THE LABOUR LEADER of Thurrock Council, cllr John Kent gives his reaction to the cuts agreed last night.
“Months of careful work was thrown into chaos by Thurrock Tories on Tuesday night — simply to score daft political points.
Cllr John Kent, Leader of Thurrock Council, said after Tuesday’s full council meeting: “The Tories and independent councillors thought that saving Thurrock residents less than two-and-a-half pounds a year was more valuable than a sensible, well worked out budget.”
He said: “I told Tuesday’s meeting that we had looked carefully at a quarter of one percent Council Tax decrease and found that it would only save a Band D Council tax payer £2.79 a year while costing the council £145,000.
“Most homes in Thurrock are Band C and below, so that’s even less of a saving — and that doesn’t include those who live alone and get the 25 per cent discount!
“We simply do not believe this to be prudent or responsible in the current economic climate – it was this type of irresponsible budget setting that led to Thurrock’s £6 million Tory overspend last year.
“What’s worse is that they quite obviously haven’t thought things through.
“We’d already said that we’d found a way to avoid having to cut the residual waste collections to fortnightly, so that’s no new saving.
“Outrageously they voted to close the Thurrock Adult Community College in Grays – with no consultation with the staff or learners – and leave others to pick up the pieces.
“They want to spend £228,000 on PCSOs — or ‘plastic policemen’ as one Tory called them — but we already know that we don’t have our full complement of PCSOs. Our proposed cut wouldn’t have affected the number of police officers or PCSOs on our streets one jot!
“And when you look at their so-called new savings things not only don’t get any better they show that the Tories haven’t been listening to us.
“Let’s look at a few of them. We now have to look at saving £20,000 to ‘package up leisure related facilities and community halls and outsource to specialist external organisations or trusts’.
“The Tory leader was at our cabinet meeting a couple of weeks ago when I said we were already involved in talks with a range of potential partners regarding leisure and libraries, but these negotiations take time and the council now doesn’t have that time.
“Now, somehow, we have less than four weeks to implement the Conservative / independent plan to privatise Grays Beach and the Thameside complex and cut back on our support to community halls.
“We now have to save £110,000 by finding staff who want to work and get paid for four days a week instead of five. We’ve spent the last nine months telling staff we’re looking for new ways to save money. If they wanted to do this, they would have told us.
“Achieving ‘TRANSVOL and bus service complementation efficiencies’ — we’ve already looked at and achieved this in the £200,000 reduction of the transport budget; cutting out the £2,000 for every member to be able to spend in their own wards — despite the impassioned plea from Tory councillor Phil Anderson for devolved budgets (yes, he voted for the cut.)
Cllr Kent said: “There’s more, but what it comes down to is this: In May, we took over a council that had been effectively bankrupted by the previous Tory administration with £2 million in reserves and losing £500,000 every month — you do the maths.
“Our hard work has guaranteed around £5 million is reserves, minimal loss of services — no libraries disappear, no reduction in the criteria people need to access adult social care — and all that in the face of £12 million cuts imposed by the Tory-led government.
“Clearly some of these Conservative proposals have merit, but they needed careful consideration by a cross-party group of councillors.
“But consideration and common sense went out the window on Tuesday night. Instead we are now stuck with ill-thought out, headline-seeking and political point-scoring measures that we have to try and work through — and all for two-and-a-half quid a year each.”
All this from a person who sat on the cabinet of the previous Labour administration when there were 20 million in reserves in 2000 but, only 6 million in 2004 who also had a part in the 48% council tax increase over 4 years.
I would actually say well done to the Tories for coming up with an alternative budget unlike last year where there was no alternative offered to the Tory budget just, “we don’t like this cut, ask cabinet to come back with something else”
The Tories should have gone further and, made a larger reduction to the council tax.
What a hypocrite John Kent is, his opening comments to this article “simply to score daft political points” did make me smile, all this from a party that has tried to score political points at every juncture.
As has been stated by truth_not_lies its is good to see that an alternative budget was tabled, the only downside with the Tory plan is the closure of the Adult Education Centre, surely this can be saved???
