Shropshire Council cuts ‘will devastate many lives’
Friday 11th February 2011, 11:29AM GMT.
A leading Shropshire councillor today warned of the “devastating impact” on people’s lives from plans to save more than £30 million by scrapping projects across the county.
A variety of capital projects face the axe to generate savings of £19 million for Shropshire Council next year and a total saving of £31.5 million by 2014/15.
Labour group leader Alan Mosley said that £8 million for adult social care would also be coming out of the council’s revenue budget.
He said: “A new dawn has broken in Shropshire in that people can see for the first time the devastating impact of cuts on the quality of their life, and the services that are going to be slashed.
“Despite what is being said about frontline services being protected . . . vulnerable people are going to be seriously damaged.
“We will be identifying the true impact of the cuts and seeking to mitigate the effects.”
Council leader Keith Barrow said yesterday that it would be a “tough” decision to scrap the 50 schemes from the capital programme but claimed they had little choice in the face of unprecedented Government cutbacks.
He said some “aspiration projects” which were in the pipeline were no longer affordable, but that was not to say they were “off the agenda forever”.
But he also pointed out that despite the cuts, the council will still plough millions of pounds into projects in the county.
Capital spending will amount to almost £95 million in the 2010/11 financial year and just over £171 million from this year until 2014/15. Councillor Barrow said the spending was a clear indication of the council’s commitment to investing in the local economy.
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Perhaps Mr Mosley would like to address his concerns to Gordon Brown who is the person that ran up the country’s huge debt in the first place.
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You are a card Mr P. I trust your future is well provided for. Brian
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It was until Mr Brown raided the pension funds.
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And Cameron and Osborne will raid them more have no doubts about that!we are all in this together.
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They can’t mike theres’ nothing left
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Well Mr Mosley should tender his resignation from the Labour Party then if he feels so strongly as this is all as a result of Labours legacy.
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Nothing to do with the bankers then?hope you enjoy the tories term rusty flag by then.
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Keep burying your head in the sand with the rest of the socialists who created this mess, leftist joke.
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It not about left and right its just a worldwide fact the banking industry caused financial chaos and our Industry base is not strong enough to support our services.
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Stop playing politics Peasbody, it’s people’s quality of life at stake here and that’s the important thing. Oh, and a global recession exacerbated by irresponsible lending decisions made by bankers had nothing to do with state we’re in!?!
yeh, right…
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Much as I despise the current Shropshire Council administration – spending hundreds of thousands on new corporate directors, while cutting funding for the disabled on the other – it is far too easy for the Labour group to criticise, really.
As with the Labour party nationally, we have no idea what cuts they would have imposed had THEY got into power. Indeed, during the General Election campaign, the Labour party kept their cards very close to their chest as to what cuts they would make; but they’ll still be joining the Tories and nodding a lot of the cuts through. And it’s the same with the council. Would there have been much of a different in the scale and scope of the cuts in Shropshire with the Labour group in charge?
I doubt it.
As for Mr Peasbody, he is well known as something of a troll in this neighbourhood, who doesn’t always think before he writes. Please try and be understanding. Most of us realise that the economic situation is a bit more complex, where ‘blame’ can be attributed in lots of different ways. Mr Peasbody probably can’t grasp this in the same way that sane people can ;-)
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Have a look at the Shropshire Leaders webpage to see what the money is actually being spent on. Im more worried about the amount of people who are being asked to take a pay cut whist these high rolling directors are not. Shropshire Council is the biggest employer in shropshire – many families are going to feel the cuts through the changes to terms and conditions, never mind these projects!
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reasons to be cheerful
1 gordon brown overspends
2 banks nearly go bust, saved by more of our cash
3 tories and poodle party, decide to slash and burn economy and local economy instead of phasing it in
4 defecit too deep to carry out 3 so we are all to suffer
5 a possible silver lining is when lloyds/tsb, rbs/natwest and n/rock are sold off this may help the defecit. do not hold your breath though, as you and i will not get a chance to buy in. thanks all 3 parties for making our future neither orange or bright!!
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I was always a Labour voter until I moved to Shropshire and saw that here they were no different to the Tories and self interest was always motivation for the power of so called public service.
I have written to the council who claimed to want to know what areas we felt public money was being wasted and have had no reply.
I wrote to the paper but my letter was not published.
I have photographed the site of the Old Abbey station where there is just about one wall remaining and I am very concerned that what amounts to £300,000 could be ploughed back into council coffers if this minority interest group had not been allocated our money for a museum that there is no business plan nor strong proof of great public interest.
The fact that a councillor is the Chairman and a journalist who had a weekly column in the Chronicle newspaper for years is also a director may have contributed to the lack of public knowledge regarding this potential white elephant.
How can a socialist councillor stand by when money allocated to the homeless is cut, yet this project is now being pushed forward to be funded by the town councillors! Still taxpayers money either way.
I hope those who march on Saturday will stop and look at what is a potential lucrative development site for housing and question the merits of this railway folly. I cannot believe that anyone interested in railway history could not get adequate information about yet another railway company in the past who went bust from the internet.
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How come people keep accusing the government of being in bed with the banks and being funded by bankers when it was the previous government that bailed them out with billions of pounds and allowed them to recieve huge bonus’s for thirteen years.
Also could someone please explain to me why the previous ( working class ) government allowed the Rover group go under to the tune of £50,000,000 yet again bailed out the banks to the tune of billions.
By the way, i am not loyal to either party but would like some honest unpatronising answers from both sides if possible..
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The simple answer is unfortunately our economic base is heavily reliant on the financial sector not our Industrial base therefore if the banking industry went so would UK PLC
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It will devestate the lives mainly those of the fat cats who work at the county council yes it will but i dont care about a few hundred of them compared to tens of thousands of real working people paying their taxes who will all be better off without them
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if they chose too shropshire council leaders could stagger the cuts over 4/5 yrs by dipping into reserves or borrowing against future savings, by fronloading the cuts they are more likely to cause redundancy and thus higher costs, if they allowed 4 years natural wastage to occur, they would have turned over 10-20% of all staff anyway with no net cost and thus delivered there cuts in a much easier way which is long term cheaper too
by cutting to fast the tories are causing more pain than is needed and jeopardising our economic recovery locally and nationally
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surely floater, at the time we did not all want rovers but we did want money in our bank accounts and a roof overhead with a secure mortgage. this is why the last government pumped so much of our money into the banks, our banks, but the idiotic government never tightened up on banking bonus’s
there is a silver lining barclays bank announced yesterday £6 billion profits up 32%, when our manks natwet/rbs, lloyds/tsb/halifax and northern rock announce similar good results the government should sell them on giving you and i an opportunity to invest, i suspect by then we will not be in a financial position to invest.
i did have hopes of a condem coalition, especially when libdems brought in lower or no taxes for the low paid, but the defecit is too big for the condems to phase in the cuts, so it is cut and cut again time with most of us being in it together.
and yes labour should have found way to save rover, they were building great cars sadly with an outdated reputation,
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yes i agree the cuts should not be so harsh because we are sitting on a bout 100 billion worth of bank shares
ultimately they will be cashed in and pay off the national debt in one fell swoop
mind you tories never sell stuff at full value do they look at the balls up they made of british gas, british airways and british rail to name but a few
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