FLY TIPPING TRENDS

FLY TIPPING TRENDS

Ask anyone and they will tell you that fly-tipping is massively increasing, many will also tell you that it is because the council restricted use of the "Household Waste Sites" (note the word "Household). The fact that over 50% of waste fly-tipped is waste that could be put in black or green bin and that only 5% constitutes "banned" waste argue against this perceived wisdom, oft featured as star letters in local rags.

It is an uncomfortable fact that the majority of fly-tipping is done by our friends and neighbours, who on many occasion put more effort into fly-tipping than would be needed to use their bins or visit the household waste site. Last year the changes what we allow in the sites saved the council £327,000. The people who voted for austerity and the conservatives who promote it are as much to blame for the reduction in services as those who forced the changes by abusing the system.

GOVERNMENT PRIVATE CONTRACTOR HITS KIRKLEES RESIDENTS

GOVERNMENT ALLOWS PRIVATE AMERICAN COMPANY TO DELIVER A BLOW TO KIRKLEES RESIDENTS

America's highest paid caseworker operating out of his lair in Reston Virginia has decided that anyone who is sick in Kirklees will have to travel to Halifax to be assessed for benefits.

Richard Montoni is the highly paid CEO of MAXIMUS the for profit company that the Conservative Government use to stop people getting the help they need when they can't work.

MAXIMUS is a company with a revenue of £1.7b that is set up to make profits from governments privatisation agenda. They are paid by the Conservative Government so have no interest in providing a service to people in need.

We are happy to support Healthwatch Kirklees campaign to save the ESA health assessment centre in Huddersfield, their plea for help is added below.

https://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/12/12348/meet-richard-montoni-americas-highest-paid-caseworker

 

 

 

We would like your support on our campaign to save the ESA health assessment centre in Huddersfield.

What’s the issue?

Healthwatch Kirklees has received written confirmation from the Department of Work & Pensions (DWP) that the Huddersfield Assessment Centre for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) Work Capability Assessments (WCA) is expected to close in June/July 2018.

We have been informed by DWP that a decision has been made to merge the Huddersfield Assessment Centre with the Halifax Assessment Centre and that it was fully impacted by Centre for Health and Disability Assessments (CHDA), who we have discovered is a company belonging to MAXIMUS which is global private corporation that has steadily built up a portfolio of multi-million pound government contracts.

The Halifax Assessment centre will provide the assessments for both Calderdale and Kirklees residents.

Why are we covering this issue?

After listening to the concerns of partners, community groups and local ESA claimants we are concerned that the decision to close the Huddersfield Assessment Centre will negatively impact the nearly 18,000 ESA claimants residing in Kirklees.

We would like the DWP to ensure that the Huddersfield Assessment Centre to remains open in Huddersfield.

What you can do to support the campaign

Send a letter to the DWP

We have now written a letter to Esther McVey (see attached) who is the Secretary for Work and Pensions, to bring to her attention the unfair decision of closing the Huddersfield Assessment Centre and how this would affect the 18,000 ESA claimants in Kirklees.

We would encourage other organisations and individuals to get involved and share their experiences/stories by using our template letter. You can either post a paper copy of the letter or send it via email.

Please let us know when you have posted or emailed your letter, so that we can add your name to the list of supporters of this campaign.

 

Here is a link to all the information regarding this issue on our website.

 

 

NHS DENTISTRY FAIL IN KIRKLEES

NHS FAILING TO PROVIDE DENTISTS

A massive shortage of NHS dentists in Kirklees has left local people struggling to find treatment. People in severe pain are being advised to attend already overburdened, and under threat A&E departments (as long as they are still open).

The Dentists own association blame the complicated contracts and NHS mismanagement of Dentistry. Unfortunately Dentistry offers an insight into what the Governments vision is for the NHS, underfunding leading to a privatised sector growing due to lack of NHS provision. Long waiting lists growing and local services removed will force people into looking to buy either full provision, or queue jumping. No one can blame parents desperate to look after their child or children looking out for their parents. Dentistry should be guaranteed as a mainstream NHS service.   

A patients’ group has claimed that the NHS is failing to offer fair access to dentists in Kirklees.

Healthwatch Kirklees boss has admitted deep frustration with the service after 12 months of failing to convince NHS England to change its approach to address what the community needs.

