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Lambeth Liberal DemocratsNews, views and contact information for the
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Liberation for Lambeth: Lib Dem Alternative Budget for 2011
February 18, 2011 9:07 AM
Liberal Democrats reject Labour's cynical and lazy budget aimed at maximising headlines while damaging poor, disadvantaged and vulnerable people in Lambeth.
Labour is sitting on piles of cash being held in various accounts that Lib Dems would prefer to see liberated to maintain key front-line services. Our budget frees-up this cash now when it is most needed yet over three years we will still contribute £10.3 million more than Labour to balances.
Labour is clinging onto a valuable riverside office block it owns in Vauxhall, which could easily liberate millions of pounds of badly needed cash.
Labour is content to have one of the highest levels of empty homes in the capital but is so embarrassed by this shocking state of affairs that it officially calls them voids so that its backbench councillors won't notice.
Apart from depriving the 20,000 currently languishing on its housing waiting list for a home - that embarrassing word again - Labour's crass empty homes policy is depriving the Council of millions in revenue from rent and Council Tax. Liberal Democrats estimate that existing tenants already pay £7 a week more in rent than they need to just to subsidise Labour's shameful waste and neglect.
Labour's hopeless housing ALMO imposed on Lambeth tenants has been an unmitigated disaster that costs at least £1 million a year more than if the Council or tenants ran the service. It has not delivered a single one of the promised new kitchens and bathrooms, nor has Lambeth Living ever approached the two star status of competency needed to release Government funds.
Liberal Democrats have called for tenants to be put in charge and the Labour ALMO to be wound up but Labour politicians cling on desperately to a wasteful and unwanted organisation they created and which shells out huge amounts of public money to placemen and consultants. Meanwhile tenants have seen their services contract and stagnate while their rents have rocketed to pay for this tragic farce.
Meanwhile, in figures released today under a BBC Freedom of Information Request, Lambeth is shown to have the worst Council Tax collection rate in the Capital out of 32 London Boroughs and the fifth worst collection rate in England, Scotland and Wales. Labour's current slash and burn mentality to vital services is therefore hard to fathom when they cannot be bothered to collect the taxes they already impose.
Liberal Democrats will liberate £1.2 million from Labour's overblown propaganda department where Labour plans to trim only a fraction. Liberal Democrats will liberate £2 million from Labour's curiously inactive Regeneration Department whereas Labour only offers savings of £700,000, and Liberal Democrats will secure savings of £1.5 million from the Chief Executive's Departmental budget, which has only been dented by Labour to the tune of £600,000 by Labour.
Liberal Democrats will save the four libraries under threat from Labour and restore all school crossing patrols being needlessly axed by Labour. Liberal Democrats will also reverse Labour's destructive and incomprehensible raid on children's and youth support services this year which may force many key community organisations to close for good.
Liberal Democrats reject Lambeth Labour's inept and heartless approach to problem solving and that strategic budget planning was left so late in the day that a crude and needless butchery of services was their preferred solution.
Liberal Democrats have shown in their alternative budget, by their careful and methodical approach that is endorsed by finance officers, it is possible to find efficiencies within Labour's wasteful and top-heavy bureaucracy while maintaining essential services.
Liberal Democrats do, however, welcome the late conversion of Labour's Cabinet in accepting Liberal Democrat suggestions for a freeze in Council Tax this year, which they rejected only as recently as the January Full Council.
We hope that Labour councillors will also overcome the habit of a lifetime and support our alternative budget proposals to liberate Lambeth from Labour's savage cuts.