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| Cllr Sheard, Leader, Kirklees Council, published in Dewsbury Reporter |
Kirklees Council leader David Sheard has shed some light on what services might look like over the next few years as the council faces cuts of £69m.
He said that early intervention, combined efforts and community involvement were the tools that would keep Kirklees from going completely bankrupt.
He said: “The agenda isn’t really about what the council is going to keep on doing and stop doing, it’s about changing the way the council works altogther. If we don’t change what we’re doing in terms of looking after older people and protecting children then the numbers mean that by 2021 we would be bankrupt because we would be able to afford nothing else than to look after them.”
He said breakfast clubs at schools in disadvantaged areas could give children a better chance at a decent education and that better broadband access would help to connect people to the world. Snow clearance and salt spreading could also by devolved to residents, street by street.
And Coun Sheard said loneliness was a recurring theme with older people and that contributing to the running of a library could help to combat the problem while keeping the service open.
“It could be that some of the things we have to change could open things up to people that weren’t available before,” he said.
“We can provide things if we provide them in a different way. The cuts are too big to say ‘Let’s just salami slice here and cut this bit off here’, we are way past that.
This article was written by James Carney, and published online in the Dewsbury Reporter, 7 October. You can view the entire article here.
