£87m council cuts will 'devastate services' in Lancashire
Councillors approved the cuts in a vote last week
A Labour County Councillor says recent cuts announced by Lancashire County Council (lead by the Conservative Party) will see people's lives put at risk.
Councillors last week approved £87million worth of cuts, most of which will come in the form of a reduction of agency workers and inhouse staff.
Some services will be affected including which roads will be gritted as we head into the winter months.
County Cllr Alan Vincent, cabinet member for resources and deputy leader of the authority, told the LDRS that highways bosses were content that the county council could still “safely grit the roads that need doing by just changing the routes around a little bit”.
He added:
“There’s always some risk attached to it, but they’ve basically said to us that they think these are the roads that we absolutely need to do the winter gritting on.
“You could extend it and grit every road in Lancashire – but we couldn’t possibly either do that or have the cash to do it. So we’re going to have to do the best we can with the resources that we have available.”
Cllr Vincent said that the authority would listen to concerns from all quarters about any of its proposals – even where formal public consultation was not required.
He said:
“We’ve been going through every potential option and coming up with the best solutions that we can to modernise…and to drive down the cost of how we operate. I think it’s palpable that we’re achieving that – certainly within Lancashire, I don’t see a massive outcry that people are not getting the service that they think they should get.
“People will criticise, I get that – but it’s easy to criticise. What’s not easy to do is to say what you would do as an alternative to make sure that you square the circle – and that you can actually keep people safe, keep your services operating at a high level and not go bankrupt at the same time.”
Councillor and Trade Unionist Julie Gibson from the Labour Party says:
"There is a potential that this will increase collisions between motorists because roads won't be gritted in the timely fashion they were before. This is something I already get a lot of complaints about.
"I'm really dreading speaking to residents how the service is going to get worse.
"We really need better from the Conservatives at Couty Hall and we can't and we won't put up with cuts like this.
"This is going to devastate local communities across Lancashire. This is the destruction of most of our local services across our local communities. These services don't only serve, but they offer protection and save people's lives."
It's feared