If you are a Salford taxpayer, you won’t have enjoyed reading today’s story in the Manchester Evening News about next year’s budget:
CRUNCH talks will take place tomorrow over a looming financial crisis at Salford Council. The city is anticipating a £12m budget deficit when Whitehall announces later this week how much each local authority will get for the coming financial year.
Council leader John Merry insists it will not mean town hall cuts but tough “efficiency” savings. However, the Tory opposition have criticised the council for not making sufficient savings in previous years.
Since I was first elected to Salford City Council in 2004, my colleague Cllr Ian MacDonald has delivered three alternative budgets. Every year we have urged the Council to make efficiency savings and look at overstaffing, and every year we have been rebuffed by the ruling Labour Group who have continued to waste money as if it was going out of fashion. Last year, rather than look at genuine savings, the Council raided the reserves to prevent an inflation-busting Council Tax rise.
Now they have run out of options, but it will not be the Labour politicians who pay for the mess they have made. It will be the hard-working taxpayers in Salford who will have to fork out more for their Council Tax whilst suffering cuts in services.
Of course the Labour Government have not helped – they have piled extra responsibilities onto local councils without providing a funding base for those responsibilities – but the responsibility for the current financial mess lies firmly at the door of Council leader Cllr Merry and his predecessor Cllr Bill Hinds in his current role as lead member in charge of the budget. If Labour had accepted our alternative budget for the last three years, we would not have a looming black hole in the Council finances.
Tomorrow I have a meeting of the Budget Scrutiny Committee – which promises to be stormy. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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