Local authority debts.

Read in the paper that our council intends to slash just about everything. Jobs, refuse collection, civic buildings (but not the ones in the Tory areas), youth work, children’s services etc etc etc

Has their budget been cut by so much or have they been pissing it against the wall?

Depends what you class as ‘so much’, 9% per year for the next 3 years?

Not to mention that the cuts impact further as some local authorities have jobs that are funded from elsewhere, e.g. by the health authority and these budgets have been cut too.

Budget cuts by 25% in some cases for some departments.

There’ll be **** all left in Bury apart from the flower beds infront of the Town Hall at this rate.

Interesting that the boroughs facing the largest cuts are also the ones which have residents who are amongst the most in need of such services.

Big Society. We’re all in it together, apparently.

Welcome to the concept of the “parade of the bleeding stumps”

I think the general idea is that we need to readjust our expectations of what we will get from our health and social services. Obviously having the means to provide for yourself will be an advantage.

But we are in it together elfin.

We take the crap so they can take the dosh.

And yet we just sit and accept it…..

But management always aim downwards when cutting costs…

quick they’re turning the internets off!

I think the general idea is that we need to readjust our expectations of what we will get from our health and social services. Obviously having the means to provide for yourself will be an advantage.

Shame they won’t readjust their expections of how much money they take from us. For £1500 a year I want my bins emptying every ####ing week.

LOL, look on the brightside, they will probably have to cut back on trying to stop fly tipping.

If you ask people what they think is a reasonable price for rubbish collection, a lot of the time they’ll name a price that is more than a council spends per household.

Round here they spend about 33 quid per household per year

the cuts are front loaded so it is about 25 % in year – they have to cover redundnacy /ear;y retirement cost sof the staff made redundant. Despite what you hear most council costs are wages so jobs must go. They have reduced the area grants as well which gave additional money to deprieved areas so generally they are the worst hit…yes those that need it the most have had the biggest cuts those that need it the least have had the smallest cuts.
they have also reduced ring fencing of themoney they give. Say they give x to deliver x and y to deliver y the local council can cut x by 80 % and y by 20 if they wish locally. The postcode lottery will be enhanced or local choices will be made if you wish to use Tory language.
Front line services will be hit as the savings can only be made by less people who will do less work

HTS why do you need your bin emptying every week can you really not last for two weeks ? not trolling or having a dig but I have never understood how anyone cannot go 2 weeks. My recycling pile is always bigger after 2 weeks than actual waste.

Our council is having to borrow money to pay its staff off with redundancy, while floodlighting all its buildings all night,and privatising anything it can.

Our county council is cutting everything, worst thing of all is the 160 million they wasted on a guided bus that is two years and counting overdue opening.

Tijuana Taxi , is that oxford then.

Our county council is cutting everything, worst thing of all is the 160 million they wasted on a guided bus that is two years and counting overdue opening.

Could be worse, you could be living in Edinburgh where they’ve spent 4x that amount on a mile of tram line… 😯

Just checked my district council’s cuts

Hampshire County Council is also having to battle against 6m of cuts to its 660m budget.

East Hampshire is largely unaffected by the budget cuts. However, the cuts to Hampshire may mean it faces some belt-tightening -The main loss is the council will no longer receive 252,714 of a two-year 500,000 ‘LPSA2’ grant for things like tackling barriers to recruitment, helping people feel safer and improving transport.

Don’t think I’ll be manning the barricades just yet… 🙄

I’d be willing to bet they could save that much just by turning down the thermostat in all their offices by a degree!

Even better:

Havant has lost 20,000 from its cohesion fund grant, which would have been 75,000 before the reduction. The fund is used for council communications with the public.

I can hear the residents of Havant cheering as one, “Hurrah, less shit through the letterbox!”

I work in one of the worst hit Local Authorities.

The government would have you believe that most LAs have had their budgets cut by around 9%. That’s total nonsense. They are including money in that which wasn’t previously included (and hence the removal of ring fencing to justify/hide this) like Supporting People grants. For example, the cut for mine was announced at around 9%, but actually will be closer to 17% (£60m).

LAs like Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Nottingham, etc, which have a lot of social problems linked to deprivation are at the moment the main recipients of Supporting People grants. To decide how best to fairly distribute this money now the government has created a new formula. Bizarrely this has seen the amounts for those places fall dramatically at the same time as other LAs like Maidenhead and Windsor, and Dorset (which didn’t previously receive any Supporting People money) have gained. The headline we’re given is that on average the cuts in the Supporting People grant fell by 3%. This might be true, but some LAs have gained when they didn’t need to, and other LAs have had their grants cut by nearly 50%. For us this means something like a decrease from £22m to £12m which had been allocated for working with women and families on the receiving end of domestic violence, teen pregnancy, substance misuse, the homeless, etc, etc, etc.

Apologies if everyone else is aware of this last one – I wasn’t. They have used a buffering system so that the LAs with the least cuts support the LAs with the most cuts. This seems fair enough on the face of it. However… they’ve banded the LAs into four groups based on how badly hit they were!!! So the LA at the bottom of the group with the worst cuts is having to give some of its money to the LA at the top of that group, whilst the LA at the top of the group with the least cuts RECEIVES money from the LA at the bottom of that group!

