BUDGET proposals “tinker at the edges” of cuts, a councillor says.
And Clr Andrew Cooper, who heads up the Green Party and Valley Independents on Kirklees Council, says more people will experience poverty unless the Government backtracks on its funding cuts.
The Newsome councillor spoke ahead of Wednesday’s Budget meeting and says they are working on proposals which may secure the future of libraries.
The Examiner has already outlined the Labour Party proposals, which include £22m of cuts, reducing staffing budgets and changes to council services.
Yesterday we revealed the Liberal Democrat amendments which include deferring £190,000 cuts to the public rights of way service and contributing £100,000 to develop and support businesses in small commercial centres.
The Conservatives are yet to reveal their plans.
Clr Cooper spoke about his party’s thoughts on the budget, saying: “Our principle concern in having to strip £50m out of the council’s budget over the next three years is how to do that and not decimate a number of services.
“There needs to be a lot of re-thinking around staffing and how the council can operate.
“Our view is that what they’re doing is tinkering around the edges when these budget cuts are major.
“The Labour Party proposals are quite constrained when you consider they’ve had more cuts put on them by the Tory and Lib Dem Coalition Government.
“I don’t think any council in the country has much room for manoeuvre where the budget is concerned.”
Clr Cooper said the Green Party councillors and the Valley Independents were working on library proposals.
“Libraries are certainly high on our agenda.” he added. “We’ve got ideas which we are working on and don’t want to say too much about it until we’ve got everything in place. But they may bear fruit.”
Clr Cooper slammed the so-called bedroom tax, which sees people on housing benefit lose 14% if they have one spare room or 29% if they have two or more spare rooms.
Clr Cooper said: “One area that is of particular concern is that more people will be living in poverty, poor people will get poorer and it’s working people on low incomes who will bear the brunt of the cuts.
“These are the people already struggling to make ends meet.
“These (Government-led welfare changes) are just going to add to that and we as a council need to find a way to help those people.”
Asked if there was any sense behind the bedroom tax Clr Cooper said: “There’s no benefit I can see, it’s nonsense to make it compulsory. If we want to encourage people to move into a smaller property we should do that, but this isn’t the way to do it.”
He believes the 2013/14 budget proposals will give the council some “breathing space” to better understand the latest Government cuts.
“There will be fraughtness at the budget meeting, but I think that will come from a feeling of powerlessness in the face of funding cuts from the Government,” Clr Cooper added.
