Fuse lit ahead of council budget debate

Contained in the papers which were ratified by the executive cabinet earlier in the month are plans to cut £9 million, with money taken from charities and vulnerable groups, job losses, and a series of big cuts across every council department from road to waste.
The local Liberal Democrats insisted they would reverse a series of planned cuts to services for the vulnerable and re-open six youth clubs as part of their alternative budget proposals; however the Conservatives have labelled the proposals a series of “last-minute” empty gestures.
The leader of the council, Graham Jones (Con, Lambourn), said the opposition sought every opportunity to spend and seemed incapable of taking the difficult decisions.
“They can not bring themselves to recognize economic reality,” he said.
“They are looking to spend an additional £1.147m, with their under funded programme having to resort to reserves. There is not a single idea about spending less or generating more income.
“Spending more than you have in the way of income leads to a situation of the kind found in Greece. These proposals are a Greek tragedy waiting to happen.”
The shadow finance spokesman David Rendel (Lib Dem, Thatcham Central) called the Conservatives “hypocrites”
“They are trying to accuse us of the things they have done; cutting services and spending money we don’t have,” he said.
“We had ten days to come up with alternative proposals, for them to say we have done this “last minute” is nonsensical. If we had been given their budget in advance we could have prepared something much earlier.
“The fact is Mr Jones thinks he should store money away when we believe the best thing to do to help the district is use some of that money from the reserves to boost businesses and help the local economy.
“Reserves are known as rainy day funds. Well, we are having an awful lot of rain in West Berkshire, and the council needs to put up a big umbrella here to protect the people from that rain.”
Mr Rendel said the money would be raised, rather than taken entirely from reserves, from alternative car parking charges, an overhaul of Shaw House, using a £402,000 Government instead of banking it, and cutting library staff.
The meeting will have extra spice given that protestors from West Berkshire Mencap will be in attendance to hear the debate.
The charity said it believed that the impact and potential risk to individuals and families would be “enormous”, and is in danger of costing the council far more than what it would save in the short term.
A reduction in Government funding over four years means the council must deal with a £25 million cent cut in funding, which translates to a £9 million reduction this year.
The budget proposals outline that £3 million would be staff savings, £2 million from services affecting the vulnerable, and £4 million in cuts to every council department from education to youth to those looking after services such as roads and waste.
The meeting will be held at the Market Street council offices in Newbury at 7pm.