This government doesn’t care about the poor and the vulnerable, and we’re certainly not ‘all in this together’ by any stretch of the imagination. They are handing out billions of pounds of tax breaks to multi nationals at the same time as taking away from those that need our help the most. And why would they care? Their experiences are only of wealth and privilege.

I voted Lib Dem at the last election (and always have done) but never again. What they are enabling these Tories to do is shameful.

HTS why do you need your bin emptying every week can you really not last for two weeks ? not trolling or having a dig but I have never understood how anyone cannot go 2 weeks. My recycling pile is always bigger after 2 weeks than actual waste.

2 kids in nappies in the house. Trust me our bins need emptying every week.

We live in a Lib Dem ward of a Tory controlled council and seem to be taking a disproportionate kicking compared to the Conservative areas. The next round of local elections could be interesting.

Junkyard – Member
They have reduced the area grants as well which gave additional money to deprieved areas so generally they are the worst hit…yes those that need it the most have had the biggest cuts those that need it the least have had the smallest cuts.

I’m in Scotland, so this bit doesn’t apply to me, but I was truly shocked when I found this out.

Well, my dad’s post is being ‘disestablished’, which must be about the worst but of HR-speak I’ve ever heard. Not that he cares much, he was going to retire anyway, and 40 years service probably gets him a very nice redundancy package.

More interesting is that the only person he line-manages keeps his job with the same duties, which as he was my dad’s post’s assistant, I’m not quite sure what he’ll be assisting!

It’s all going very wrong. The team I work in is being halved. No one seems to have taken into account that everyone is stretched to the max right now and has been for a long time. Better yet, they’re talking about a four day week. The problem is, no one has suggested any way of lowering public expectation of what we deliver. The managers arguing to be calling for the same output with a reduced budget and 80% of half a team.

I feel immune to such cuts, despite living only a mile or some from Harrythespider.
My next door neighbour lives on her own and spends a good 8 months out of the country. She lets us use her wheelie bin.

Is the neighbour that I saw in her pants?

is that oxford then

No, its Cambridge

druidh – Member

“Junkyard – Member
They have reduced the area grants as well which gave additional money to deprieved areas so generally they are the worst hit…yes those that need it the most have had the biggest cuts those that need it the least have had the smallest cuts”.

I’m in Scotland, so this bit doesn’t apply to me, but I was truly shocked when I found this out.

Why were you shocked ? Its the usual tactic – tailor cuts so as your core support is not affected.

2 kids in nappies in the house. Trust me our bins need emptying every week

been there and done it and still did not need my bins emptying every week and still generated more recycling than watse – did use reusable nappies though. No offence but I think they do it to make peole like you think a bit more about the waste you produce.
Not emptying your bin seems to be the only way to get peole to note ..bit like huge oil prices are the only thing taht will make peole thinka about car use

peole like you

?

peole like you

yeah, YOU. Stop feeding your kids curry and Holts’ Bitter. Or something.

The recycling bin will get emptied every 4 weeks, so if people like HIM are recycling more than waste, how’s that going to work?

You’ll be suggesting he drives the waste to the recycling place next, I expect. You know, in his car.

Today liverpool big demonstration about the cuts 1500 jobs to be abolished, 500 eople bothered to turn up according to the local news.

Seems as if local government couldnt even orgainise a protest.

maybe the rest of them were all having a clear-out before the fortnightly bin collections kick in.

that is an excellent explanation of why you generate this much waste – well done very powerful use of logic by you and your mate 🙄

No i would suggest people like you – ones who fill your bins too quickly like that was not clear- could perhaps generate less waste if you gave it some thought/effort. This is hardly me launching in to some sort of personal attack of you or your parenting – like I could comment on either.
Perhaps waste genneration may just be something you do have influence over and something you could change? Not sure why you took such umbrage to this suggestion tbh.

Has their budget been cut by so much or have they been pissing it against the wall?

Their budget’s been cut, massively. OH works in local government so I’ve got a direct feed into what’s going on. Massive layoffs all over the place.

As you have cast judgement without knowing the facts.

1) We reycle
2) We have a council sponsored compost bin. We took part in trial to monitor waste levels.
3) About the only thing that goes in the bin is nappies which after 2 weeks are a bit ripe.

[edit]removed the last bit because I can’t be arsed arguing

however. Despite us getting the composter and all the information about reporting how much went in it nobody bothered to get back to us.

£1500 per annum. Empty my bin.

and don’t close the facilities in the labour/lib dem wards to prop up the ones in the tory wards that nobody bloody uses. We’re all in this together apparently.

Right. Friends at the door and beers in the fridge. I’m off.

Bottles will be in the blue bin tomorrow.

Really calm down is this such a sensitive issue you need to get abusive ?
I meant no offence and i dont know why you are so angered about this.
This might have been a clue

not trolling or having a dig but I have never understood how anyone cannot go 2 weeks.

All I have learnt from this interchange is that people who stuggle to do this get angry if you ask them about it.
EDIT: I wrote that after reading only your first post the secong two were more the HTS I recognise
Seriously I was not having a dig so sorry if it came across as such.

I think it’s just the ‘people like you’ bit TBH.
and I’m not sure that anyone’s got angry or abusive either.