Well I've made my contribution to the cuts, but wondering if it's people power or PR gimmick.

Some of the headings are quite emotive - who would want to cut 'care for the disabled and elderly'? Whereas 'town planning' sounds boring, so will probably get a battering.

Here's my top 5 changes.
1. Create a charitable trust to run libraries and museums (a la Corn Exchange)
2. Abolish the Education Department (90 staff, I believe)
3. Sell off assets like Greenham House (prime spot for a bit of housing)
4. Get rid of the green meanies - loss-making, unpopular
5. Sell off leisure centres

I completed it too, and I wondered the same. Every saving came with a sob-story. Of course that might very well be the reality of making those cuts, I don't know enough about WBC to judge.

That's an interesting list Bofem. I use both libraries and leisure centres so my inclination is to protect them, but something has to give doesn't it. I don't see why leisure centres shouldn't pay for themselves, but libraries? Would a Library Trust get state funding? 2-4, yes, why not.

The sob-story approach is probably to get our sympathy.

The problem with the calculator is that it is too top-level - I would want to know what I was cutting before making the decisions.

Selling off assets is always an option, but often a short-sighted one. Selling off Greenham Park may help balance the books this year, but there would still be a need to make cuts next year. Might as well do it now.

You got it on the button blackdog, where is the detail???

What are you all talking about??

It's alright I found the NWN story.

Yes, the program is rather unscientific. I just went a long and took the same of for everything until I got the required cut. They all have merit, but the things that you might think are loss deserving have a smaller budget, so there is little to gain from the cut, although being too aggressive on any one might ruin the service.

It presents many opportunities too.

Take the green meanies. WBC estimates a loss of £240k this year (on top of £200k last year).

http://decisionmaking.westberks.gov.uk/mgC...ch=%22budget%22

For a more substantial saving, we've got primary schools with 30 pupils in the sticks due to stagnant planning policy and nimbyism. But of course, here's where they bottle it (see below).

http://www.newburytoday.co.uk/News/Article...articleID=15043

1. Create a charitable trust to run libraries and museums (a la Corn Exchange)
2. Abolish the Education Department (90 staff, I believe)
3. Sell off assets like Greenham House (prime spot for a bit of housing)
4. Get rid of the green meanies - loss-making, unpopular
5. Sell off leisure centres

Bofem, I like your ideas.
I wonder how libraries could become self financing, but why not sell the one in the Wharf to Greenham Common Trust and use the top floor for the Arts Centre?
I'd love to have the chance to review all Council staff and see them in action. I've come across several Council staff who have perfect form filling skills, meeting targets on paper, but who have minimal, if any, impact in reality.

All Council staff?
Really?!

To see them in 'action' Michael? How patronising can some people be... ...pathetic

I have no doubt at all that there are council staff who would absolutely welcome your assistance on their rounds Michael. I have a close friend who works in Adult Social Care.. She spends a lot of her off-duty time... her unpaid off-duty time... continuing to work with vulnerable teenagers with severe learning disabilities. She regularly spends weekends taking them out shopping or just spends time with them because she is passionate about her work and knows that she makes a difference to their lives.... She's committed to her work to the point of having to be dragged away to spend a night out for a drink with her mates..

Part of her work involves looking after them in ways someone like you couldn't imagine Michael.. Some of the kids she works with have no family support, are incapable of dressing themselves, going to the toilet on their own, bathing themselves.

Please do volunteer your services Michael, she'll be grateful for someone else stepping forward and holding the bedpan!

Yet you come on here and sneer at the work she does and many others like her do...


I'd love to have a chance to drag muppets like you around, to rub your nose in some of the work she puts up with, which she willingly accepts as 'part of the job' and makes no fuss over...




Yet I suppose you're a finely honed specimen of efficiency, running around the Great Corporate Wheel and generating profits for the company you work for Michael..... How useful.... I'm sure your mum's proud of the 'impact you have on reality'


Give me a break....

