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Tag: cuts

Very, very small riot breaks out as Mayor approves cuts

Lewisham’s Mayor and Cabinet meeting on 17 February to approve £80m of cuts over four years began at 10am – a time recommended by police to avoid the scuffles and smoke bomb of the two previous cuts meetings. The earlier time and a strong police presence seemed to do the trick.

In what Mayor Steve Bullock called a “meeting in public” rather than ” a public meeting” those members of the public entering the Civic Suite were subjected to full body “pat-downs” and a search of belongings. The half a dozen or so protestors who did manage to get into the meeting had to resort to a few desultory shouts plus throwing a number of badly aimed paper planes towards the Cabinet table. After about an hour the protestors decided to leave.

In a meeting that lasted the best part of  five hours, the Mayor approved presentations by officers which will lead to £80m of cuts in the borough over the next four years.  Telllingly, the Mayor made a number of exceptions to the cuts on the basis of submissions made to him by individuals and groups who attended the meeting.

Sly and Reggie perform at Sydenham Library Great Library Read-in, 5 February 11.30am-12pm

 

Self-styled middle-class dub artists, Sly and Reggie performing their hit We Love Libraries is just one of the exciting acts on Saturday at Sydenham Library Great Library Read-In starting at 11am. Local resident Baroness Warnock, Guardian columnist Lucy Mangan, local author Julie Day and local poet and author Chrissie Gittins will all be appearing. Jill Helmore and Karen Hall, authors of children’s title Stripey Horse will read excerpts from their book.

Activities for kids with a great balloon launch as a climax!

Make sure you get there.

designedbygoodpeople.com

For more details of the Great Library Read-in visit  www.sydlib.com

Southwark propose £50m cuts over two years

Southwark has to make more than £50m of savings over two years after funding cuts made it London’s worst hit council in cash terms. Its cabinet is due to meet next week (25 Jan) to consider its budget savings proposals.

Southwark estimates that around 400 council jobs will be lost in the next 18 months with more possible losses in future years.

The proposed cuts in brief:

  • Department of the Chief Executive – Saving £7.5m. Includes cutting Southwark Life magazine to save £724,000. Renegotiating call centre contract – £1.5m savings
  • Finance and Resources – Saving £2.6m. Includes saving £923,000 on IT contracts.
  • Children’s Services – Saving  £3.7m. Includes stopping support for After School Clubs.  Cutting Youth Services by £1m.
  • Health & Community – Saving £3.8m. Includes cutting Supporting People Service (job training etc) by £2m and cutting support for mental health problem by £650,000. Home Help charges to rise sharply.
  • Environment, Safety and Culture – Saving £1.8m. Includes raising cemetery and crematorium charges and the cost of parking permits for polluting or families with more than one car per household.
  • Communities, Law and Governance – Saving £992,000. Includes cutting admin support for councillors and money spent of lawyers.
  • Other Services. Includes halving the number of Community wardens, Street Cleaning reduced from daily to every other day, Charities to take over running of Borough’s Day Centres. Review of library services.

Bromley council plan £40m cuts

Bromley have unveiled a plan to slash £40m from their budget over the next four years. The proposed cuts include:

  • Closing either Anerley or Penge library
  • Shutting 20 out of 23 children’s centres
  • No more school lollipop crossing patrols
  • Scrapping grants for school uniform purchase for the borough’s poorest families
  • Volunteers in Child Protection scheme part of the Bromley Children’s Project axed
  • Park security patrols will be reduced
  • Park toilets to be closed
  • Introduce car parking charges at countryside sitesReduce councillors from 60 to 40, but this can’t be done until elections in 2014
  • £800,000 will be stripped from sheltered housing

    • The largest cuts in the borough’s budget in living memory – yet you’d struggle to find any news about this on the Bromley website

    http://www.bromley.gov.uk/