Heated exchanges in City Hall as budget cuts kick in - Labour slams City Hall’s financial strategy as ‘built on sand’ - 450 jobs to go
Published: 25 February 2011
by JOSH LOEB
UNION members and opposition councillors packed into the stalls for the council’s budget meeting this week in a rally against cuts to jobs and services.
City Hall says its plan to axe 450 jobs will affect the back office rather than front-line services and officers have pointed out that its tax freeze initiative has been welcomed by local government secretary Eric Pickles.
The council’s revenue spend is set to be reduced to from £266million to £236million and the capital spend will be £28.8million.
No children’s centres or leisure centres will close and meals-on-wheels will be retained.
But during a heated meeting in which Conservative council leader Colin Barrow threatened to have the leader of the opposition, Paul Dimoldenberg, ejected if he did not stop interrupting speeches, Westminster Unison branch leader Stephen Higgins pleaded with councillors to “think again”.
Mr Higgins told the meeting: “Those in the branch and the wider community recognise the current economic climate that we’re in and understand that changes need to be made. However, we argue that there are better ways of saving money and that the cuts that are currently being put forward are going to disproportionately affect the poor.”
He added: “I would urge this council to use its influence with central government, to get back to them and ask them to think again.”
To cheers from Unison members who held placards opposing the closure of St James’s Library, Labour leader Cllr Dimoldenberg said residents were feeling the brunt of a “made-in-Westminster financial crisis.” He said: “Your financial strategy was built on sand.”
Addressing Cllr Barrow directly, he said: “You had a golden inheritance… when you took over as leader in 2008, over £70million in reserves. That is now down to £11million, £12million or about £13million at the most.”
Cllr Barrow had failed to take the advice of successive directors of finance who recommended a council tax increase “of modest and prudent proportions,” he said.
Cllr Barrow replied that the Labour leader had said “…nothing at all which suggests the financial position would be any better under a Labour administration” and that raising council tax did not “make financial sense”.
He said the city council did not make cuts lightly.
“We don’t do this carelessly. We do this at the last possible moment after we’ve searched every other way we have to reduce the expenses of the council,” he said.
The 2011/12 budget will be ratified by full council on Wednesday March 2.