It really is mind boggling isn’t it?
We pay a fortune to our council for public services only to find that now this year BCP council is all but bankrupt, and this is to be managed with a massive cut in public services.
BCP: Massive cuts in public services.
Not by a cut in salaries and allowances for council staff and councillors, or by a large-scale cut in the number of councillors, but by hitting our public services in our residential areas.
So excuse me, BCP council leaders, but is it not the practice in the business world when a business goes down to cut salaries and cut staffing numbers? The last thing you cut is the business services you are supposed to be providing.
And of all the cuts, however, can the council put on the line services including food standards, hygiene and safety, environmental health, animal welfare, noise and anti-social behaviour complaints, and community officers?
How shocking and terrible beyond belief!
I submit to BCP council that either the council halve the number of councillors or cut councillor allowances to cover necessary costs and no more. As it was up until the 1990s. £10 a week to cover travel costs. Not as it is now £12,000 a year, irrespective of time and work put in.
And while shelling out expensive part-time councillors, the council could also close down their hugely expensive marketing department. However, can we have a council closing down food standards, animal welfare, and health and safety for the general public, but think its fine to keep running a self-promoting marketing department?
Its terrible beyond belief. The truth is, it is the Tories who have predominately run local councils in Poole, Bournemouth, and Christchurch over the years, and then, from 2020, BCP council. This is clearly where the burden of responsibility lies. We can cite for example the hugely expensive Imax disaster ten years ago, which cost the council many millions of pounds in wasted money.
I am then only sorry for all the other parties now in the coalition dealing with the legacy of many years of financial waste and mismanagement.
But no less leadership and decisive action are now needed. Not fiddling around on the edges and having “consultations” on what is all too often the staggeringly obvious. The council needs to cut their costs of “being in business,” and that means allowances, the number of part-time councillors, officer salaries and perks, and departments that have no critical necessity. Â
If BCP seventy-five councillors accepted they are part-time volunteers and accepted basic allowances to cover actual costs, that would then save the council close to £1 million a year. Far more saving than any other proposed cuts in public services.
The exception is the cabinet, which needs ten members. They could then, not unlike the police commissioner, be elected full-time and on salary. Professional council leaders. Put an end to part-time councillors and all the politics. All too often, parties do nothing more than neutralising each other, costing us all a fortune.Â
To the point now where our council is bankrupt. And don’t we know the dreadful state of our infrastructure, not least our jammed, falling-apart roads? And all the other public services we have lost and are losing.
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