The patients’ rights charity’s research has found that just over half of adults in Kirklees (57%) have seen an NHS dentist in the last two years – which surprisingly is above the England average.

It revealed that pockets of the district have a chronic shortage in NHS dentists the whole system for finding and accessing NHS dentistry appears to be broken.

“The model isn’t right,” they say, “it’s not working for the benefit of the patients.”

The Healthwatch team’s research found that merely finding out which dentists were accepting new NHS patients was virtually impossible. They say the NHS Choices website should detail all the NHS dentists in Kirklees and who’s taking on new patients it does not.

Highways National Survey - Update

 

The National Highway Satisfaction Survey

No we are not complacent, being below the National Average by just a little bit is not a help when the National Satisfaction is so low.
The nations infrastructure is falling apart in the name of "Austerity", we need massive investment in many parts of the Public Service, but without an effective Highway structure lots of the investment will go to waste. The economy is dependent on our infrastructure.

Government Road Funding - Is it fair?

CONSERVATIVE MINISTER DECIDES WHO GETS WHAT;

CORNWALL £37.63 per person
SULFOLK  £26.10 per person

Neither noted for bad winters or hilly terrain.

KIRKLEES £12.43 per person

Kirklees - Need to make further cuts

Since austerity became the mantra of choice by first the coalition, then the Tories we have had year on year cuts. Despite every economic think tank and every respected accounting body saying it is not working, the Tories are sticking to their devastating policy.
Evidence abounds from other economies, the most graphic being Portugal and Iceland (Iceland never embraced Austerity and Portugal abandoned it) both have seen their economies grow and their deficit decrease.
The current government policy, as admitted by the current chancellor, is not about economics but about an attack on the public sector, because they enjoy it.

Kirklees Our Budget Challenge

Kirklees - How our Funding is Changing

POT HOLE SCANDAL

POT HOLE SCANDAL

If you have not noticed the state of our roads you are probably a Hermit. Despite the fact that year on year Councils are filling more and more holes, they can’t keep up. The National infrastructure is falling apart before our eyes in the name of “Austerity”. Patches on patches does not work yet the money to resurface roads that comes from central government has all but disappeared. In fact for unclassified roads it has disappeared, last year’s allocation was Zero.

 

We have more pressure on our roads due to our terrain and weather conditions, the Pennines do us no favors in that regard, yet more is spent on Transport in the South East year on year. Kings Cross had more money spent in one year than ten years of funding for the whole of Yorkshire.

Motorists, and Bikers, pay duty on fuel, VAT on fuel, Vat on Duty on fuel, tax on our insurance and Road Tax, none of this finds a way onto our Roads.

 

 

Kirklees Potholing update –

 

Between 1 April 2017 and 13 March 2018 has seen us repair 21,415 potholes which were either reported by the councils safety inspectors, yourselves, members of the public or identified by the teams whilst out working on the roads - but we still have a backlog of 3450 left to repair.

 

The recent snow and ice has made this situation worse with new potholes at different locations on our roads, and when it is snowing the crews can’t repair the potholes, they are busy gritting and supporting the winter operations.

 

To address this we are deploying additional resources to catch up.

There will be 12 potholing gangs heading out on Monday, weather permitting, including the 2 MultiHog machines. This is 3 times our normal potholing resource.

 

Update on Free School Meal Cuts

FREE SCHOOL MEAL CUTS

In a low down vindictive swipe at the working Poor Theresa's Terrors cut to free school meals that would deprive 6400 children in Kirklees alone of free school meals.

The Commons crunch vote over the changes to the disastrous Universally Hated Universal Credits is a response to the sneaky attempt by Miserable Ministers to push through the changes last week on the nod. Thankfully the underhand dastardly deed did not succeed. The deed is even more dastardly is realising how bad it is Ulster is not included. Families in Ulster need to earn £14,000 a year before they receive their kicking, in the UK it is set to be £7,400 a year.

Unfortunately  Tory MP's have not a little bit of human kindness left to enable them to scupper this scruple less scheme.

Thanks to Huffington Post for the details of this plot, unfortunately for some reason the BBC have chosen to ignore it, perhaps the Public Schools that their children attend have also been given special exemption.

Just to point out to Huffington Post though. Kirklees is not a Conservative controlled council.

