PETERBOROUGH LABOUR PARTY

Council consider sale of the crematorium in crises budget

The most vulnerable in Peterborough are to be hit as the council budget proposals will mean £30million in cuts over then next three years. The Conservative council are currently overspent by £839,000 for this financial year alone. Things are so bad that the sale of council crematorium site is being considered by the Conservatives as they continue assets stripping to avoid going bust this year.

The conservative administration needs to get a grip of council finances and if necessary let other authorities run the services in Peterborough. 

“The Government have provided increased funding for Peterborough but the conservative council have made a mess of finances running a deficit budget and losing investments. I am concerned that the Conservatives are considering taking away devolved schools budgets and not passing on the full 5.1% allocated for our schools. Perhaps it would be better if other better qualified authorities such as Cambridgeshire or Lincolnshire were to take over the role as the Education Authority. We could make savings by reducing senior councillor’s salaries and having fewer directors on four figure fees and salaries. The Tories can not continue to do nothing to address the problems; the Council must pay its bills and wages like everyone else and the books must be balanced. The present budget outurn and plans for the next three years are precarious to say the least. The most recent response has been to announce over one hundred and twenty redundancies, but there is no budget allocation to fund any redundancy payments.

Over recent years the Peterborough Conservatives have run the council like some shoddy second rate business financed by the flogging off our green spaces and allotments to friendly developers, meanwhile they have not balanced the books as revenue expenditure has exceeded income month after month. The should have developed our assets for the future and kept an eye on income and expenditure. Yet they have continued to spend £2.5 million on the council publicity machine and interim mangers alone. We need Council that will mange the budget, employ local people who care and know about Peterborough and stop spending on luxuries.