In a surprise outcome to the Warwickshire County Council budget debate at Shire Hall today, Conservative and Labour councillors collaborated to push through a joint budget, which the Liberal Democrats could not support.
The Lib Dem Group had set out its key priorities clearly ahead of the debate, which were to invest in and protect our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, and to invest in speeding up integration of health and social care services. The “compromise” Tory-Labour deal failed to meet any of these priorities. In particular:
- Conservatives and Labour have agreed to implement a savage programme of cuts to children’s centres budgets, taking out a further £1.1 million by April 2018. There is no published plan on how this will be achieved without causing irreparable harm to the vital children and family support services involved, where budgets have already been cut to the bone.
- Both major parties have turned their backs on the opportunity offered by central government to put an extra cash injection of £7.6 million into adult social care services over the next two years, by re-phasing the adult social precept rises over the next three years. Political and short term considerations have blinded them to the real difference this cash injection could have made.
The decision by the Conservative Group to spurn the central government offer is all the more surprising given the prominent national role of their leader, Cllr Seccombe, in lobbying for better funding of adult social care on behalf of the Local Government Association (LGA). While Lib Dems are fully behind the LGA call for proper central government funding, turning down this opportunity for extra funding to make a point to central government is perverse and does not serve the best interests of Warwickshire residents.
After the final vote, Lib Dem Group Leader Jerry Roodhouse said:
“This four-year term of the current Council is ending the way it started, with a Tory/Labour deal done behind closed doors. In 2013, Labour sat on their hands to let the Tories form a minority administration, while they grabbed all the well-paid chairs of committees. Now, in 2017, they’ve pushed through an unacceptable joint budget which they’ll have to justify to Warwickshire voters this May. Vote Blue get Red, and vote Red get Blue, it seems!”
Notes:
- The Conservative-Labour budget requires cuts in children’s centre budgets totalling £1,120,000 by April 2018. There is no published plan as to how this will be achieved. To achieve this aggressive timetable, public consultation will need to start immediately after the new Council is formed in May, decisions taken and fully implemented before the end of the 2017/18 financial year.
- The offer by the Government to allow councils to apply 3% adults social care precept rises in for the next two years, but then 0% in 2019/20, would have given WCC an extra cash injection of £7.6 million (£2.5m in 2017/18 and £5.1m in 2018/19) to spend on the transformation of hard pressed adult social care services. The impact on a Band D council tax payer in 2017/18 would have been 24p a week.