Labour put electric cars before the vulnerable says Councillor David Millican
“Ealing’s Labour Council can’t find the money to keep open the Albert Dane Day Care Centre, or invest in a new Arts Centre to better utilise the Town Hall, whilst it can find £716,000 extra budget for electric car charging points and green roofs as part of the re-building of two Ealing schools.
“At the recent (12 October) Ealing Cabinet meeting it was originally proposed to spend £603,000 from contingency funds and then on the night this suddenly increased to £716,000. This funding enables 20% of the car parking spaces to have electric charging facilities.
“Even without these extra proposals the designs for the schools were declared to include a “very good” range of measures to mitigate the environmental impact. Whilst we are all in favour of more sustainable energy, in today’s economic climate, such extra spending cannot be justified. If these schemes are so important then they should have been in the original proposal and not funded from contingency budgets.
“Ealing’s Conservative Opposition Councillors are so concerned at such profligate and wasteful spending that we have forced the Council to delay this spending. The Conservatives have “called-in” the decision. This means that the Council’s powerful Overview and Scrutiny Committee must scrutinise this decision thoroughly, at its meeting on 4 November.
Let’s hope sense prevails.”
Councillor David Millican, Shadow Conservative Spokesman for Education and Children’s Services
We have asked the Labour group for their response
October 27 2010
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