We are facing yet more tough decisions
IN the next few months we have the difficult task of setting our budget for the coming year.
This is never easy, but in the face of continuing austerity we are facing yet more tough decisions as we try to protect and deliver frontline services while having to make substantial savings.
Despite recent announcements of extra funding, the fact remains that local authorities have once again suffered in the Welsh Government’s budget settlement and have been left to pick up the pieces.
For us, that means we have got to find savings of some £28 million over the next three years – £10 million of that within the next year alone.
Yet we are still determined to improve access to services and facilities, and investing in the continued growth of the county through capital programmes such as new schools for our children.
Hopefully by now, many of you will have already taken the opportunity to have your say in our budget consultation.
In doing so, you will see the very difficult choices we have to make. It is very important, in making these decisions, that we do so with the views of the public in mind.
If you haven’t already done so, please go to our website and take part – your views really do count. ALMOST every day, doomladen articles in the newspapers, and sour-faced “experts” on the telly warn us, with what always seems to be lip-smacking relish . . .
“The High Street is dead. Everyone in the world now buys everything online!”
If everyone is sat at home, hunched over their laptop or smartphone ordering everything from a 90in TV to an egg and cress sandwich (with the crusts cut off!) from a food delivery service, I have a question.
Whenever I visit a supermarket, exactly who are those people I have to queue behind for ages at the check-out?
Alien visitors from the far distant reaches of the galaxy looking for some “buy one get one free” bargains in the cheese aisle?
And when I venture into town to buy something, even if it’s only a coffee and a newspaper, there always seem to be plenty of people around.
Admittedly, during the week and outside of the school holidays, the majority of people out shopping, sat in coffee shops and restaurants and popping into travel agents to book their next holiday do tend to be retired.
The reason they, along with mums and their children, make up the majority of weekday shoppers is because most people of working age are at work.
And many of them are in shops!
Who-da thunk it?
That the high street is alive and well was proven recently when the winner of the 2018 Great British High Street Award (thanks to the judges being so impressed by its bustling main street lined with family-run stores) was please . .
Powys.
Residents love their town so much, 267 of them clubbed together to buy a pub, which was due to close down, rather than see a national chain store take it over.
It’s now been turned into three new independent shops.
So, the next time you go shopping, don’t go out of town. Go “into” town.
If enough of you do, this time next year, your town’s main street might even win the award. independent . . . drum roll, . Crickhowell in