Cheadle and Gatley Lib Dems are moving
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by Lib Dem team on 12 August, 2014
Over the next two years (2015-17) Stockport Council has to reduce it’s controllable day-to-day spending by over 20% – savings of £39.5 million.
The Liberal Democrats have developed the Investing in Stockport (IIS) programme – rather than cutting existing services, we’ve turned it around. We started off looking at the outcomes we want to achieve, at the money we’d have left and then looked at how we could develop ways to deliver our outcomes.
Some things will be done very differently – in many cases we’re looking to work with public sector partners like the NHS, with other councils and with local residents to deliver services which the Council might in the past have done itself.
Last month we published our general approach to tackling the budget reductions.
Last week we published the detailed Lib Dem proposals for finding most of the savings (not quite all – we’ll be bringing forward further proposals in the coming months).
These are the Liberal Democrat group’s proposals for the budget. Stockport is Lib Dem-led but is a minority council and there’s nothing stopping other groups bringing forward their own proposals if they disagree with ours. Since anything significant may well need a consultation, that should really be done sooner rather than later. The final decisions will be made next February at Budget Full Council.
The Lib Dems have previously invited the other groups to work with us on developing the budget. The Independent group took that up, Labour and Tories have not yet done so, though the door remains open.
Today I’m publishing the business plans for each of the savings – see below. These come with a warning: they are working documents which will change over time. They set out all the detail we have about the proposals and will form the basis of consultations, and will be amended as they go on.
For convenience in displaying them here, I’ve merged all the business plans together into one PDF. You can download individual documents here.
5 Comments
How about reducing the number of councillors to two per area instead of the three?
Hi Bruce – that’s an option. We know it would save very little and we know that in the short termit would cost taxpayers money, but it remains an option that could be brought forward.
Wholeheartedly agree with the proposal.
BT – have you been reading Ones previous postings ? !
That said, oneself thinks ONE Councillor per seat would be sufficient, BUT, there may then be a case for a few more seats ? – like for Gatley only ??
Ergo – instead of 21 seats and 63 councillors, methinks 30 seats and 30 councillors would suffice.
Also, if the council elections were held only once every 5 years (as per the British and European Parliamentary elections) – turnout may increase ? If not – it will save the cost of these more regular and futile (in terms of turnout anyway) elections we ‘enjoy’ now !
We can all have our opinions on what setup would be best, and no doubt there will be lots of different views. That doesn’t change the basic fact that any change would save relatively little money and in the short term – certainly the two years of these proposals – would cost money.