Forum Topic

LIBRARY CLOSURES - TURN UP 6.30PM TUESDAY, TOWN HALL STEPS

See note from Ealing Conservative Group's leader, David Millican:The Conservative Opposition has forced the issue of Labour's proposals, to close libraries, to the top of the Council's agenda.Conservative Opposition Councillors have organised separate petitions, each with hundreds of signatures, to save each library. Petitions will be presented to Full Council next Tuesday 14 June, which will trigger debates.Then, as Opposition, we have called a special meeting of the powerful cross-party Overview and Scrutiny Committee, which will meet at 7:00 pm on Tuesday 28 June.  This will discuss the fate of all the Libraries under threat, namely Perivale Library, Hanwell Library, Northolt Leisure Centre Library, Northfields Library and the Mobile Library.The date of 28 June has been selected because the Council's Cabinet will decide the fate of the Libraries on Tuesday 5 July and the papers will have been published.We ask concerned residents to congregate on the steps of the Town Hall next Tuesday 14 June at 6:30 pm to show their support to keep our Libraries open.The Labour administration have appointed another councillor to oversee the proposed library closures, namely Cllr Ranjit Dheer; so I ask you to write to him with your views  at - ranjit.dheer@ealing.gov.ukPlease forward this note to encourage others to help save our libraries. 

Phil Taylor ● 5413d2 Comments

Peter,The council is very confused about numbers and I will be doing some work on this later today.  We have heard a range of numbers: £53 million, £55 million, £65 million, £66 million, £67 million and now £85 million.  We have heard the famous, but extremely misleading percentage of 30%, which according to Cllr Bell has not increased when the "cuts" have gone up by £30 million.  This confusion is not really acceptable as we pay a man called Ian O'Donnell a lot of money to give us an objective picture of the council's financial position.  If you look at the booklet that came with your council tax bill you will find that gross expenditure this year will be just over £1 million less than last year - falling from £739,704K to £738,428K.  To give some context the Tories took out £60 million in four years and pretty much no-one noticed.  Most of this got put back in in the form of new growth, ie Conservative priorities such as spending more money on policing, re-cycling and street cleaning.  The £65 million figure is inflated by new spending decisions that the new council has made, otherwise known as growth, so is less than £60 million in reality.  As a percentage of the council's spending this is less than 13%.  Painful but not as advertised by the council which seems to have lost its objectivity on this matter.  Even this "cuts" figure will include government grants that were always advertised as short term funding.  If I make you a gift of £100 you don't call it a cut when I don't repeat it!  The new £30 million seems to be a hyper pessimistic reading of the future direction of travel of local government grants.  It is not based on actual government announcements.  It includes, for instance, assumptions that education funding will go in the same direction as the main council grant when we know that the government has stated that this will protected.  We are not being well served by officers in this area.  We expect the council's officers to explain re-cycling in clear language.  There is no reason why we should not expect an objective explanation of the council's finances which is accessible to the public.  All we are getting is Labour spin. 

Phil Taylor ● 5412d

Phil,It is interesting that just before this meeting. The supreme leader announces that more savings need to be made. There seems to be some confusion about these sums. Why did they get their sums so wrong in the first place or is this just spin??Peter

Peter Chadburn ● 5412d