IS KIRKLEES GETTING A FAIR DEAL

KIRKLEES GRANT

All local authorities are told by Central Government that they have to do certain things (Statutory Duties), and in many cases government prescribe how they have to be done. To pay for these things the government decides how much businesses each pay in Rates, they decide what the “Rateable Value” is and what it is multiplied by to work out how much you pay. The Rate is collected by your council, who keep half and hand the other half over to Central Government.

They also value your house to decide how much you pay in Council Tax, they then tell your council how much they can charge, the council collects this money and keeps it all.

Because the sums above are not enough to pay for the services that the government say they have to do, every year each council are given a “Revenue Support Grant” (in Kirklees £22,824,955). This grant used to be worked out on a formula on a basis of need; this was scrapped by Eric Pickles and replaced by a system at the whim of the current minister.

Now there are reasons why different councils get different amounts of grant the most obvious being the number of people each authority serves. So if we divide the grant by the population of each authority we can compare the grants. This is over simplistic but a starting point.

In West Yorkshire the differences are at the least interesting;

	Population	Grant	Per Head
Bradford	534,300	£48,538,924	£90.84
Wakefield	336,800	£22,348,765	£66.36
Leeds	781,700	£46,482,482	£59.46
Calderdale	209,800	£12,357,086	£58.90
Kirklees	437,000	£22,824,955	£52.23

 

This is nowhere as simple as the explanation above implies, no one can say that Local Government Finance is simple; it is believed that the two people who do understand it have both been committed. That does not mean we should not try to understand it, especially as the government are doing yet another review of how Local Services are financed, to some degree dictated by the crisis of funding Social Care and the massive impact underfunding has both on the lives of individuals and the finances of the NHS.

There is something wrong with a system that sees the average council tax for a Band D property in London being £500 cheaper than a Band D property in Yorkshire. There is something wrong in a system that allows a Minister to give extra cash to where he lives. There is something wrong where Kirklees is the 322^nd (of 326) worse funded Local Authority in the UK.

The local Kirklees Conservatives think there is nothing wrong with the system, the then leader of the Conservative Group on Kirklees stated at a council meeting. Kirklees is getting less now because the Labour Government gave them too much money, and all the Government is doing is making it fair by giving councils down south more money.

I am not optimistic about the review.

 

AUSTERITY MISERY - BBC Story

John McDonnell highlighted the rise in rough sleeping and council job cuts in a speech in London.
He said "whatever positive nuggets" come out of official economic forecasts in the chancellor's Spring Statement, any boasting would be "misplaced".
The government said Labour would "let debt spiral out of control".
Chancellor Philip Hammond is due to deliver his Spring Statement on Tuesday, which will set out updated UK economic forecasts.

• Kamal Ahmed: McDonnell's message to chancellor
• UK economic growth exceeds forecasts
• Cameron and Osborne hail plan after deficit target met

The Office for National Statistics reported in February that UK borrowing for the year to date was at its lowest level since January 2008.
It emerged last week that the day-to-day deficit had been eliminated - two years later than former chancellor George Osborne had wanted when he set it in 2010.
But Mr McDonnell said growth was lower than any major economy, real wages were still falling and that "abstract national figures don't show us the real impact of austerity and economic failure".

'Pain and misery'

"This is a government still committed to the austerity spending cuts the Tories first announced in June 2010," he said.
"They seem absolutely blind to the economic evidence and the pain and misery they have caused."
Mr McDonnell said schools were sending "begging letters to parents for pens and pencils" while children were being taken into care because councils cannot afford early intervention programmes.

               

He referred to the death of a homeless man outside Parliament and said public services were understaffed and "stretched to breaking point" because of cuts.
"Labour are outlining our demand on this government to wake up to the scale of suffering that austerity is inflicting on our communities and the underlying damage being done to our economy," he said.
But the government said its "balanced approach" was working and meant there was more money to spend on public services, with councils getting £830m extra next year, while dealing with debts.
Exchequer Secretary Robert Jenrick said: "Labour don't know how to handle the economy and would let debt spiral out of control.
"That would put our economy at risk, mean higher taxes, and spending more on debt interest instead of public services."
Chancellor Philip Hammond has decided to end the system of there being a Budget and a financial statement which was effectively a "mini-Budget" each year.
The Spring Statement, unlike most recent Budgets and Autumn statements, is being delivered on a Tuesday rather than taking the high-profile slot straight after Prime Minister's Questions on a Wednesday.

