Wirral Services Cuts and Closures
The Green Party totally opposes the devastating cutbacks in community centres, libraries and leisure centres.
These cuts will have a huge impact on thousands of people across Wirral especially those on low incomes and with poor access to transport. The cuts clearly demonstrate that Wirral Council has failed in its duty to maintain public assets and promote social cohesion. Furthermore, we strongly believe that there are significant cost savings to be achieved which would help to protect these vital services. Finally, the supine nature of our elected representatives in accepting the recommendations of external consultants clearly shows the urgent need for a broader spectrum of representation on the council. Savage cuts reveal years of mismanagement
Steve Maddox has stated that the facilities to be closed are no longer fit for purpose. This can only be true if the Council has failed in its duty to maintain public infrastructure. The fiasco over Birkenhead Library shows that basic maintenance of our facilities has been ignored. It is not acceptable that local communities should lose their facilities while highly paid council officials who presided over such a deterioration retain their positions.
All of the mainstream political parties are complicit in this failure. Until recently they were all involved in overseeing the Council and have clearly failed. Moreover, the abject failure of the Conservative Party to offer any constructive measures to tackle this crisis confirms their incompetence.Significant cost savings are available to save services
Steve Maddox says that the Council has shed labour over many years and further savings are not available without cutting essential public services. The Green Party disagrees. As a matter of urgency Wirral Council should:
• Radically trim its corporate services activities taking into account the current economic realities. In particular, scrap the Special Initiatives Team which seems to specialise in schemes that divide communities.
• Introduce differential charging for the use of rooms in public buildings. At the moment businesses pay the same amount as community groups.
-Wage war on waste. In particular, energy costs could be radically pared simply by turning down the heating in Council run properties in line with responsible guidelines.
• Senior executives on Wirral Council should volunteer an immediate 20% pay cut. If this is not forthcoming the Council needs to seriously address the over spend on executive pay.
• Impose a freeze on outside consultants. The Council needs to make much better use of in-house expertise. That public funds were wasted on consultants for the Strategic Asset Review begs the question what are we paying Council Tax for.
• Impose prudent management of public funds. Taking risks with taxpayers money is not acceptable. The Green Party would only deposit funds in secure, socially sustainable financial organisations. We would never have risked £2m in the Icelandic banking system.
Lobby government and reform the council tax
When the government is bailing out banks and imposing wasteful cuts in VAT there is clearly an unanswerable case for increased Government funding to save vital services. Has Wirral Council even put the case to Central Government? The supine nature in which Labour and Liberal Democrats have enforced these cuts in services will no doubt leave many wondering what is the point in voting for them.
Ultimately, we urgently need to reform the Council Tax in line with Green Party policy (Replacement of Council Tax by Land Value Tax).
Finally, the Green Party see a worrying theme running through the way this Council does business, namely, decision making by unelected council executives. We want to see the elected representatives setting the local agenda. It is clear from the dismal failure of all our elected representatives over this matter that the only way to achieve this is by voting Green.
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