(And it's not even the rant section ffs... ...but your comments and others like it make me mad when I think of the dedication of some who work for a pittance, looking after those you don't give a second thought to)

Yes, Spartacus I'd like to see all Council staff 'in action' rewarding those like you describe, and sacking those like I have seen taking the piss and getting paid for doing a professional job but in reality doing bugger all.

But is your mum proud of YOU?

And would you allow those same Council staff that you despise, to join you for a day at your place of work and see whether you are the model to aspire to? Or would it confirm you as an oxygen thief....


Or is your main beef with Council staff not showing you enough respect at the benefits desk?

Spartacus, you sound like you're trying to wind me up! Not sure what the pride/otherwise of my Mother adds to the discussion about Council Cuts!

I only despise those Council staff that I have seen with my own eyes taking the piss (I suspect there are more) and I would love those in similar positions to join me for a day at my place of work to see the difference in approach.

You're the one that wound ME up with your glib, sweeping and generally patronising statement and this assumption that all council staff are taking the pi$$. Tell that to my friend matey boy... she LITERALLY has to wipe the stuff up on a daily basis.... Still... it's part of her job...


Anyway.... my rant's over and my spleen has been vented....


What was this thread about?

A bunch of cuts at the WBC!

Might as well save a few tens of thousands by ending late opening at the libraries. Since WBC introduced charging for car parking in the evening Newbury Library is barely used after 6.00pm. But as has already been pointed out, the big ticket items are related to social care and unless we can find a way of, for example, drastically reducing the numbers of elderly in the town there isn't a lot of room for manoeuvre there.

The fact is that although there is some scope for efficiency savings 25% reductions over the next four years are going to have a huge impact on this country, including massive job losses in the private sector firms who provide many of the products and services which councils use.

Having said that, the WBC calculator doesn't seem to allow the option to look at merging West Berks with other unitary authorities and saving management and support service overheads (HR, IT ec). This is happening elsewhere, of course. http://goo.gl/HpwH2

Perhaps we could go back to a Berkshire County Council, drastically reduce the number of councillors and save all the expenses etc. which currently go to them? I do think councillors should be setting an example here and abolishing themselves whenever possible. How do councillors add value, exactly? Has anyone done a cost benefit analysis of Graham Jones?

Re. Mr Jones and other councillor's costs, they are available here http://www.westberks.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=5805 together with all other councillor expenses. Mr Jones received £23,720 in allowances and expenses in the financial year 2009/10. Unfortunately the document doesn't show the total but basic allowance costs appear to be about £360,000 and special responsibility and travelling and subsistence allowances adds another £160,000 based on a quick tally so presumably 25% of that half million or so will be saved.

That's not at all what he said though. He said he would like to review all council staff, not sack them.

Ah... I see now... I should have interpretted it that he was looking to hand out awards then? Compliment them on their diligence maybe?

My bad...
I was grumpy and read it that he was implying that they were all like the several Council staff he'd come across who have perfect form filling skills, meeting targets on paper, but who have minimal, if any, impact in reality.

Now I've read it again I can't imagine how I might have thought he was implying that every council worker, be they dedicated adult social support worker or efficient form-filler, was a waste of space...

There's some merit in Michael's comments, although it may have been expressed a little more sensitively.

But let's look at the detail of the education department. Some of these jobs include making sure schools spend their s106 developer contributions! And guess what, many of our schools are NOT expanding their schools to cope with new housing, despite having the money to do so. However good the WBC staff may be, the system isn't working.

Or perhaps the Extended Schools Team. These people are to advise and encourage schools to be open for the wider community. Lovely idea, but in reality, caretakers are reluctant. In Greenham, they had a multi-games area put in at the Willows School, which the caretaker then closed in the evenings! In East Ilsley, they have no village hall and wanted to use the school...could they persuade the school to open? I'm not sure whether the Extended Schools team are hindering or helping us get the best out of school buildings.

But this isn't personal against WBC's Education team. There are 60 in the Policy and Communications team. Their job is (largely) to bring in Whitehall targets at local level, plus preparing agendas and reports for councillors, and consultations.
Do we need that many now so much regulation is falling away?

