What effects of cuts to the residents of Walsall?
- national cuts… VAT up to 20% which will affect everyone but proportionally more those on low and middle level incomes. There will be an increase in unemployment and further pressure on unemployment benefit costs.
- Cuts of EMA ( education maintenance allowance) this is an amount up to £30 a week paid to families where there is a 16 year old and family of low income to encourage the 16 year old to stay on at school for further education. There has also been an up to 30% rise in tuition fees which risks future generation of young people who go to university only with a wealthier family background.
- There will be a 3% cut in real terms to the NHS ( after inflation, increase in demands etc taken into account) Primary care trusts will go and 80% of spend will go into hands of local doctors who will buy your NHS care. Some GPs may do this well but experience from the last move to GP fund holding showed a lot of GPs were very bad at handling such a vast budget.
- There will be a cut in the police budget which will mean less police. Exact numbers are being discussed by the Chief constable but I cannot see such a level of cuts being implemented without a marked cut in beat officers.
- Cuts to the grant settlement to Walsall Council amount to 9% or £14M for 2011 budget on top of £10M of recent cuts this year. This will mean the loss of at least 450 Council staff plus the knock on affect on support services funded by the Council and supply services to the Council.. Those who get disability living allowance which has a mobility part to it will be expected to pay this towards transport costs. The levying of a cost of transport that was in a previous year’s budget will also be implemented for all. Care packages and respite care support will be cut to the statutory minimum. There will be much greater dependence on ‘telecare’.. detectors that send signal down telephone line to suggest that for example someone suffering from dementia has left the house and not returned for a while.
- Support for leisure centres and libraries is under threat. Some closures and further reduction in opening hours I am sure will be proposed. Swimming pools attached to schools, I am sure will suffer closures from the current level of 44 to around 6.
- The road safety budget ( education etc to young people about road safety ) has already been cut.
- Walsall are now the only Council using SERCO to deliver their education services… all other councils have not renewed their contract… does that tell us something about value for money? Walsall have signed up to another 12 years of SERCO who provide a wide range of services nationally such as transporting prisoners . I do not believe we are scrutinising their spend properly.
- We already contract out a number of services such as the road maintenance to Tarmac. I believe we pay far too much for their services in comparison to other Councils For example we are taking out a new recycling contract that will save over £1Million in a full year… does that not suggest we have been ripped off before?
- I believe that we have to reduce expenditure, but that there has been and continues to be large amounts of wasted or poor value expenditure, serious overlaps and duplication of services and costs, too little cross boundary cooperation, too little encouragement and support for local businesses to access contracts in the Walsall economy, a real threat to ‘spend a little to save a lot’ schemes which will build up much higher costs in the medium to long term. The cuts will fall more proportionally on the lower and middle earners than on the rich who also have the ability to organise their affairs to reduce payment. Cuts as severe as these could literally cost lives .
We already have 'meals on wheels' service ending contract and so replaced with a fascinating mix of sandwich bars, local cafes and other sources of meals for the frail and elderly. What many want is that visit from a friendly face ......mind you if you read the audit report on that firm done by the Council you can see how poor was their accounting reporting and how the Council was being exploited by a bad contract.
We will be looking very carefully at proposals and raise the issues where we can. However we could be cynical and say that all has been decided and it is just a matter of going through the motions... but let us at least try! We owe that to those who are vulnerable and handicapped and often get trampled under foot by those better equiped racing to the trough.
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