Thurrock has, in the recent past, been poorly served by its elected representatives and, in truth, neither Labour nor Conservative parties have covered themselves in glory. Lately, however, the Conservatives actually seem to have cottoned on to the idea that they should represent the people of this borough and not their parliamentary party. For instance, local tories are helping residents of Belhus with their Howard Tenens issue and local Tories are fighting the fight at Basildon Hospital. Now we hear that the Tories have actually come up with an alternative budget to that of Labour and one which will shave a couple of quid off the council tax. Now that’s what I call proper politics! Labours response? To moan about the Tory proposals and suggest that saving just a few pounds is hardly worth the effort. It might only be a couple of quid Mr Kent but it’s MY couple of quid and I am pleased that at least one party in Thurrock is making an attempt to cut my costs. There will always be arguments about what should have been cut and what shouldn’t have been and not everybody will be winners but at least this is a start.
gray64. i am surprised as to why the Conservatives have supported the Howard Tenens issue. It is after all an illegal planning issue. Thurrock councils planning meeting are in a great big pile of something due to the illegal lorry park in West Turrock . What makes the Howard Tenens one different. Ilegal is illegal and no planning permission is no planning permission. Simple.
Sting, are you a Politician? I have no feelings one way or the other over the Howard Tenens issue, I neither live in Belhus nor know any of the people involved. What information I do have comes from yourthurrock and the Gazette and what I have read suggests that, whatever the rights and wrongs of the issue, there are a fair few folk that want things changed to make their lives better. From what I have read, the local Belhus councillors are doing precious little to help the residents affected. Now it so happens that the Councillors concerned are Labour and it also happens that the Councillors that are trying to help are Tory but all that really matters is that somebody is trying to help. Politicians have to realise that they are elected to represent the people that vote for them and not their own political parties. It may be that the issues can’t be resolved but surely you can’t object to somebody at least trying to resolve them?
But you do have feelings about it and i do have an issue with planning in the borough. West Thurrock has an illegal lorry park that nobody has dealt with for years – St Cleres in Stanford will be getting houses its local community strongly object to – Tenens has no permission for its lorries to be there. Lorries park all over the borough with nobody stopping them, industial areas become parks over night.. Dubai Ports is being built at the detriment of local residents and wildlife. Tilbury is going to get a 24 hour Logistics park built on its greenbelt land and backing onto the residents bedrooms. So it is not Tenens in particular it is one thing that makes my blood boil.
Oh i forgot to say. No i am not – but i could be coming to a street near you very soon.
Getting politicians to actually support their community is something I care about. From what I can make out, the Tenens issue is a little unusual in that their plan has the support of the locals, something which is not the case elsewhere. Where I can agree with you is on the planning for the rest of the borough, especially when it comes to the vast amount of housing being planned. We both know that the borough is already at breaking point with lack of school places, access to doctors, poor infrastructure etc etc and that piling more houses in will only make matters worse. However, I think most of the pressure for the new development comes from central Government and there is not much Councillors can do to stop it.
So in simple terms it seems that to give me £2.50 the Tories are scrapping the adult education college. If that is the value of their effort at attempting to cut costs then they really should not have bothered.
Reading both news posts on this story, it seems to me that Thurrock Tories have sacrificed our ability to access some further education for political point scoring.
Still if we keep the populace in a position of stupidity they are more likely to believe what we say and vote for us…
so the tories have managed to push through their proposals eh?
If they were such good why didn’t they do it when they were in control of the council?
The pirvatisaion of grays beach is unworkable,the closure of the adult comunity college is a slap in the face to people genuinly trying to improve themselves and improve their chances of finding a job ect and thats just them 2 things !!!
It was the tories idea to have volunteers helping out in libaries and not one person stepped forward to do it so how do the expect people to step forward to do the other things they want covered.
I hope people remember in the coming elections that these are tory proposals because i can guarantee that when this blows up in our faces the tories will blamethe current administration and magically forget it was their proposals that have done it .