THURROCK Council Taxpayers will see a small drop in their bills after Conservatives sprang a coup on the ruling Labour group and scuppered their budget plans.
Labour were hoping to push through a spending programme of £118,396,000 at Tuesday’s full Council meeting but were ambushed by a Tory amendment which cut the bill by £145,000 and foiled Labour plans to axe spending on Police Community Support Officers and cut street cleaning.
They also forced through a cut in the Council Tax of 0.25 per cent rather than leaving it at its present level as Labour planned.
Conservative leader Garry Hague put forward the changes to Labour’s budget and won the support of three key independents, Cllrs Barry Palmer, John Purkiss and Stuart St Clair-Haslam after saying: “We believe Labour have made serious mistakes in proposing to cut key front line services that are highly valued by our residents.
“Whilst we support the need to make efficiency savings to deal with the financial crisis left by the Labour Government, the choices as to how, where and how the savings are made are fundamentally the responsibility of the Labour administration – they cannot blame the Coalition Government for where they have let the axe fall.
“In opposition we cannot re-engineer the Council’s entire budget, that’s something we will progress once back in control to ensure residents get the services they need at an affordable cost.
“But we are proposing an alternative budget tonight to protect key frontline services.”
Under the Tories’ plans the number of councillor portfolio holders will be cut from ten to eight, a voluntary scheme will be introduced for Council staff to work four instead of five days with a salary reduction, a scheme to give councillors £2,000 each to spend on their wards will be scrapped and it is likely that the running of Grays Beach – and possibly the Thameside Theatre – will be put out to private tender.
The Tories also plan to close and sell Thurrock’s Adult Community College and locate its courses to a new Further and Higher Education campus in Grays – though plans for that are hardly off the drawing board and its financing is currently under review.
The Conservatives also plan to keep all local waste bin collections weekly, though that had already been conceded by Labour leader John Kent in his outlining of the his budget.
He had said: “We have listened to what people have said and worked to find the money to not move to a fortnightly residual waste collection.”
That was probably the only concession he expected to make, but found himself outgunned by the Council’s floating independents as the vote on the Conservative amendments to the budget was won 24-21.
Cllr Kent derided the Conservative plans after they were forced through, saying: “On the Council Tax I said that we examined a quarter of one percent decrease and found that it would only save a Band D Council tax payer £2.79 a year whilst costing the council £145k.
“We do not believe this to be prudent or responsible in the current climate – it was this type of irresponsible budget setting that contributed to a six million pounds overspend last year.”
In his opening address, Cllr Kent had turned on the Tories, saying his group had inherited a mess.
He said: “This is a Budget that has been prepared in unprecedented circumstances, so let me speak plainly about the situation.
“The first thing to say is that this time last year we – cross party – agreed a budget for the current year that included nine million pounds worth of cuts. Then in June the Conservative led government announced £6 billion of in year public spending cuts. The effect of that on us here in Thurrock was to take £4m of promised funding – forcing us into bringing forward a package of savings to make up the shortfall. That is £13m taken out of the council’s budget in one year. Tonight we have to agree further savings of around £10m.
“This is a totally unprecedented situation. Some councils are fortunate to have sufficient reserves to help cushion the blow. That is not a luxury that we have.
“We inherited an economic situation here in Thurrock where £6m had been taken out of reserves – in one year – to prop up the budget. Had we carried on over spending as freely as our predecessors, at a rate of half a million pounds a month with just that £2m in reserves the Council would have run out of money by last September.”
In 2004, after putting council tax up by 48% over 4 years, the Conservatives inherited reserves of 6 million which were at 20 million just 4 years earlier so, lets get this into perspective.
Lets not get hung up on the reserves issue here – lets look at what exactly Thurrock residents got out of last night.
They got a 0.25% cut in their council tax – to save the sums this works out at less than £2.50 per YEAR for a band A, less if they are a single and get the 25% reduction. Not even a fast food take away once a year.
They reinstated the PCSO’s that were never going to get made redundant anyway because Thurrock police has a number of vacant positons anyway. Everybody knew this had been the case for several months and thats why after talking to the police the cut was made.
Then came the alternative budget savings from Gary ‘ We wont hit front line services’ Hague. This he had had assured everybody before the meeting, the press included. As he progressed with his budget proposals this is what he got through propped up by the ‘Tory in disguise’ East Tilbury Independents. One concerned conservative and the Mayor absteined. BNP councillor didnt even bother to turn up as per usual.
