Cuts to council services worth almost £15 million will be discussed this evening as councillors look to agree Caerphilly County Borough Council’s budget for 2014/15.
A rise in council tax of 3.9% will also be discussed which could bring the bill for an average Band D property to £954.78.
Proposed budget cuts include £2.1m to social services, £1.2m to education and £2.9m to environment.
Caerphilly County Borough Council is having to make the savings next year after the money it gets from Welsh Government was slashed by 3%.
Read our full report from the meeting tomorrow on caerphilly.observer
Extra charges and what could be cut in 2014/15
- Increase outdoor facility charges by 20% for three years, bringing in £60,000.
- Closing public toilets saving £24,000.
- Introduction of charges for garden waste collection services (£80,000).
- Review of off-street parking charges saving £30,000 in 2014/15.
- Review of leisure centre provision – including closures saving £20,000 in 2014/15, £66,000 in 2015/16 and £731,000 in 2016-17.
I wonder what alternative the opposition Plaid Cymru members will put forward. Thats right, absolutely nothing.
I would be very surprised if the Council decide anything like £15 million pounds CUTS to this obese organisation. They will likely trim it here and there on the debit side, but add millions of pounds to the credit side, to balance the books, made up of additional Council Tax and charges for various public services. So to say to balance the books the council will CUT 15 million is incorrect.
There are those who work at this authority, and, those who get elected to represent the ratepayers and effectively run the authority, who have already declared that they did not enter local government, either as officers or elected Councillors, to `dismantle everything they have worked so hard over the years to create` and there is a lot of merit in that view, but, the sad fact is that the, central, odious, Tory lib Dem government, have ALREADY made the cuts to Council budgets so all that is left is to `balance the books, so, to increase costs and charges and further pick the pockets of hard pressed local households is not what we elected our Councillors to do either. They have to find ways to CUT the fat or face the electorate at the next election to explain why ANY of the budget shortfall has to be paid by the ratepayers of Caerphilly to prop up an OBESE organisation which refuses to diet and trim its waist ( Waste).
Trefor is exactly right when he says. "So to say to balance the books the council will CUT 15 million is incorrect."
Nothing like this will be proposed or passed by council. The money to be saved, or replaced by higher charges and taxes, is less than 5% of the council budget. Regardless of whether the government is right or wrong to cut its provision to local authorities adjustment will have to be made. This adjustment is well within the capacity of a competent administrator from just about any large company in the UK. These administrators have been set far tougher targets and have achieved them.
A brief look at some of the peripheral charge increases reveal a lack of foresight. Just to uses one example, charges for garden waste collection. This is predicted to save £80,000 but I wager that the assumption has been made that the current quantity of waste continues to be collected. This of course will not happen. Faced with a charge a hard pressed household will simply compost soft garden waste and burn or take to the dump the harder waste, such as that from tree pruning. The other suggestions also do not stand scrutiny.
A better way to save more than £80,000 would be to scrap the pay structure introduced for senior officers last year. This has resulted in, so far, three senior officers each on more than £100,000 being suspended prior to court proceedings. We are all still paying these wages but the people involved are doing no work, in the case of two of them for almost a year. To cover the chief executive post Mr. Rosser has been recalled from retirement and we are all having to pay his salary too.
If any councillors believe that the public will meekly accept a tax rise of nearly 4%, when their own incomes are static or decreasing, they are living in a fantasy world. The public expects their elected members to act in their interests, not in the interests of highly paid employees and the empires they have built. If they do otherwise the ballot box will prove to be the ultimate veto of local authority profligacy.
Ive worked in 4 local authorities, in social services. I spot lots of ways to make savingss. First is the management structure. There's team managers, who are needed in managing front line staff, then there are service managers and then above them either a head of children's or a head of adult services maybe even backed by a deputy. Each local authority has an unnecessary amount of middle (service managers) management that micro manage the team managers and the overall service. The team managers are quite capable of managing their own teams and budgets and reporting straight to the head of social services. I can't see why that layer of middle management is there only as a form of close control.
Furthermore local authorities really need to push the direct payments agenda, there's probably a good few hundred thousand if not over a million to save there. They need to contract with organisations like Dewis or Diverse Cymru to manage the direct payment for vulnerable people. They also need to follow Cardiffs example and allow people who receive direct payments to pay family members, this will not only allieviate unemployment and family poverty, it will make people more open to accepting care and less likely to have frequent hospital admissions or admission to longer term care. This is particularly relevant with dementia sufferers as family are the best people to care for this group of people.
We need to pull back our obsession with performance indicators in this sector. In Children's and Adults services there is a focus on meeting an indicator and proving that you have achieve this through a massive amount of paperwork and complex IT systems. This disaffects staff, which leads people leaving the profession and in turn will effect the sustainability of care provided in both children's and adults. It will also prevent reliance on private sector agancies which local authorities use to plug gaps in employment and service provision that will result in further significant costs.
There's so much that can be done, however each local authority is full of top down senior management structures who are focused on protecting their interests which makes an organisation rigid,inflexible and overly bereaucratic. In this profession social workers are your front line, they are capable and well trained, managerialism makes they're job so much harder and deprofessionalises. Get shot of middle management, devolve power to team management and you'll see better results and save money.
Why should we be cutting any money from council services? It's the fraudulent and corrupt banking cartels of this world that have brought us to this economic situation; through their exploitation of fractional reserve banking. People need to realise the deception that is put upon them every day. Research "John Harris – its an illusion" and start waking up from the lies that are perpetuated on humanity daily.
They found 90 million to spend on bargoed, they built a cinema up there instead of a company doing it. Cut down on management, buffets for the so called elite and keep the toilets, community cafes and cleaners for the vulnerable. Sort out your priorities.
see:
youtube.com/watch?v=hSLFeJYIw4E