Thanks to  BBC for this story.

 

 

 

        

KIRKLEES FUNDING LOSS

KIRKLEES FUNDING LOSS £176m

On three occasions the Nation (not Kirklees) have voted for Austerity, this has given the government the excuse to slash local services to give them chance to cut taxes for their rich friends who have been too lazy to use tax havens to hide their money. This has meant that Kirklees have had our grant cut by £176m.

This cut has not been universal, from day one the Conservatives have fiddled with the grant schemes to help rich Tory Areas. The Kirklees Tories in their usual fashion deny the reality of the situation. Is this because they are lacking in intelligence or are they overawed by deference.

 

  



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



New Homes Bonus or Tory Fiddle

NEW HOMES BONUS - or how we get screwed.

We have just been told what out New Homes Bonus is this Year. New homes Bonus is how the Tories Fiddle support to Councils to continue their screwing of the North.

Money to councils used to be based on need, the Tories scrapped that idea in favour of giving more money to the rich by basing what they give on the value of houses built.

We get £4,661,492

For instance Tower Hamlets get £20.7m, Wiltshire £12m Southwork £11.3m.

We get £10 per person, Westminster get £38 per person, to subsidise one of the richest parts of the country.

Social Care Crisis

SOCIAL CARE CRISIS

Just one of the many articles pointing out the crisis, yet all we get from the public is a cry to spend more (money we have not got) on universal services. They want us to subsidise the rich on the basis that the poor can't pay for services. It all sounds reasonable but a charge for a service that does not cover the cost is not a tax, the service whatever it is, is subsidised.

Thanks to Independent for putting it so clearly.


 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/councils-cash-reserves-social-care-funding-crisis-health-budget-a8074911.html

Councils are being forced to spend billions of pounds of their emergency cash reserves on social care amid a significant funding shortfall, official documents reveal.
Analysis produced by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to accompany the Autumn Budget shows that English councils withdrew £1.4bn from emergency reserves last year.
They are forecast to have to draw down a further £1.7bn by 2020 – significantly more than the £0.9bn the OBR estimated in March.
Experts said relying on reserves to fund social care was “unsustainable” and “a crisis in the making”.
Local authorities face a huge funding shortfall in social care that is set to reach £2.5bn by 2020, according to the King’s Fund charity.

Because they have a legal duty to provide care to those who need it, councils have little choice but to find the cash to fund increasingly in-demand services or else risk breaking the law.
Many are therefore going significantly over their allocated budgets. More than half (53 per cent) of councils expect to overspend on adult social care this year, by an average of £21m.
Two-thirds of authorities that are currently overspending on social care plug the gap by utilising council reserves.
These funds are designed to safeguard councils from an event such as a recession and ensure they have enough resources to maintain services if circumstances change.
However, the funding gap in social care means many are being forced to use the funds to cover day-to-day spending, raising the prospect that they could be plunged into crisis in the face of an economic downturn or financial crisis.
Councils have seen their government funding cut by around 40 per cent since 2010, including 4.3 per cent in the last year alone.
In 2014, Eric Pickles, then the Communities Secretary, accused town halls of “pleading poverty” and told them to start spending the money set aside for a rainy day.
English councils currently have total reserves of around £23bn – down from £25bn two years ago.
However, MPs and local government leaders said the practice of using emergency funds to pay for regular spending was dangerous and “unsustainable”, as councils will eventually run out of cash.
Labour’s Clive Betts, chair of the Communities and Local Government Select Committee, told The Independent: “This is a matter of real concern.

“There was nothing in the Budget on social care. There is a crisis of funding for social care and drawing on reserves simply postpones the day the money runs out.
“This is not how councils should be funding social care. At some point the Government has to recognise this and put a proper funding regime in place.
“This is a crisis in the making. There’s a funding crisis in the here and now and this is just postponing the consequences.”
Mr Betts said the reliance on reserves also creates a postcode lottery because some councils have reserves they can draw on whereas others do not.
The OBR said councils are having to go over budget by more and more each year and rely increasingly on reserves.
Town halls have been overspending on children’s social services since 2010-11 and on adult social care since 2014-15.
Last year, councils in England overspent on their entire non-education budgets for the first time since the financial crisis, largely as a result of the cost of providing social care. Previously, under-spending elsewhere, such as on transport, made up for overspending on care services.
Amid growing concern over the funding shortfall, in March the Government announced a £2bn cash boost for social care. Town halls welcomed the increase but said it was not enough to meet demand.
Philip Hammond faced pressure, including from some senior Conservatives, to use his Autumn Budget to boost investment further. However, his Budget speech did not include a single mention of social care.


