Residents will have the chance to air their views about how Stoke-on-Trent City Council should save money over the coming year with a week of consultations across the city.
Questions have been created to allow residents to help the city council set its spending priorities. With the extremely difficult budget position the council is facing in the next few years, and the 25% cut to our budget demanded by central government it’s vital that the council do things differently. The consultation started on Monday (July 12) and continues until August 13.
Councillor Mohammed Pervez, Leader of the council said:
“I want to experience for myself what people are saying during this consultation. I personally want to make sure people are getting the opportunity to tell us how we should spend the council’s budget, what we can cut in our services to make these savings.“We’re going to lots of busy public places with the consultation including shops, leisure centres, churches and places of work, as well as places where people access our services like Stoke Local Centre where we are today. We need to know what people think is most important to them before we make any key decisions, getting out and about the city will help us do this. I want to assure people that this is not a tick box exercise.”
For anyone who unable to attend the consultation events should receive a copy inside the latest edition of the council magazine being delivered at the minute, or they can go on-line at www.stoke.gov.uk/letstalk or telephone us for a copy on 01782 235104.
Why are you accepting a 25% cut?
What case have you forwarded that rejects a cut for this regenerating City?
Hit the streets, then hide in private in none advertised closed cabinet meeting.. disgusting
Ian,
it doesn’t matter how often he hits the streets, he still won’t earn more than 50 pence.
Look at that picture, a face only a mother could love. Still, there are plenty of mothers in the Labour party.
Cleveland Brown on a tour of Quahog-on-Trent with his mates Ernie the giant chicken and Evil monkey.
‘Hitting the streets’?
Its going to be as big a con as the coalition governments brilliant idea to ask people what laws they want to introduce. As Nick Clegg this week, if he disagrees with the public’s most popular proposals-such as on capital punishment or repealing the smoking ban-then he will ignore them. So in effect, it is only what they were going to do anyway that will be taken forward into policy-now fully justified by having being asked for by the public.
It is going to be the same thing here. The public may put their views, but if puppet Pervez or his masters disagree, then they will be ignored.
Its a sure sign that the Lib-Lab-Indy-Con is scared stiff of making the necessary cuts without first achieving political concensus. ‘Please tell us what to do’ they are shouting to the crowds.
But if they are then going to pick and choose which of the public’s cuts they impliment, there is going to be little point to the exercise.
Might as well discover some balls and actually make the cuts that you think are needed and THEN justify them to the public.
Cllr Pervez wants to know what the public think about plans to cut public spending by 25% and he’s hitting the streets to find out. I very much want not to be cynical about this, but it’s a struggle.
For a start why has Mr Pervez and his cabinet been so meek about accepting the size of the cuts, Labour have opposed them nationally and surely the leader of the Labour group on Stoke Council should be in an ideal position to put that opposition into practice.
The consultation itself, in its online form anyway, is deeply flawed, asking people to make arbitrary decisions on spending priorities without giving them an opportunity to explain what they want to cut or protect and why.
If there have to be cuts, and sadly there is no alternative, then wouldn’t it be a good idea to start with the expensive and remote Transition Board and the legions of “Ëœconsultants’ hired to advise the city on how to go about, ahem, cutting spending?
Do you think that will happen? I don’t, any more than I think this consultation will be more than a shallow PR exercise designed to cover up decisions that have been taken behind closed doors already.
Is ” hitting the streets” the same as cleaning the streets? If so I hope he will make a better job than is being done now, Always assuming that the streets are being cleaned, one would be hard pressed to proclaim that.The city is filthy, litter abounds, stinking “piles”(it is now piles) of cigarette ends all over the place.
And we have a councillor ,”cabinet member for Environment, Waste management and neighbourhood services
‘ who says in the “Our City” magazine he wants to get tough on litter louts. What is stopping him? Why haven’t we got teams of officials fining “on the spot” the louts that litter our streets blatantly. A £50 pound fine for every “fag” end dropped would fill the coffers, and pay for the officers many times over. You have only to look at the number of ends on the floor to see that this is true. and hopefully it would be a case of diminishing returns and our city could look like a civallised one
Mikefire, how can you fine anyone for dropping litter and then letting someone dump tons of waste and let them just drive off scot free?
As for savings well the city council have allready started by cutting funding to Residents Associations, and according to a local councillor “the Highways Department” have no new projects planned.
So the public suffer first.
What savings are being made inside the Civic Centre?
I must confess, you puzzle me at times Shaun.
I would’ve thought you were delighted with this government and its’ indisputably Thatcherite (spit) agenda. Slashing spending, rolling back the State, criminalising the poor?
It’s a rampant Tory government in my eyes. When blaming Labour for its f*** ups starts to wear thin, you can always blame having to drag your Judas Democrat biatches everywhere with you.
Treachery… from the Tories… surely not?
I’m amazed that Tonyjohnt continues to run the tired thread of supporting the indefensible.
This lot that runs this City now have debts of Millions of Pounds that we the taxpayer have to fund.
No one, but no one is to blame but them.
If Tonyjohnt refuses to accept that the guilty are guilty, then he is in danger of being ignored as a political irrelevance with no ideas of his own to combat this travesty.
Gary,
what do you mean he is in danger of being ignored?
He has declared his marxist fascism for all to see, he even declared his undying admiration for Michael Foot, the Worzel Gummage of British politics, and possibly the worst communist Labour tool ever to darken the steps of Westminster.
This guys nothing but a laughing stock, don’t let his inane ramblings concern you.
And yet I called out last week for a toilet repair ( bad valve in the cistern) and got given the hard sell on a new bathroom I don’t bleeding want.
What is so difficult about “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it ” ?
The questionnaire is awful, it’s got specific questions on the areas they’re probably going to cut like cleanliness, repairs, housing, health, sport and leisure. But no questions indicating any desire to cut things like consultants, transition board, expensive civic events, communications (spin) department, ‘Our City’.
They want to make £30 million of cuts but are repaying nearly £28 million in loans. So if financial management had been better and the books had been balanced, the loans wouldn’t have been needed and the cuts would’ve been very little.
As for RENEW – wonder what the £177 million they’ve had has gone on.
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2010-07-19a.6629.h&s=speaker%3A11843#g6629.q0
Just on the fag ends out the back of the civic centre alone they could make enough of a packet to avoid a good deal of the cuts!