6 THE SENTINEL Friday February 24, 2012 SEN-eO1-S2 [P/R] SEN-eO1-S2 [P/R] THE SENTINEL Friday February 24, 2012 7

HARD TIMES: Councilleader Mohammed Pervez.

NEWS NEWS

ELDERLY AND ADULTSERVICES AND CARE

■ Rehabilitation care for elderly andvulnerable patients who need supportbefore returning home after a hospitalstay will be concentrated at StMichael’s, which will close as a carehome. The Meadows centre ofexcellence will also close as a carehome and could be reopened as acentre for adults with learningdisabilities. The Meadows, in Bucknall,has received £800,000 investment overthe last five years, while St Michael’sHouse, in Chell, has benefited from£1.4 million in improvements. Thecouncil originally planned to shut StMichael’s and the Meadows and useMarrow House for rehabilitation. It wouldhave forced 15 dementia sufferers wholive at the Meir Hay home to move intothe private sector, as well as dozenswho use it for regular respite care.Leader Mohammed Pervez announced aU–turn after families threatened a legalchallenge and signed an undertakingthat the council did not have permissionto move any of their relatives. The latestplan will see 30 jobs cut and savings of£678,000;

ADMINISTRATION CUTS■ Deputy manager’s post to be cut atHandley Drive learning disability centre,in Packmoor – £30,000;

■ Review of staffing in procurement –£33,000;

■ Six jobs to go and spending on PRand communications cut – £200,000;

■ Corporate restructure with the loss offour senior posts – £424,000;

■ Three jobs in sports and leisureservices cut to save £111,000;

■ New rotas will be drawn up for thecity’s 22 traffic wardens to have more ofthem on the prowl during the daytime.Reduced overtime costs for working atnight will save cash – £17,000;

■ Team manager’s post in the council’sculture and tourism team cut andreplaced with a junior role – £21,000;

■ Civic Centre and Swann House, inStoke, closed on Saturdays with councilstaff who have to work told to work athome or at Stoke Local Centre. Savingswill be made from reduced spending onfuel bills and security – £25,000;

■ Administration cuts in allotmentservices – £21,000;

■ Four jobs cut in car parking servicesfor staff car parks – £95,000;

■ Increased marketing of Longton TownHall to boost income –£10,000;

■ Reducing the number of agency staffused for debt collection – £50,000;

■ Use of an external courier to delivermail to schools will be dropped withcouncil staff taking on the responsibility– £50,000;

■ Job advertisements to be placed onthe council’s website and not in trademagazines – £100,000;

■ The canteen at the Cromer Roaddepot, in Northwood, faces closure. Areview of the restaurants at Hanley’sPotteries Museum and Stoke’s CivicCentre could lead to outsourcing –£150,000.

CHILDREN AND FAMILIES■ Schools will be forced to pay extra forswimming lessons with three years ofincremental increases for schoolswimming at council facilities. Subsidywill be wiped out altogether in 2015 asschools will have to pay for hiring thevenues. Council officers have warnedthe move could lead to fewer swimminglessons or see schools go to Newcastlein search of a better deal. After-schoolswimming subsidy and the communityswimming service also face funding cuts– £71,000. City of Stoke-on-TrentSwimming Club, known as COSACSS, isalso set to lose its £32,000 councilfunding. The club, which has beenestablished for more than 30 years,puts the funding towards venue hire andpaying for two swimming coaches. Italso supplements annual fees paid byits 173 members, who book 15,000swims per year;

■ Children’s centres centralmanagement team and associatedcosts are cut – £84,000;

■ Youth clubs in Stoke, Meir, Bentilee,Packmoor, Burslem, Goldenhill andBerry Hill could close with up to ninejobs scrapped – £398,000;

WHERE THE AXEWILL BE FALLING Protests cannot stop

■ Three education welfare officers willbe cut, despite protests from teachers,meaning primary schools would nothave their own named officer and therewould be no intervention until a pupil’sattendance dips below 75 per cent.Crucial home visits which can lead tofurther interventions by social workerswould also be sharply reduced –£84,000;

■ Three jobs cut as part of savingsin the Youth Offending Service –£57,000;

■ Playground inspection team, whichmonitors safety of facilities foryoungsters, to lose a member of staff –£23,000;

■ Trainee social workers will no longerbe taken on as the council estimates itwill save £110,000 per year by onlyemploying qualified workers;

