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.
Perhaps Cllr Merry will Fiddle with the salford philomonic,and watch Salford Burn. Yes i agree with your comments to a Degree,This had to come.I was allways led to belive the old saying of cutting your cloth. Possible we could ask for our £20million back or next time the China trip comes round we use Air miles? Stop putting out £2.8 million pounds on publicity. Who Knows one thing ian its not the opposition that as to say thats another fine mess you have got me in.
joe
Can you summarise the main “efficiency savings” in your latest alternative budget please Iain?
A one page at a glance comparison would be grand for starters.
The Lib Dem one here in Manchester is always worth a giggle and is put together and presented by a councillor who had to change jobs after 12 months gardening leave and who is always getting into scrapes. Interestingly it tends to promise things that they either don’t do elsewhere or that come unstuck elsewhere.
As the outgoing LD leader of Oldham said after losing his own seat and control in 2004 I think: “When in opposition you can say anything and do nothing. But when in power there are hard decisions to take and we weren’t up to it.”
Or words to that effect. Birmingham’s Lib-Con council of course got into a similar sort of budget problem - keeping to a budget. They blamed it on “too much rain” and “people living too long” which respectively reduced the takings at golf courses and crematoria.
Blogged about it at the time. They are also of course selling every scrap of land they can find - including publically used pieces.
intrested in joes comments about a decision supported by his leader. presumeably this means in time honoured lib dem fashion he will be campaigning to get rid of him! chris there is no problem with this years bufdget . the article was looking at next years projections which every authority is currently doing and I would guess projections in manchester will also at this stage reveal a gap. ian since the tory party every year will not allow the budget scruitny committee to examine your proposals it is clear that they are unlikely to be serious. There is no crunch meeting and there is no salford crisis just a recognition that it is likely to be a tight round for all local government.