Office staff are to be asked to work 4 days instead of 5 and have their salaries reduced accordingly. – Not front line then Gary?
Housing staff to be reduced by £380.000 in the next financial year. No rhyme or reason. Not a problem for front line services then Gary?
Grays Park to be outsourced to a specialist external organisation. Not Big society offering it to the residents then? External orgs need to make money, will they start charging to use the free facilities? Not front line residents services then Gary? Has anybody thought about procurement and the staff who work there? They r not front line then Gary? perhaps a job for Impulse?
Thameside Theatre to be put out to an external organisation? Impulse? Staff consulted before your proposal? Tupe or redundancy? Procurement issues? Not considered to be front line services Gary? NO Big Society here either.
Villlage halls to be packaged up and outsourced to the specialist external organisation. This external org is doing very well here. What about THE BIG SOCIETY and getting communities to apply for grants and take over the village halls. Mr Pickles would have loved you had you thought of this one. Will the extrnal org put up the price of hire to cover their costs, of course they will. Not hitting front line services and communities then Gary?
Shut down and sell off Adult Community College. Land will be sold to a developer within the year. Consulted with staff and students? Got a buyer in mind cos Thurrock is full of spaces for new houses. No Gary you didnt did you? Not front line services then Gary? not hitting residents leisure time then Gary?
So what we now have is a whole set of cuts that WILL hit front line services, and hit them hard. Perhaps the East Tilbury councillors would like to tell their residents why they supported these front line cuts when they are out campaigning for the elections in May.
They campaigned about the locking of the gates at Coalhouse fort – if the Tories can privatise Grays Beach they can certainly privatise Coalhouse Fort to a external organisation. Be warned.
It appears that truth_not_lies is saying that just because Labour allowed the council reserves to dwindle it was okay for the conservatives to keep doing so.
The most irritating thing about the reserves issue was how one of the Conservative councillors from Stanford immediately started bleeting on about how Labour must increase the level of reserves the moment his party was out of Office.
Outside of the closure of the adult education college, the biggest cut they are proposing seems to be £110,000 through asking council staff to volunteer for a 4 day week. In this current economic climate does it seem likely that the staff will do this?
It also seems unlikely that any group taking over Grays Beach and the Thameside would be able to do that without increasing access charges by at least the £2.50 – £3.00 we all could be saving.
Great work, everyone, well done.
I watched with amazement on Wednesday evening as Thurrock Conservatives along with the Tories in disguise from East Tilbury forced through the amendments to the proposed council budget presented by the Labour group.
How can they have the audacity to assume that council office staff, in significant numbers to raise their proposed saving of £110,000, will want to work a four day week.
As for the marvellous saving of less than £3 on my council tax i thought i might take my family to Grays beach for a few hours. Though i doubt if i will be able to afford it once the private company that the tories want to give it to start charging the prices they need to make there profit margins. Because that is all they will care about , not if the people of Thurrock have a safe , affordable and well run beachside park to visit. Or if i am really lucky i might be able to afford to buy an icecream during the interval of a film or show at the Thameside Theatre. Thats if i will ever be able to afford to go there again once the private company that the Tories want to run the complex take over.
Also lets look at the great victory the tories won over the PCSO service(or plastic policeman as one tory cllr wished to call them). It touched my heart the way they defended the need for these PCSO to stay on ouur streets. It is a shame that they cannot have a word with there own coalition government who are slashing police budgets across the country and causing the loss of some 500 plus police posts in Essex alone.The actual cut in the service proposed in the Labour budget only reduced the funding by the amount of vacant positions within the PCSO service therefore Thurrock would have seen no less PCSO on the beat than we have know.
The circus on Wednesday ringmasterd by Gary Hauge (though at times he looked more like a clown than a ringmaster) was just a blatant attempt to score political points and not for the benefit of Thurrock residents.I hope the electorate are not fooled by this showmanship and in May send a clear message to the Tories that we do not want showboat polotics, we want hard working councillors who have the interest of the residents of Thurrock at heart.
Apologies to all for saying Wednesday evening , when in fact it was a Tuesday, I am just so used to Full Council meetings being on Wednesdays.