After Labour councillor Geoff Lumley released his budget amendment last week, it was quickly pointed out to him by council leader David Pugh that he’d made an error with some of the figures.
It seems there was some confusion over the £575,000 Disabled Facilities Grant. Cllr Lumley claimed it was not clear from the paperwork that this was to be included in the Conservative budget and Cllr Pugh himself admitted that “finer detail is not clear from reading Appendix 7A alone”.
However, this has all been confirmed by Council officers now and Cllr Lumley has amended his budget proposal for this year (embedded below for your convenience).
“Council leadership’s capital budget paper .. a bit of a mess”
Instead Cllr Lumley tells us that he would “now re-direct the £500k of this year’s projected underspend from the re-procurement costs of the next waste contract (as proposed by the Conservative group) towards making a significant additional contribution to Adult Social Care provision.”
Cllr Lumley said, “The Council leadership’s capital budget paper for Full Council this week was frankly a bit of a mess and I have now learnt that they won’t actually be cutting the disabled facilities grants next year at all.
“Why that could not be clear in the paperwork is beyond me. It makes me wonder whether they have subsequently realised they were making a profound mistake?”
