Volunteers plan a cloak for massive service cuts

Published: 10 September, 2010

• BASING local services for over 250,000 Westminster residents on the basis of an “army of volunteers”, as Westminster City Council leader Colin Barrow proposes, is completely mad and a recipe for thousands of vulnerable residents losing essential help and support.

Volunteers can play their part in supporting professional, experienced, and properly paid staff, but to imagine a situation where essential services in the heart of London can be farmed out to volunteers is the politics of ‘fantasy land’ and the total abdication of responsibility by the Conservatives.

Cllr Barrow’s plan fails to explain how volunteers are going to deal with the problems of people with extreme social services needs or how volunteers will maintain housing estates in need of repair.

How are volunteers expected to tackle law and order in areas under threat from crime and anti-social behaviour?

Will volunteers be teaching our children?

Will we be expected to volunteer to sweep our own streets and dispose of our rubbish?

Will volunteers be handling planning applications and licensing matters?

There is no substitute for properly-funded, professionally-run, services and for the Conservatives to claim otherwise is nothing more than a cruel deception.

As ever, Cllr Barrow knows the price of every thing and the value of nothing.

His plan is nothing more than a thinly-disguised cloak for massive service cuts that will hit residents right across the board, but particularly the most vulnerable.

CLLR PAUL DIMOLDENBERG
Leader of the Labour Group