The Local Government Association (LGA) said using reserves to fund social care was “unsustainable”.
Councillor Izzi Seccombe, chairman of the LGA’s Community Wellbeing Board, said: “Adult social care services face a £2.3bn funding gap by 2020, including £1.3bn right now to stabilise the provider market. Councils are doing all they can to protect vital adult social care services that help people stay well and live independently in the community.
“Reserves are designed to help councils manage growing financial risks to local services. Using them to plug funding gaps is unsustainable and does nothing to address the systemic underfunding that they face.
“The reality is that the size of cuts councils are having to make and the growing demand for adult social care are simply too big to be plugged by reserves.
“It was hugely disappointing that there was no new funding announced for adult social care in the Autumn Budget. The Government needs to put this right in the local government finance settlement or else risk failing the ambition to support people’s independence and wellbeing with quality care and support.”
The Independent has contacted the Department for Communities and Local Government for comment.

Kirklees Cons Care Con

Wanting to be generous to the Kirklees Conservative Group I thought they may have written their resolution to council before we received the conditions from the Conservative Government connected to the "one-off" grant we were given for Social Care. The conditions are quite clear, the money has to be spent on Social Care for the elderly. So I asked if the wanted to withdraw it. The answer was no, the thought we should spend £6m delaying the cuts to the Library Service, (cuts forced on us by the cuts to government grant to Kirklees).

They wanted the council to say, that as we are using reserves (more one-off money) to pay for Social Care, therefor we could ignore the government directive and use the one off grant to delay Library Cuts. The grant would only delay the cuts because the money is not in the base budget (that is the money we know we are going to get each year - like your wage or pension), so when it runs out the cuts would have to be made anyway. It's like taking out a loan when you have no money to make the repayments.

SCHOOLS SET TO LOSE OUT

KIRKLEES SCHOOLS SET TO LOSE OUT

You may have seen the newspaper headlines that indicated that only three schools in Kirklees gain from the governments (and by association Jason's) "fairer funding formula".

The schools set to gain if the changes survive pressure from MPs are Marsden I & N (£6,462), Lindley CE Infant (£7,728) and Kirkburton Middle, the winner, with an increase of £11,978.

All other Kirklees schools miss out and will have funding cut with the biggest losers being secondary schools, Holmfirth High losing £177,099.

This is on top of the £5.5m cut that the Education Department has made to the Education Support Grant that Kirklees got to support schools. This was an abolition in total of the grant, not a cut. This is also at the same time as the government plan to spend millions on divisive "selective" schools and even more divisive "faith" schools. They intent to continue building schools where there is no lack of capacity, not only wasting money (look to the embezzlement in Bradford) on the buildings, but taking funding away from existing schools.

 

SURREY LETTERS

Private Surrey letters reignite possibility of secret deal between council and DCLG

This was published by PSE- I thought it so shocking I publish it in full.

 