I just hope this budgetsimulator isn't to be used as a smokescreen for making unpopular decisions, when easier options which save/enhance local services haven't been explored.

I think Spartacus makes a fair point. This isn't about the dedication and efficiency of public sector workers.

I share Bofem's concern that it's not in the interests of the WBC mandarins to make service cuts painless. Quite the opposite. For a senior manager, the bigger the Council, the more important you are, and the more you earn, so you want to make service cuts as painful as possible to protect your self-interest. Bofem's digging out some useful specifics, but without much more like that we're stuck trusting the Council mandarins.

Mrs Bill1 here.

A friend has just pointed out a way for WBC to save a few grand

http://www.budgetsimulator.com/info/pricing

All rather reminds me of Great Britain Ltd, my fave BBC Micro game in the 80s (I was rubbish at Chuckie Egg).

Of course, I may have it completely wrong on the Education Department.

They're committed to merging several local schools, which gets rid of half a dozen headteachers saving £50k a time.
[can't find the doc just now, but from memory it's....
John Rankins J&I
St Nix/St Johns
Parsons Down J&I

NB when they did this to Winchcombe, it went into special measures.

Moving on...they're nearly done with farming out Castle School pupils onto other sites, freeing up the Love Lane site for sale to a developer (apparently a big retailer is interested).

It's around £650k a year for members.

So we've spend almost £8k on a simulator that gives us no real detail of what we're "cutting"... Did you know that this is an online only consultation too? True democracy at work!!!

Where does the actual price paid become sufficiently clear on a corporate website to know the fee WBC paid?
Is it the only method of 'consultation', or just one of several (so those without 'puters are not disadvantaged)?

It is a bit of a weak tool for serious budgeting, but a reasonable way of letting people who 'know what to do' get an indication of the downsides to their point of view - which a written documents would struggle with. Also, assuming the license endures beyond the current exercise, maybe even £8k is not an OTT sum....

Ah, thanks. Well I'm sure that it will be easy enough to save 25% of that. Many of the councillors - particularly the Conservative ones - seem pretty well heeled and I'm sure could easily manage without claiming their allowances. We really should be looking at reducing their numbers as well. I'm confident that's already being looked at - it's very popular elsewhere: http://goo.gl/6jsPA

Here's another money saving idea.

I seem to remember that there was talk of getting rid of the Market Street offices some time ago. This should be pursued asap - I'm sure as a prime town centre location the office and its huge car park, right next to the station, would attract a good price and there are many sites on our local trading estates which could easily be taken over by the few remaining councillors and staff. I'm thinking of warehouses which, with the addition of some cubicles, could house staff at low cost: lots of companies do this as some quick Googling will reveal.

In the meantime, why doesn't the District Council abandon it's very plush council chamber immediately and instead meet in halls around the district? This might not save a lot in the short term but it would save having to build a replacement chamber once the officers relocate to their converted warehouse and it would send a great signal to the electorate. It would make council meetings - which could be held in village halls, churches, school halls and so on - much more accessible to those in rural areas and in the more far flung parts of the district. In the summer they could even be held in the open air saving even more money and marking a return to the ancient idea of a 'moot', held near or on a suitable landmark: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moot_hill

Tradition, cost saving and open democracy - a triple whammy! Feels like a Do-It-Now idea to me Mr Jones!

Not sure this estimate is entirely correct but as it's rumoured they're planning to centralise West Berkshire's CCTV that's perhaps a few numbers away already given the 10 or so camera operators would be included in your inflated figure.

Moving the meetings around the district is attractive, but past experience suggests local involvement is somewhere around nil apart from those with an axe to grind or an agenda of their own. Then the halls have to be hired - nothing for nothing - and the Officers who have to attend in support can then claim expenses that do not apply when the meeting is at the centre (as it is their normal place of work). So a fair cost would ensue....

'Plush' Council Chamber? Luxury is subjective, but the WBC Chamber is far from plush in my opinion.

