Easy cut for county to make – passing it to another council
LANCASHIRE county council leader Geoff Driver has written to the Free Press letters page twice in recent weeks to correct what he saw as errors in this column.
Most recently, he wrote to challenge the suggestion that the Tory administration he leads had cut a £500,000 grant which used to go to Rossendale council to help support recycling.
Coun Driver pointed out the decision to cut the funding was actually taken by the previous Labour administration, which set the 2017/2018 budget shortly before losing the May county council elections last year.
This, of course, is true – but the Tories made a priority of reviewing the spending decisions made by Labour in their final budget and as a result funding was put back into subsidised bus routes, re-opening libraries and repairing roads (although Labour still query whether any new money was put into roads).
By my reckoning, if you review something and decide to push ahead with it, it’s as much your decision as the decision of those who made it originally, which is why I believe it’s the Tories at County Hall who should share the blame for the fact that if we want to have our garden bins in Rossendale emptied, we now have to pay for it.
It’s an easy cut for a county council to make – effectively passing a cut to another council.
It’s exactly what the government has been doing to councils since ‘austerity’ kicked in in 2010 – local councils have had to save far more proportionally than government departments.
Passing the buck when it comes to delivering cuts might be a political game politicians are happy to play, but the result is still the same for taxpayers – we end up paying more for less.