Canterbury Tories and the social cost of recession
Between them, Canterbury City and Kent County Councils managed to lose £56 million to the collapse of the economic bubble in Iceland, and both expect the residents of Kent to pay for it through accepting council tax rises and cuts in services. I’ve already dwelt at length upon some aspects of the service cuts faced as a result – such as the attacks upon funds that are transfered to third sector organisations which look after the homeless in Canterbury. Canterbury City Council have just published another list of things they’re cutting.
A council tax rise is imminent, as are separate charges for things like clear sacks – that is, the things we use to recycle. More importantly, however, a range of features in the city itself will close. The Westgate and Roman road museums are likely to close, and Westgate Hall, which is an important community centre, will also be closed and sold off to make parking spaces. Westgate Hall is central to Canterbury itself and is used by political groups, volunteer groups, hobbyists not to mention the odd conference and budget wedding reception.
Closing down facilities such as these cuts down the number of social spaces in Canterbury. At a time when everyone is worried about declining political participation and the rise of extremism, you’d think that the powers that be might worry that they are negatively affecting the situation. But no. More important than these things, more even than tourist attractions, is keeping collection of garden waste completely free. Because the garden-owning vote (of which a large slice of the working class populace have no part) is more important than room for civic-mindedness.
Council leader John Gilbey declared, “Our aim has been to protect the frontline services that people tell us they value most and maintain funding for the things we are required to do by law.” But of course the Tories haven’t managed to protect the frontline services; by all accounts cuts to local government workers are going to bite deep AND the Tories are making up for their own financial incompetence by raising the council tax. All of which might easily have been avoided had the Tories decided to refurbish rather than demolish and replace the Marlowe Theatre at a cost of some £30 million.
Or not been stupid enough to invest in Icelandic currency.
Even having suffered these setbacks one would think that, since Canterbury is a prosperous city, developing a cogent business plan that could promote and use the museums and social spaces we have remaining to their full effect might be better than simply closing them and selling the real estate. After all, the tourist stream in Canterbury is a constant revenue earner, which could be better managed than it currently is. The museums themselves could do with refurbishment in order to maximize their attractions – and to acquire new attractions and uses to appeal to people who live in the city.
They’re being closed instead, which demonstrates a breathtaking shortsightedness.
This is pretty much on par for Conservative-controlled councils up and down the country at the moment. Leeds, where the Tories and Lib Dems are in control, faces serious industrial action because of attempts to increase the workload, cut the number and cut the wages of many local government staff such as refuse collectors. Brighton, also a Tory administration, is facing even larger revolts by refuse collectors and housing trust employees over plans to gut wages of the already poorly paid by up to £8000 per year.
Which is to say nothing of the Tory-led cuts juggernaut known as EasyCouncil. Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines, we’re back to the 1980s race to the bottom.
A shape of things to come on the national scale, I’m afraid to say.
Only an urban left-winger would think that the working classes do not have gardens. Has the author ever visited a garden show?
And only a complete dipshit would think that what I said was meant to be universally applied, as opposed to applied merely to Northgate or Wincheap in Canterbury, you know, the areas where us poor oiks actually live?
Rather belatedly stumbled across this and thought an issue I took a particular interest in is relevant.
October 2009 – Canterbury cut in benefit help for elderly disabled
The following text was written as a letter to the Kentish Gazette, in response to a news item about a cut in Canterbury CC funding for the benefits advice service provided by Age Concern for elderly claimants and their carers.
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I am a carer and recently benefited from a visit from Judy Ayris, an adviser from Age Concern. She came to help me with a claim for Attendance Allowance (AA) for my elderly father.
Many years ago I too was an adviser making such visits and helping with benefit issues. However even with this background and many years in advice work, it is difficult to deal with oneself. The AA claim form is 30 pages long and goes into all kinds of tricky issues. You can therefore imagine that I was shocked to open the paper and find that this provision is to be cut and the resources spread more thinly.
Councillor Gilbey, the leader of the council, is reported as saying that elderly people would not be at a disadvantage and the new system will benefit a larger section of the community. I assume that as leader of the council Cllr Gilbey cannot be ignorant of the issues at stake and therefore he is careless of the effect.
Your article says the funding being removed to put into a post with a broader remit is “nearly £20000″. That will pay for less than 1 full-time properly trained welfare rights worker including employers’ National Insurance contributions etc. It is simply fatuous to suggest that if you spread that amount of money over a much larger client base than before that the original group will not lose out. There will be no slack to take up.
As I know from experience, an adviser working with a particular group will have the opportunity to specialise in the issues and benefits pertinent to them. For example, someone working with elderly disabled people and their carers will be able to learn the detail of the benefits available to them, how to deal with the claim forms, what kinds of evidence are relevant, what the implications of one benefit will be on another and so on. Younger people will have very different issues and different benefits. It is, for example, much more likely there will be questions of childcare, availability for work, money for dependents and so on.
It is quite simply fatuous to suggest that a generalist who covers all the bases can have the same depth of knowledge and can deliver the same level of service. Any one worker can deal with no more than hundreds of individual cases in a year at best, especially bearing in mind the need for time for training and study. Unless that person keeps up with changes there is a danger of potential claimant losing out through wrong advice. It also takes time to get around to see people who may not be able to travel to get advice.
The population is ageing, so there will be increasing need for the kind of work the Age Concern workers have been doing. Meanwhile due to the recession the numbers needing advice about benefits for people of working age will also increase sharply. To claim that spreading the
same limited resources more thinly will ‘ensure all residents receive the benefits they are entitled to’ is unsustainable.
I hope that Cllr Gilbey (one of my ward councillors) and his colleagues will reconsider this mean-spirited cut in service which will worst affect some of the poorest and most vulnerable elderly
people.
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I also sent the text by e-mail to Councillor Gilbey. I, like the Kentish Gazette, received a reply from him, to all intents and purposes reiterating the position I had attacked as incredible. The core paragraph was the following:
“The need to cater for our working-age residents and their families is a real, pressing one which needs to be addressed. The budget, however, is finite. The challenge we have is to make sure we provide an equal level of service to all who contact us for help, regardless of their age and circumstances. It will also enable us to plan proactive awareness campaigns throughout the year aimed at different groups of people.” [My emphasis - PH]
He assured me that he understood my concerns. You won’t be surprised to learn that I was not impressed.
Not in the least surprised Paul, but thanks for dropping by and outlining the situation even more clearly than I’ve managed to.