Wednesday night was Bury’s Full Council meeting. This was the last full meeting of the Council before the local elections on 5th May 2011. Here’s what happened:

Apology from the Leader of the Labour Group
The Bury’s Labour Leader Cllr Mike Connolly read out an apology for not declaring an interest at a meeting of the Council last year. The issue was that he had proposed a motion about employment issues at Bury Council, without declaring that his partner works for the Council. A Standards Committee hearing had resolved that he had to read out an apology to the Council meeting.

Transformation Strategy
This was the most significant issue of the evening. The Conservative administration of Bury Council had proposed a strategy to deal with the savings that the Council is going to have to make NEXT year and the year after. This had been consulted on, and agreed by the Council Leader, but he was seeking the support of the whole council.

We had been very concerned about the press coverage that this issue had received, in particular the story that this was about “privatisation” of Council services. We would never support the wholesale privatisation of Council services.

Thankfully the Council had, to some extent, listented to the consultation and had made a very significant change to the first commitment of the strategy, which previously had implied that the council wouldn’t be providing services, to a much more balanced view where a whole range of options would be considered.

The Liberal Democrat Group Abstained in the motion. I spoke on behalf of the Group and made the following important points which explain why were both unable to in favour or against.

• We regognised that something has to be done. If the Council does not review how it does things, then next February we will have to agree £5 million worth of cuts to council services. In February 2013 we will have to agree another £7 million of cuts to council services. The further you cut services the harder it gets, so these will be horrible cuts in local services. We don’t want this to happen. We want to see if the council can be more efficient so that more local services can be saved. The Labour Party in particular don’t seem to regognise this issue. They seem to think that they can vote against everything and somehow the cuts (which are after all the fault of their Government) wont have to be made. We wont burry our heads in the sand like they do. For this reason we wouldn’t vote against the strategy – something has to be done or local services will be cut in a years time.
• We think it is right that the Council looks how best to provide services. There is nothing wrong with this. All Council services are paid for by Council Tax payers money, and it is right that we demand extremely high value for money for what pay in taxes. There is nothing wrong with checking that what the Council does is being done efficiently. There is nothing wrong with looking to see if there are some things that Council does which could perhaps be shared with other Councils or people like the NHS? I made the point that we might find some interesting answers – people often talk about sharing things like payroll services, but I understand that Bury has the cheapest payroll serivce in Greater Manchester – perhaps people should be paying us to do their work! We also don’t believe there is anything wrong in looking to see if community groups are appropriate to take on if its in the best interests of the service. For these reasons we support the strategy and wouldn’t vote against.
• However, we are extremely concerned about how the strategy has been presented to date. This should NEVER be about wholesale privatisation of Council Services which the Liberal Democrat group is proud to say we will never support. However the press coverage has been about mass privatisation, understandably thousands of council staff have been worried about their jobs. This should never have happened. We are also concerned that this strategy still needs more discussion and have urged the Council to involve all parties and key stakeholders like trades unions and others in all the discussion from now on. For these reasons we couldn’t vote in favour of the strategy – on balance we abstained.

What will happen now is that a whole range of services provided by the Council will be reviewed to check that they are being done as efficiently as they can be. HOPEFULLY efficiencies will be found, as its only then that services can be saved for future years. Options for all services will include the council continuing to provide the service, partnerships, community groups and private companies if they are the best option.

Leaders Statement and Question Time
We get about 30 minutes for written questions, and then a further 20 minutes for oral questions. I asked a couple of written questions: – what was happening to the Phoenix Centre (the youth centre in St Mary’s Park) following the Liberal Democrat group amendment that secured its future at the budget Coucnil meeting, and what were the proposals for local community grants for 2011-12 (again an initiative the Lib Dem group had secured at Budget Council. I’ve already published the answers to my questions and the questions from my colleagues in the Lib Dem Group here. There are some interesting answers on toilets, bridleways, bins, crossings and more!

Motions – Save Prestwich Tip
There had been two motions on the order paper – one from the Labour Party on fuel prices – but they withdrew this the day of the meeting! Since they’d submitted it the Government had announced the reduction in fuel duty, so perhaps they thought they looked a bit daft now!

The only remaining morion was from the Liberal Democrat Group to affirm the Council’s commitment to our campaign to Save Prestwich Tip. Thankfully everyone voted in favour so the motion was carried unanimously. You can read more about it on Cllr Richard Baum’s blog here.

Questions to Joint Authorities
Finally two questions from Lib Dem Councillors to Joint Authorities where i’ve already published here.

Any questions please ask. The papers for the meeting are here.

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