Cllr David Westley, said:
Yet again Labour increased Council Tax by the maximum 2.99%. Compare this to South Ribble Council who have frozen Council tax for a second year.
Labour only balanced the budget by again raiding reserves, £1.8M this year and a further £0.6M next year.
The combined projected deficit for the following 2 years is a further £2.7M but reserves by then will have been exhausted.
The projected deficit equates to a 40% increase in Council Tax increase or the loss of 60 employees and this is after assuming that 24 temporary staff positions will not be retained.
Nothing has been done regarding shared services. Labour said they hadn’t been able to reach agreement with other councils yet Chorley and South Ribble councils have saved hundreds of thousands of pounds a year each.
There were no cross party discussions about doing something about the budget deficit, as there had been for the previous 2 years. Labour control the Budget Committee where such discussions would take place. The committee hasn’t met this year. Labour cancelled the meeting scheduled for January.
Labour are just hoping something turns up & have no policies or ideas for dealing with the deficit. This failure will have a disastrous effect on the frontline services.