Private communications between Whitehall and Surrey County Council published today have revealed possible collusion between the authority and government surrounding Surrey being given extra funding in return for calling off its referendum proposing a 15% tax raise.
When the council U-turned on its decision at the start of last month, it was unclear exactly why leaders decided to call off the referendum – but correspondences put online after multiple Freedom of Information requests have suggested that Surrey may have been offered a “sweetheart deal” of additional funding for in return for dropping the referendum.
It is thought that the government sought to avoid the politically embarrassing referendum that would have seen council tax rise by 15% to plug Surrey’s social care funding gap.
One text from Surrey’s senior finance director Sheila Little to Matthew Style, a senior DCLG official, read: “Matthew, the leader [David Hodge] has just sown [sic] me a note from a Surrey MP about a conversation late last night wit [sic] SJ [Sajid Javid]. Seems to indicate government are willing to get us some extra funding from 2018.”
She continued: “V [very] interested in whether this is sincere. As it stands isn’t enough to call the ref off? But could it be? Grateful if we can have an officer chat although I’ve told the leader he would need to speak to SJ.”
The published correspondences have heaped evidence onto the suggestion that a deal was reached between DCLG and the county council. For example, an email dated 9 January from Jonathan Lord, MP of Woking, a constituency in Surrey, to a number of senior government figures read: “Sajid led me to understand before Christmas that he would be trying very hard indeed to find £30 or £40 million to help Surrey out with the worst of its (government-dictated) financial dilemma.
“I am extremely unimpressed that he has not come up with the goods.”
Lord added: “If Saj was imprudent enough not to have £40m hidden under the departmental sofa for this sort of emergency/problem/outlier emerging from his department’s draft settlement, then I assume, if he is a man of his word that he must have done his best to put a strong case to the Treasury…
“If all his local government settlement money is really allocated... if the Treasury really is refusing to help out... and if he can't find a pot of money for the 'missing' learning disability grant...then Saj still has the option of adjusting all other council settlements down very slightly in order to accommodate the £31m needed for Surrey – and I think he should be encouraged to do this.”
The letters have prompted outrage from some key figures in the Labour Party, with frontbench shadow minister Barbara Keeley MP telling the Commons at a debate yesterday that the documents revealed the council had “extraordinary access” to ministers and their advisers.
In early February, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had read out texts sent from Hodge to a government minister that said: “I am advised that DCLG officials and my director of finance/CE have been working on a solution and that you would me [sic] contacting me to agree on an MoU [Memorandum of Understanding].”
The opposition leader then put the question to Theresa May: “How much did the government offer Surrey to kill this off and is the same sweetheart deal offered to every council to solve the social care crisis?”
But the prime minister had dismissed the idea of a deal as pure speculation, confirming to the media last month that “the deal that is on offer to all councils is the one that I have already set out”.
Hodge himself also put out a statement in February confirming that the decision to scrap the referendum was “ours alone”, and the DCLG reiterated that the government was not proposing extra funding to the county council that “is not otherwise provided or offered to other councils”.
Have you got a story to tell? Would you like to become a PSE columnist? If so,

The Surrey Swindle - why they are keeping it secret.

THE SURREY SWINDLE - tell us the truth!

It was interesting to see the reaction of our Conservative MP Jason McCartney when I met him last Friday. He obviously knows that Surrey have been offered a bung to keep them quiet, he knows what our situation is. He joined us in our "all party" delegation to the Minister to explain our position.

As soon as we met, on Friday, he started claiming that all that had happened is that Surrey had been added to the Business Rates Pilot. He then said he could get us added to the same pilot if we wanted it. He knows, because that is in the pack we gave him that it would mean a £14m cut for Kirklees, unlike the £44m bonus that Surrey have allegedly been handed in a secret memorandum of understanding.

Obviously Tory MPs have been given a briefing of how to try to explain the £44m swindle. Like the secret letters to Tory MPs that we are not allowed to read.

Let us be absolutely plain about this, Surrey are to be allowed to keep £44m that was due to go to the treasury, this offer, as far as we know has not been made to anyone else, remember last year they were given £12m in the lets bribe the Tory Shires Scheme dreamed up by the government.

Just when are people outside of the Tory South East going to realise they are being "Screwed" by this Neroesque  government.

BUSINESS RATE BILL CHANGES - after revaluation.

Winners and Losers in the Rating Game...

It might not have registered with you that all valuations for business rates in the UK are changing this year. Obviously some go up and some go down, but what do they mean in regional terms.

The changes are as shown in this table.

On the face of it, it seems good news for Yorkshire, and it is, but what else can we understand from the numbers.

What it is saying is that because the Conservatives delayed the re-valuation, for the past few years, businesses in Yorkshire have been paying 10% too much in Rates whilst businesses in London are paying 11% too little. It doesn't stop there as the changes, in Yorkshire a reduction, are not going to be implemented straight away, they are to be phased in.

It also means that Local Authorities in Yorkshire are to get the largest part of their income (under the new funding proposals) cut by 10%, this is on top of the cuts already made, whereas the South East will only be cut by 2% and London will get a 11% rise in income.

This shifting of resources to the South started as soon as the Lib/Dems and Conservatives took charge of the finances and is being accelerated now the Conservatives control the purse strings. Local Conservatives continue in denial and refuse to condemn the blatant attack on our services.

WAKE UP FOLKS