As for the site sale, I believe it is still on the agenda, but the commercial interest in building is reduced at the moment. I agree re the use of 'trading estate' facilities though - as per the Highways Offices. I don't believe facilities should be down-at heel or utilitarian, but function before form.

Are you a councillor? Whether you are or you are, I'm sure you'll agree that councillors have to be seen to be sharing in the agony here. Leading from the front and all that.

And yes, the council chamber is plush in comparison with the village and school halls I'm proposing will be used in the future. Also I think you're ignoring the huge cost savings which will be made by not replacing the existing chamber when Market Street is vacated. These will easily offset the modest hire charges for local halls. Most councillors could easily afford a few pounds for petrol as I've already pointed out - the more energetic ones will cycle, of course.

Regarding officers, I think it's about time councillors started taking their own minutes, don't you? You can take turns. Alternatively the meetings could be recorded and transcribed during working hours. In the council meetings I've attended the officers barely say a word so I think so long as they're available via a mobile phone that will suffice (and will save yet more costs, of course).

Come on, NWN Reader, with the best will in the world you really aren't trying!

I am all for reducing the operating cost of the Council, and I certainly agree Members allowances are there to cover costs, not as a target income. Same principle as MPs 'expenses'.

I'd like to see some actual data re. the comparative costs of a fixed rather than mobile council meetings, particularly post Market Street: neither of us has any data on this.

Don't agree with you re. the lack of public participation in meetings held outside Newbury - reasonable numbers of people used to attend the local forum meetings in Thatcham before Mr Jones scrapped them. Yes, most of those people had an 'axe to grind. Obviously. The meetings were poorly publicised.

However, my main point is that in the current climate we need to look closely at the costs of local democracy. To my mind the creation of district councils was an expensive luxury which we can no longer afford. We should certainly reduce the number of councillors dramatically, as many others have noted (see the google results above), and we should merge local district councils.

Shame that those options aren't included on the budget simulator but it's interesting for what it omits rather than what it includes. There's no option to raise taxes, for example, or to factor in increased revenues due to local economic/population growth.

FWIW, the whole idea of having party politics at a local level is farcical to me - the squabbling between the local parties is rather pathetic. We could jettison local parties and organise things far more efficiently while retaining accountability and good governance as other countries do, of course, but that's another story and there are too many vested interests here for it ever to happen.

Unsure how this can work.

How is this democratic? Not all West Berks residents have computers, so are voting forms being sent out to everybody, and if so at what cost?

Obviously residents who have posts within the council or supply the council in some way have a vested interest. What is to stop, say librarians, having multiple votes and voting themselves an increase?

I need far more information. For instance if we lose budget in Community Safety, how much crime have neighbourhood wadens prevented?

I know it is cynical, but I feel the council is protecting their own backs and devolving responsibility to the residents. I can hear the words 'dont blame us, you voted for it'. If they dont get paid for making the decisions, what are they there for?

This is a new one on me. Are you seriously saying there's too much democracy in West Berkshire and the officers should be making more decisions without asking residents?

It's just for 'fun'. The results won't be factored into WBC's spending decisions: they've already been made.

I'm not sure if you've driven along the M4 recently (when I say 'recently', I mean in the last 3 or 4 years )... I'm sure those companies that invested in those empty glass walled office blocks on Green Park,....you know, those buildings that have remained devoid of life since the day they became available to let... considered them to be prime locations too?


I'm not sure if you're joking or just haven't actually stepped inside these supposedly plush chambers.... but when I went there for a presentation evening I was astounded at just how naff if was in there... The walls seemed to have this covering which had the look and feel of cheap hessian cloth. There were no 'grand chairs', elaborate woodwork, wood panelling, coat of arms .... nothing really. It looked a bit cheap and nasty in truth.... Even the picture of Her Maj' looked a bit old and tired... Are you sure you're not thinking of the Newbury Town Council Chamber or something?



I take it that the option of saying "You are not" is not permitted?


I'll have to look up the definition of 'Plush' again.... It's not a place I'd like to stay in any longer than necessary, let's put it that way....


A quick round of applause for Tony Vickers....


