Last night was the regular “Full” meeting of Bury Council. This is where all 51 councillors meet together, about six times a year.

The meetings seem to get more confrontational all the time, and last night last no exception. We finished at 10.20pm, with still loads of business that hadn’t been concluded.

Leaders Statement
The most important pieces of news came in a special statement from the (Conservative) Council Leader. This highlighted the significant savings that will need to be made by the Council over the coming years, as its part of the public sector savings that are necessary following the deficit built up by the last Labour Government.

Around £7 million a year, for four years, will need to be saved – a very scary 25% of the variable part of the Council’s budget (broadly everything after schools and fixed charges).

It is going to be a huge challenge. Our view, as the Liberal Democrat Group is that this issue is too big for party bickering, and we should have an all-party approach that asks the people of Bury what they want the future of Bury Council services to look like, so that these can best meet people’s wants and needs in the future.

Here’s our statement. Here is the statement on “budgetary transformation” from Bury Council.

The next big news was the statement the the Council’s Chief Executive, Mark Sanders is to leave the Authority as an early retirement. This had been agreed prior to the meeting at a meeting I had attended as a Group Leader.

Mark had worked for the Authority for nine years and it will be really sad to see him go. In going at this time he is setting an example “from the top” of the savings that need to be made, which will be significant as a result of his departure.

Questions to the Leader
We then moved to questions to the Leader – written first (30 minutes) then verbal (20 minutes).
I asked three questions:
– around LAP funding – where I asked about what plans there were to find alternative sources of funding for the important “LAP Grants”
– around minimum price alcohol – supporting the discussions in Greater Manchester about introducing a minimum price for alcohol
– around cuts – asking the leader if cooperation between different statutory partners in Bury will be happening
We get the written answers to questions after a week or so which I will post here as always.

Motions
There then followed three motions:

Fairfield Children’s Services
Because I am a Non-Executive Director of Pennine Acute NHS Trust I couldn’t take part in this debate and had to sit outside – this is called a “Prejudicial Interest”. At Pennine we arn’t part of the decision about whether there will be maternity and children’s services at Fairfield, but we are very much affected by the outcome of the decision.

The end result was all-party agreement that there should be services at Fairfield.

Local Area Partnership Grants

Again all-Party support (after a Liberal Democrat Group amendment which allowed us all to support it!) for this which has asked a Scrutiny Committee to investigate how we can restore these grants. Here is our statement on this.

Electoral Registration
More all-party support for a motion on ensuring electoral registration.

Our motion (on-renewable energy sources) was “timed out” – but there is always another day!

Any questions please ask!

Tim

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