Lib Dems have pointed out many areas over the last few years where council tax payers money is being wasted by the Conservatives.
For instance, the current Conservatives are spending £5 million on consultants each year. Now Consultants are sometimes needed for specific skills which the council does not have, often these consultants have been hired just to support activities already carried out by the council. Recently for instance consultants were hired to do some work, their work was not up to scratch, so it was done by internal staff successfully – not a great use of council tax payers money.
Recently the council made a number of people redundant and then hired more expensive and less experienced temps to do their jobs – again not a good use of money an something that the Liberal Democrats are committed to stopping.
Salaries have also increased. Although the council has said there will be no pay rises this year – they are giving increments to staff ie increases in salaries! That sounds like semantics to me! This is not a time when the council should increase salaries. In fact the number of staff on over £50,000 has tripled in the last four years. One of the first acts of the Conservatives when they took control of the council was to double councillors salaries. To help pay for some of the things we want to do – we will put that salary back down a again.
Simon Werner, Leader of the Lib Dem Group says, “This just gives you a snapshot of some of the areas where money is wasted and how we would not only pay for the things we want to achieve but also how we will keep council tax down.”
“But what we want to achieve has long term benefits to the council – too often councils thing in four year periods – we need to look 20 years ahead as well.”
The day centre charges are a good example are a good example of short term thinking.
By increasing day centre charges by 1,000%, it means that people that really need the service will stop going because it is just too expensive. The consequences of that will be that not only will they need more serious levels of care sooner than they would have done, but it will also put pressure on their carers who will no longer get that respite care while the person is at the day centre. The consequences of that is that they will have to go into residential care sooner and that costs us all a whole lot more money than was saved by increasing day centre charges.
Again by helping people with learning difficulties get the training they need to actually move on into real jobs, it not only improves their lives, but again saves us all money in financing them
Again by helping young people who are struggling into work education and training, it will mean that they will fulfil their potential, not be a burden on all of us and reduce some of the petty vandalism that anti-social behaviour that a minority of young people engage in when they have nothing else in their lives.
Simon Werner continued, “So in the short term we can show how we will pay for it and in the long term how much this will save us all in the future.”