Oh p..lease! 'Reasonable' numbers? Thatcham AF was well attended? How many times did you count the one man and his dog that turned up? These Area Forums were meant to be 'public forums'... The only people that regularly turned up with an axe to grind were the Ward Members.. Owen Jeffery and Keith Woodhams between the two of them could make the meeting last all evening despite the fact that there were no members of the public to perform in front of....

Good points Spartacus. Glad that to see that we agree on my main points: that we can merge some unitary authorities, slash the number of councillors, cut/eliminate the allowances of those who remain and sell off Market Street and its car park for development. The plushness or otherwise of the council chamber doesn't really bother me although I think I'm safe in saying that it is carpeted, unlike most parish and school halls. Everything is relative.

Anyway, how do you suggest the mergers and councillor number/allowances cuts are implemented? Presumably the council leadership will pick it up: as I say I'm sure both coalition parties will want to demonstrate that they can take pain as well as dish it out. A good way of deciding who should go would be to ask the voters. If fewer than, say, 20% of voters know the name of their councillor the councillor gets the chop. What could be fairer?

So-long as they listen when they ask, al la the pavilion.

I would have thought the pavilion was a classic example of not listening. If they were listening they would have dropped the idea of building it on the park.

I would have thought the pavilion was a classic example of not listening. If they were listening they would have dropped the idea of building it on the park.

I was being ironic...!

One of our members voiced concerns at the meeting on Tuesday night that an online only consultation is unfair. The council said that there are computers which can be used at the Library!!!

Wow, I see the results of the budget simulator are in already!!! 140 jobs and five day centres gone, with more cuts to be anounced over the next few days!!! Is that what everyone voted for???

Seriously, I agree with JayJay. The whole purpose of the simulator is to give the impression that people have had "their say", but the fact it is an online only consultation shows how serious the council are about input from the public.

Jeoff Brooks is complaining about the cuts, I see. Not sure what to make of this: surely libdems need to demonstrate solidarity with their coalition partners at all levels of government? Danny Alexander is one of the main knife wielders, after all. Can anyone clear up my confusion?

I'm glad Jeff is ok... not heard anything from anyone besides Tony Vickers of late!!!

In reality, I guess the ib Dems are trying to speak out as much as possible because they are trying to protect their share of the vote.

Many Lib-Dems are unhappy with being in the coalition - at least Jeff Brooks' comment shows a little independence of thought (not something that is common from local Lib-Dems).

The trouble is that the cuts are going to happen - no local politician has any influence over that. So what we need to hear from Jeff Brooks is where he thinks the cuts should be made, not a transparent attempt to distance the local Lib-Dems from whatever cuts are decided.

So come on Jeff - show us what you would do if you were in charge in this situation, show us what we would be voting for if we put a cross alongside a Lib-Dem candidate's name in May. Give us some positive campaigning for a change.

Do you think they'll actually get a share of the vote next time around? Even Clegg is admitting he campaigned under false pretences in May:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13...ees-pledge.html

Cameron and Osbourne are playing this very well in my view. Everyone expected tories to cut and they come out of all this looking honest and straightforward while the muck sticks to Clegg, Cable and the rest. It would be surprising if this isn't reflected at a local level. The more that Brooks and co. shout 'Foul!' the more voters are likely to think, 'yes, you are'. I'm no politician, though, so am probably wrong.

I've just made some of my own suggestions to Newbury Sound about what Labour would do differently. I agree, we should be doing this cross party and looking into figures in detail. Because we really have an officer led council, no party will be claiming responsibility.

We could get close to a 25% cut in expenses by swapping the cabinet model for a directly elected mayor.

Sadly, it looks like WBC have already ruled this out.....as none of us could be bothered (or didn't realise it was going on) to respond. Nice insight into establishment thinking though!

http://decisionmaking.westberks.gov.uk/mgC...DF.aspx?ID=4296

Of course, it doesn't really matter. If we can get 8500 on a petition, WBC has to organise a referendum on a directly elected mayor. But who would be the Boris of West Berks?