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Protecting Council jobs and services by using reserve funds: MP challenges B&NES
And if they won’t do so, he insists the council must explain to staff, and to council taxpayers who rely on services, exactly why not.
Mr Norris said: “Right now North East Somerset council tax payers will be asking B&NES a simple question: If a global recession isn’t the right time to use reserve funds to protect jobs and services, exactly when is the right time?”
He said there are parallels between the council’s annual budget-setting process and the type of budgeting families right across North East Somerset carry out month after month insisting that, in principle, reserves should be used to help protect jobs and services during a recession.
”The global recession has of course made things very tough, so councils up and down the country must be extremely clear they’re spending money on priorities,” he said. “Locally, Conservative-run B&NES faces big choices. Over the Christmas period it emerged the council started preparing for large-scale job cuts, issuing over 100 staff ‘at risk of redundancy’ letters – with many more likely to follow.
“But people know B&NES is sitting on multi-million pound ‘rainy day’ reserve funds, apparently refusing to use them.
“Residents who carefully plan their family finances know that at times when it’s possible to tuck some money away as savings, it’s there to be used in certain circumstances. When the boiler breaks down, for example, or to fall back on when finances get really tough.
“At my twice-weekly surgeries and regular coffee mornings, constituents keep on saying the same thing: reserves are there to be used, not sat upon. And they don’t understand B&NES’ apparent unwillingness to use the money now, when it’s needed. If B&NES won’t use significant reserve sums to protect jobs and services they need to explain exactly why not, very simply, in words of one syllable.
“Cynics might expect that B&NES’ attempts to reply will come from the council’s expensive P.R. operation, which costs council taxpayers over £300,000 per year. Or in their very expensive glossy ‘Council Connect’ magazine, that we all have to cough up tens of thousand of pounds a year for.
“The excuse that dipping into reserves just delays difficult choices until another year simply won’t wash with the hard-working people who face job and service cuts now during the recession.”
Noting the way the staff targeted for possible redundancy tend to be front-line staff, Mr Norris added: “It is to be hoped the Council will now make important major savings by finally dispensing with the services of its expensive £170,000-plus Chief Executive who has inexplicably been rewarded for his failures with two huge pay rises since 2007.” |
As
hundreds of front-line B&NES staff face ‘at risk of redundancy’
notices from the Conservative-run Council, North East Somerset MP Dan
Norris is urging B&NES to use its multi-million pound reserve funds
to help protect jobs and services (January 2010).