Well, I’m back from the Council meeting after just short of two and half hours. Unlike in previous years, the Tories, to their credit, did actually produce a budget of their own. Unfortunately it was grounded in the Conservative’s ideological zeal to privatise anything that isn’t bolted down! Their budget was essentially based on allowing the private sector to tender for as many Council services as humanly possible, in essence: “private sector good; public sector bad”…

Let’s put aside for the moment the fact that what they proposed would potentially throw large numbers of hard working  Council workers (many of them living within the District) on to the Dole queue, the underlying message is this: they don’t rate the work performed by the Council’s employees. Despite Three Rivers District Council scoring extremely highly whenever any independent/external agency assess our services (with awards to prove this), despite the overwhelming sense of pride and achievement felt by the majority of our staff and despite the high satisfaction level felt by local residents for our services, the Tories feel it’s necessary to bring in outside companies to perform the Council’s functions because, in their minds, it MIGHT save us a few quid…

So when things go wrong or a local resident wants to complain, what do the Tories expect them to do…? Contact a call centre (probably overseas) or fill in a form online and wait. I’m not scare mongering when I say this – we all know that these companies don’t care about residents – they answer only to their share holders. They will do what ever it takes to drive down costs and increase profits, even at the expense of providing good services to residents. It seems the Tories want to exclude the people they are elected to serve from holding them to account for the Council’s services.

Fortunately, Three Rivers District Council is a Lib Dem administration. In our budget we have:

1) Maintained front line services at all costs.
2) Reduced the level of Council Tax for 2011/12 across the board, even in Parished areas (where normally there is an additional charge).
3) Changed our refuse collection service with far more emphasis on recycling.
4) Engaged in shared services initiatives with neighbouring Watford Borough Council.
5) Ploughed more money in to leisure services.

The criticisms offered by the Conservatives were at the same time laughable as they were lamentable. Not only was it clear that in some cases they were ignorant (clearly having not read the proposed budget), naive or deliberately trying to obscure the facts, what’s even more galling was the fact that members from the Conservative group were present at all committee and panel meetings and therefore had ample opportunity to see, and oppose our plans (if necessary) well in advance of last night’s meeting. Instead they chose ro oppose it at full Council in what is little more than an act of shameless opportunism.

So whilst it was refreshing to see the Tories had come up with a budget of their own, it’s just a shame their ideas would have destroyed what Three Rivers District Council is renowned for up down the country: providing high quality, professionally run, efficient, and cost effective services whilst allowing our residents the opportunity to hold their elected representatives to account for these services on a regular basis. The benefit of opposition allows the Tories to come up with a ‘back of a beer mat’ budget without having it scrutinised by committees or tested by the public. The few members of the public who were sat behind me last night seemed appalled by what they heard from the Tories – and who can blame them?

What’s important to our residents is that our services are run properly and professionally and not just profitably. We will never lose sight of this and our residents can rest assured that the Lib Dems will fight tooth and nail to protect our local services from the ravishes of Tory ideology.

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