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Richmond upon Thames Liberal Democrats:Covering the constituencies of Twickenham and Richmond Park |
Council admits £4.5 million surplus - and cuts children’s services
June 25, 2011 8:26 PM
• [Jun 24]: FIGURES presented at last night's cabinet meeting reveal that Richmond Council ended the 2010/11 financial year with a surplus on the year of £4.475 million.
This will cause the ruling Conservative administration significant embarrassment since it pushed through £500,000 of controversial in-year cuts to children's services last September, claiming this was needed because government grants had been withdrawn. The services cut at the September Cabinet Meeting in order to save £500,000 were:
• Advice to schools on health issues
• Cutting a number of youth projects, including the Outskirts magazine, the Kicks project in Ham and any educational input into the local Youth Offending Team.
• Drastic cuts to the Connexions service which provides education and careers advice to young people, reducing its opening hours from 35 hours a week to just 16 hours
• Scrapping of all positive activities for young people projects
• Scrapping of work tackling teenage pregnancy.
• Scrapping the young people's substance misuse service, stopping important preventative work.
• Scrapping work to ensure every young person between 16-19 has an opportunity to be in education, training or employment.
• Training and support for primary school teachers in raising standards of literacy and numeracy
• Training and support for secondary school teachers in raising standards in English and maths and in tackling poor behaviour and attendance problems.
At the time, Liberal Democrats argued that the Council could and should absorb the costs in order to protect these important services. Cllr Stephen Knight, Leader of the Liberal Democrat Opposition, said:
"These were brutal and shortsighted cuts to preventative services and support for vulnerable young people. We said in September that the Council could absorb the cost of the services and we have been proved right. With the budget ending the year with a surplus of almost £4.5 million, the council could easily have found the £500,000 needed to protect youth services."
• Cuts criticised after Richmond Council announces £4.5m surplus [RTT Jul 01]
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