■ Fees for each child to receivetransport to a faith school will increasefrom £390 to £450 – £24,000 gain.Remaining subsidy for sixth form andcollege students who use home-to-school transport will be scrapped,increasing fees from £330 to£450–per–child – £60,000;

■ Funding for a library of toys andequipment used by child-minderscatering for disabled children will beslashed. The library will not immediatelyclose but old and damaged equipmentwill not be replaced – £90,000;

■ A contract with the NSPCC to providesupport for children traumatised bydomestic abuse has been ended –£40,000;

■ Children placed in costly out-of-citysocial care placements may be forced tomove as the council attempts tonegotiate a five per cent cut in theamount it pays out – £326,000;

■ Funding for careers advice serviceConnexions will be slashed by£350,000. Schools face having todeliver face-to-face support to youngpeople themselves or buy in careersworkers from local authorities or otherorganisations.

What do you thinkabout the cuts? Emailyour views to letters@

t h e s e n t i n e l .c o. u k

MULTI-MILLION pound cuts willagain hit services across the city –but council leaders believe theirinvestment strategy will providecrucial jobs.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council’sbudget for 2012/13 will see citywidesavings of £24 million, with£4.6 million reinvested in theauthority’s Mandate for Change.

It means cash will be ploughedinto promoting inward invest-ment, making potential develop-ment sites “shovel ready” andimproving the traffic network.

But cuts will see care facilitiesand youth centres closed, whilescores of services are scaled back.

Council leader Mohammed Per-vez said: “We ’re still in unpreced-ented times and still facingextremely difficult and deep Gov-ernment cuts.

“The budget shows our determ-ination to make Stoke-on-Trent agreat working city.

“The council tax increase will bejust 51p per week for Band A prop-erties. We don’t believe the Gov-er nment’s one-size-fits-allapproach to council tax is the rightone, and we are fighting this.

“The Government’s offer is fo rone year only. It would result in aloss of £13 million over five years,money we can use to protect themost vulnerable and stimulate oureconomy. It is money we cannotafford to lose.”

The authority was forced into aU-turn on plans to push demen-tia sufferers at Marrow Houseinto the private sector.

Plans to scrap the cere-monial role of the LordMayor were also shelvedafter an outcry.

And the council is yet toreach an agreement withunions on savings of£2 million whichwill see stafflose rights

like weekend pay and car parking.The Sentinel revealed this week

how the council is poised to avoidstrike action by bin men after aclimbdown on plans to drasticallycut their pay.

Monday bin collections are nowlikely to be scrapped, and teamleaders will become labourers tosave £395,000 in waste collection.

Independent and Conservativecouncillors voted against thebudget, but the ruling Labourgroup holds a 24-vote majority.

Some of Labour’s own membersacknowledged the difficulty of thedecisions being made.

Karen Clarke, Labour memberfor Fenton West and Mount Pleas-ant, raised concerns about the clos-ure of Fenton Day Centre and lackof investment in the town, adding:“It’s with a very heavy heart andgreat sadness that I support this.”

Responding to opposition taunts,councillor Sarah Hill, cabinetmember for finance, said: “No Ic a n’t sleep at night, I haven’t sleptproperly for months and a lot ofpeople in the cabinet would say thesame thing, as would our officers.

“It has been extremely difficultand we’ve tried to do our best forthe city.”

North Staffs Against Cutsgathered outside the civic centre top ro t e s t .

Organiser Jason Hill, presidentof the North Staffordshire TradeUnion Council, said: “We feel the

cuts will have the worst impacton people who are vulner-

able; the disabled, elderlyand children.

“The so-called Mandatefor Change proposes to cre-ate jobs, but it seems per-verse to create jobs in the

private sector by cuttingthem in the public sector.”

includes the county council and police –£40,000;

■ Reduced funding for the HealthyCities programme which raisesawareness about health and wellbeing –£30,000;

■ Efficiency savings in bereavement,trading standards, registrars andenvironmental health; reduced spendingon pest control and teams who respondto late-night noise complaints will onlybe available at weekends during thesummer – £160,000;

■ Funding cuts hitting the Safer CityPartnership – which brings togethercouncil and policing issues – will see its£3.7 million budget slashed. Cash forjunior firefighting schemes which helptroubled schoolchildren build confidenceand discipline will be cut, although thefire service will search foralternatives. Cash for alleygates, which lock out gangsand drive down anti-socialbehaviour in troublehotspots, will be cut. Thecouncil would have reducedscope to send street teamsto trouble hotspots to helptackle anti-social behaviour.And only one alcoholrestriction zone, which givespolice the power to seizebooze, would be created in ayear – £793,000;

