This in on behalf of Stewart Blackmore, IW Labour Prospectice Parliamentary Candidate. Ed
Mr Blackmore was speaking after the Independent-led Isle of Wight Council last week voted through a budget that included further swingeing service cuts and increased charges.
Blackmore: “The end of public service as we know it”
He said savage national government reductions in grants to local authorities, coupled with an Isle of Wight Council that had neither the gumption nor capability to preserve essential services was dismantling the Island’s public services. The result, he said, would be ‘the end of public service as we know it and, more than likely, the end of the Isle of Wight Council.’
Mr Blackmore said:
“The Tory Government is unwilling to give councils the money they need to preserve important local services and the local Independent councillors have been unable to find any imaginative solutions to protect and preserve them.
“After the tortuous council budget setting meeting last Wednesday 25th it looks a foregone conclusion that the IW Council, sooner rather than later, will become a ‘commissioning council’ in the worst sense of that phrase.
“This gives the lie to the Tory claim to be champions for localism which is a sham as far as this government is concerned. The IW Council has been choked of funds to the extent that it is fast becoming impotent.
“The questions the electorate has to ask itself are these – are we willing to accept that the Isle of Wight is a backwater? Are we willing to accept our services are to be administered by people whom we have not elected and we cannot remove? Are we willing to accept the inevitable redundancies as jobs are moved to the mainland and we become bolted on to a mainland council?
“I firmly believe that the answers to these questions will be an emphatic NO.”
