Report from Sefton's Budget Meeting, Thursday 3rd March, 2011.

Sefton Council Leader and LibDem colleague, Tony Robertson, reports from Sefton's Budget Meeting on Thursday, 3rd March below: 

"Last night’s Sefton Council meeting was little more than a farce. Many members of the public turned up to hear how the Council was going to react to the representations they had made over Children’s Centres, Youth Centres, Disability Groups and the Duke of Edinburgh Awards Scheme amongst other matters.

Their issues were addressed by a budget put forward by the Lib Dem and Conservative Groups on the balanced Council where no party has a majority. But Labour who had courted every special interest group and promised to fight for them all had no budget proposals to make! So having marched these special interest groups literally around some local streets in the Borough Labour then ditched them having made no proposals to help them what so ever when they had every chance to do just that. Cynical manipulation comes to mind.

So what did happen? Well the Lib Dem/Conservative budget agreed to conduct a full review of Sefton Children’s Centres with a view to making savings in the operation of them. The budget decision did not put any of Sefton’s Children’s Centres under threat of closure. In neighbouring Liverpool the Labour run Council gave 4 Childrens Centres the bullet in their budget this week. What Labour says is not what Labour does.

The budget also agreed to a redesign of Sefton’s Youth Service to both save money and make youth provision as up to date as possible within what will clearly be fewer resources. The savings required to be made by the Youth Service, which had originally been £1.4 in 2011/12 were reduced to £500,000 with an additional £500,000 in 2012/13. There are no preconceived ideas about how the Youth Service will be redesigned but young people will be involved in the process.

The future of the Duke of Edinburgh Awards scheme will also be looked at via the Youth Service redesign with this aspect being noted as a priority issue. Children doing an award at present will be able to complete that process.

Disabled youth groups were also made a priority within the Youth Service redesign.

So concerns were addressed and campaigners have clearly been listened to. However, Labour not only failed to support these positive moves they actually voted against them! In the end they were preening themselves as though Militant of the 1980′s was back in charge of Labour locally. An utterly unbelievable carry on and an abdication of responsibility by Sefton’s Labour Group of councillors."