Liberal Democrats Oppose Cuts in Services

1.15.00pm GMT Tue 24th Jan 2006

The proposals include closing 15 youth centres and 6 libraries as well as cutting bus services.

At the County Council meeting today the Liberal Democrats opposed proposals to cut services. The proposals were made in a report prepared by consultants for the Business Delivery Review commissioned by the Conservative administration to find £50 million of savings in County Council expenditure. Councillor Hazel Watson, Leader of the Liberal Democrats on Surrey County Council said: "This Review was supposed to identify savings without cutting frontline services. Unfortunately it has failed. The proposals include closing 15 youth centres and 6 libraries as well as cutting bus services. On top of this, the proposals drastically reduce the number of highways staff, which is likely to worsen the ability of highways to deal with problems promptly.

The proposals do the opposite of what Surrey residents have requested. Residents want to protect local libraries, want more rather than less safe places for young people to meet and want the condition of the roads and footways to be improved. Surrey residents are already justified in being dissatisfied with Surrey's inadequate bus services.

The Review has not tackled the council's high agency costs. The council should be implementing recruitment and retention policies including key worker housing policies, rather than paying agency staff double to do the same job.

The Review does little to improve the effectiveness and value for money of the Council's major contracts, which is a disappointment. Also there is nothing to reduce energy costs by improving the energy efficiency of the Council's buildings. Energy costs are expected to rise by 40% in the coming year, which will increase our costs by another £2m.

Many of the timescales are unrealistic and unachievable. Therefore I believe that the level of savings proposed is unachievable in the next financial year. Also, many of the figures are only estimates of savings, because they require further work to quantify them.

The scale of change proposed, including the drastic changes to the Council's structure and staffing organisation, is too great for the organisation to cope with in one go without adversely affecting services. I believe that services are already suffering as a result.

I think that the administration has a lot to answer for. They should be taking responsibility for their inaction, not simply passing the blame on to the Government or hiding behind consultants and just going along with whatever they propose."