A shame to shun cross-council link

DEAR Editor, Tuesday saw Birmingham City Council hold its annual Budget meeting, this time coming only ten weeks before the first all up election in Birmingham since 2004. It also saw the Council at a crossroads. On the one hand about to spend over £700m hosting the Commonwealth Games, while on the other overspent by £49m this year despite increased corporate funding of £88m more than had been budgeted for.

This year’s budget represented a chance for the latest Labour council leader to set out a vision for how to modernise Birmingham City Council and ensure the delivery of quality services going forward. Sadly this did not happen.

It is also a great shame therefore that the council rejected the fully costed Conservative Group’s amendment that looked to share services with neighbouring councils and reduce non-essential spend to ensure better front line services are delivered.

One of those services it would have allowed investment in is street cleaning. We know Birmingham is facing an unprecedented growth in dumped litter and fly tipped rubbish across our streets. Our budget amendment put forward a plan to deliver cleaner streets including; extra street cleaning crews, tougher enforcement, mobile CCTV to catch people fly tipping, investment to ensure the weekly bin collection service remains affordable and much more.

Sadly the Labour administration rejected this chance to clean up our streets and instead voted through a further 12% cut in street cleaning over the next four years while putting up council tax yet again. Meaning by the end