foot in heavy rain. I hope he felt guilty. But the post MUST get through…

Have you got our leaflet yet? Have you signed our petition?

We are trying to get as many signatures to the petition as possible to deliver to the Administration at the next full council day, 2 December. If you have received one, try and collect as many signatures from Suffolk residents as possible – relatives, friends, neighbours, colleagues. It doesn’t matter about  age or background. These changes will affect us all.

If we haven’t managed to reach you, you can sign it online http://savesuffolkservices.blogspot.com/

or if you want to download it to collect further paper signatures: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/56654857/Save-Suffolk-Services-petition

Just remember to return it by the 26th November.

Remember to make sure your voice is heard!

'Divesting' services, Council spending, New Strategic direction, Suffolk County Council, Uncategorized

Suffolk’s NSD – a few sneaky sums

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We all know the story  – Suffolk has to make 30% cuts and all because of those naughty bad bankers and the UK’s mountain of inherited debt.

Right?

Wrong!

The Lib Dems have discovered that Suffolk county council only needs to make cuts of 11% IN TOTAL over the next four years to balance out the reduction in central government grants. This means cuts of less than 3% a year.

Which means that the administration used their huge Tory majority to  plan cuts that were THREE TIMES  as savage as they needed to be!!!!

How have they managed to spin this? Simple. They expect us to be not very good at our sums and not to check the facts and their figures. Pretty much like someone trying to sell you dodgy double-glazing or an unnecessary insurance policy.

They have estimated that the amount of money they would get from the government will be reduced by 33.3% over 4 years (because of the Comprehensive Spending Review).  That is, they assumed that Suffolk would have to manage on two thirds of the current central government grant.

In point of fact the reduction in central government funding will be just over 26% over four years (not 33.3%) which is much less of a hit. But this is just the thin end of their mathematical shenanigans.

BECAUSE the government grant makes up much less than half of Suffolk County Council’s total income. And the rest of this  income is not going to reduce at all. In some cases it will rise.

When we did the sums, the reduction  in Suffolk’s total income over the next four years  was NOT a big noisy 30%, it was less than 11%. That’s a very big difference when you  are talking about closing and selling off care homes, cutting school crossing patrols and closing the park and ride!

'Divesting' services, Council spending, Libraries, New Strategic direction, Suffolk County Council

Suffolk County Council consults after the event

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Todays article on this 'consultation'EADT today – p13

Suffolk’s New Strategic direction: 
when is a consultation not a consultation?

When you consult the people of Suffolk
AFTER you’ve made your decision!

We Lib Dems are deeply concerned about the minimal – and cursory – nature of the consultation being offered to the people of Suffolk re the County Council’s  NSD New Strategic Direction. 

For a start, don’t you suspect that the bland jargonese of the phrase ‘New Strategic Direction’ is enough to put any listener to sleep. How convenient! If you called it ‘Selling the Family Silver’ they might wake up with a jerk.

So much for the terminology. Now the process. On the 23 September, the Tory administration promised

that there should be pro-active and wide-ranging engagement across Suffolk to establish whether the key NSD proposals find favour with communities we all represent before moving forward to implementation; and the findings from the engagement be reported back to Full Council at its meeting on the 2nd of December 2010

This consultation started at the ende of October. Now it turns out that we residents only had until the 15th of November to provide responses to the NSD in order for these responses to be considered in the Full Council report for December 2nd (We are told that comments and surveys completed after this date will be provided to Councillors before the meeting, but not included in the official report.)  

To add insult to injury, the Council has also recently announced a number of ‘road show’ events in 10 different towns across the County to spread news of the NSD.  ALL of these events occur after today’s deadline of the 15th, and one of these events is even planned for the 3rd of December, after the Council has made its decision!

You couldn’t make it up!