Wiltshire Conservatives - a bunch of cuts

Cabinet members on WC have put forward a raft of proposed cuts to services. The nastiest of these is the half-million pound slash to youth services, which will see youth centres close and young people thrown out onto the streets. Other cuts include:

- concessionary fares. Bus passes will only be valid after 9.30am.

- bus subsidies will be withdrawn so some rural routes may have reduced or abolished services.

- funding to 'Link' services reduced.

- trade waste fees will go up.

- some school transport will be withdrawn.

- the cost of the highways contract will be reduced.

- more staff redundancies.

- half a million cut to leisure services. The council hopes to cover this by increased income, but it doesn't know how this will be achieved.

- cuts to various budgets such as Development Services(£300k), with wooly justifications such as 'increased income' or 'efficiency savings'.

- increases of up to 20% in pest control costs for householders.

- increases in fees for births, marriages and deaths, including a 120% increase in the cost of a cover stone for a child's grave.

One budget which has unavoidably gone up is Capital Financing, which involves repayment of outstanding debt.

In addition rents on council houses will go up to give increased profits for the council within the separate housing revenue account.

The budget will be set at a council meeting on February 25th. With heavy reductions in funding from government the problem for opposition parties in challenging the cuts will be to explain how they would cope with the budgetary restrictions. Watch this space for more detail, but the answer is likely to be that instead of lashing out at the people of Wiltshire, alternative budgets will be looking at reducing internal expenditure, for example on public relations and propaganda.