Bad days for Bolsover

On the 21^st December the Government issued its grant allocations and they contained a real sting in the tail for Bolsover. The Council is facing cuts of up to 35%. Here’s the data from the Local Government Chronicle:

Council	2013-14 % change	Cumulative % change 2013-14 to 2014-15
Great Yarmouth*	-15%	-39%
Burnley*	-15%	-38%
Barrow-in-Furness*	-14%	-36%
Bolsover*	-14%	-35%
Hyndburn*	-13%	-34%
Pendle*	-15%	-33%
Hastings*	-15%	-33%
Chesterfield	-14%	-25%
Preston	-13%	-24%
Copeland	-10%	-21%

 

Those Councils asterixed have been offered an “efficiency grant” which would reduce these losses. However payment of the grant in 2014/15 will depend on the Councils performance in 2013/14 and that could be a problem for Bolsover.

What does it mean? – Well I think it means 3 things:

1.   There is no excuse for waste inefficiency and waste. How can anyone fight against these cuts if our own Council is frittering money away? There are over 400 Councils in the country and only two failed their value for money assessment, guess what one of those was Bolsover. I think this is now the fourth or the fifth “last chance” saloon message delivered by External Audit, will it be acted on this time?

2.   There has to be an end to waste and extravagance. Have a look at the table again, just above Bolsover is Barrow in Furness, also a Labour dominated Council. But they couldn’t be more different in their priorities. The Basic Allowance paid to the Councillors of Barrow is just £2,120, in Bolsover it is well over four times higher. You don’t need to be an accountant to know which of these Councils will have to wield the largest axe. And it doesn’t end there. For two years the leader of Bolsover, Clr Eion Watts, combined the highest basic allowance of any District Councillor in the country with the highest claim of travel and subsistence expenditure of any District Councillor in Derbyshire. A double whammy indeed. In 2009/10 his claim for travelling and subsistence alone was over £7,500 by comparison the total claims for travelling and subsistence from all 48 Councillors in Chesterfield (also in the above table) was just £3,811!

3  There is no point in saving the Council if we sack the District of all its assets to pay for it. In a lesson it learnt from Thatcher the Council is staging its own fire sale of assets. Bolsover’s public toilet went last year; Sherwood Lodge and Green are due to be buried in tarmac soon and if the Labour members of the Safe and Inclusive Scrutiny Committee get there way all the Community Houses will be closed shortly. Enough is enough the coalition is doing enough damage already it doesn’t need any help from the Labour councillors on Bolsover.