■ Residents in areas with

the lowest use of recycling bins will losetheir collection and be told to usenearby recycling centres on their own –£57,000;

■ Large areas of public open space willreceive only basic maintenance. Twostaff will go and the areas will beallowed to grow into “wild meadows” –

£46,000. Football pitch marking andweed-killing to be reduced withone job lost – £23,000. Up to16 jobs will be cut in street-

cleaning and ground cleansing.Town centres and litteringhotspots will continue to becovered – £171,000. A further£48,000 will be saved on groundcleansing in the city centre and£18,000 will be saved on litterpicking in city parks;

■ Four dedicated town centre

regeneration managers – coveringBurslem, Stoke and Longton – could becut to save £77,000 while a further postwill be left vacant. The council’sregeneration department would take ontheir work;

■ Organic waste recycling collectionswill be suspended between Novemberand March every year with residents toldto home-compost the rubbish or dump itin with general waste – £170,000;

■ Road safety projects reduced –£18,000;

■ Floral displays designed to improvethe appearance of the city for visitorsand motorists on key link roads will becut. The council chopped £18,000 fromits funding for bedding plants last yearand is proposing to all but end itsspending on flowers from 2012/13. Thecut in spending on bedding plants wouldsave £50,000 next year as some of theexisting £180,000 budget would bespent on perennial plants that do notneed much maintenance. It would meanseveral attractive floral displays beingreplaced with basic greenery, whichdoes not need regular attention. Theannual saving would increase to£125,000–per–annum thereafter;

■ The annual £634,000 budget forrepairing street equipment like bins,signs and benches will be slashed. Itwill mean street equipment left badlydamaged by vandals will be removedinstead of being fixed – £100,000.

FACILITIES■ All six of the city’s public libraries – atTunstall, Hanley, Longton, Meir, Stokeand Bentilee – will close at “least busy”times. Opening on Saturdays will berestricted to between 10am and 2pmwith some half-day closures and no 7pmevening opening. Plans for a full libraryservice at Blurton have been scrapped –£100,000;

■ Children’s centres, libraries and otherservices could be merged or forced toshare buildings – £566,000;

■ Athletes could be charged topark at Northwood Stadiumwhile City of Stoke AthleticsClub will have to pay extramembership fees.The council will have tospend thousands laying asuitable car park to justifycharges but expects to save£40,000 from the £127,000subsidy;

■ Opening hours will be cut on Sundaymornings at Gladstone Pottery Museum,in Longton, to save £20,000;The New Vic Theatre, Stoke-on-TrentMusic Festival and Make Some Noiseyouth festival will have funding cut by£10,000 this year, £19,000 next yearand £26,000 in 2014/15;

■ Closure-threatened community hallsacross the city were handed a stay ofexecution after complaints thatresidents were given just months to

come up with business plans for takingover them.Management committees have nowbeen given until April 2013 to draw upplans for running the popular facilitiesindependently of the council. Operatingbudgets will be reduced and committeeswill have to find savings, but the overallcut of £162,000 has been scaled downto £62,000;

■ Buildings sell-off – revenue savings of£500,000;

■ Campaigners fighting to saveWedgwood Memorial College are

hoping to prevent the facility’sclosure. The council isplanning to close theBarlaston centre to save£28,000 per year andescape an additional

£160,000 subsidy it says thecollege will need just to keep

operating. The Save WedgwoodMemorial College group believes it cansave the facility and make it profitableby focusing on its traditional strengthsof offering residential educationalcourses;

■ The council wants to offload bothEtruria Industrial Museum and FordGreen Hall, Smallthorne. It is againtrying to transfer both to a privatecompany or social enterprise to keepthem open. It is estimated the move willsave the council a total of £158,000per year, comprising £100,000 forEtruria and £58,000 for Ford Green.

NEIGHBOURHOODS■ Speed cameras in the city will be keptactive for another year, despite majorcuts to the Safer Roads Partnership.The council backed down on plans tocut the £100,000 budget entirely afterbeing told that all remaining activecameras would be switched off and nomobile police camera vans would visitthe city. A total of 130 of the 260 fixedyellow speed traps in Staffordshire andStoke-on-Trent are never switched onand fewer than 29 are active at any onetime. But the council’s initial planswould have meant every active camerain the city being decommissioned andno mobile police speed vans visiting thecity. The Sentinel revealed earlier thismonth how bosses hope to make thecameras self-funding by raising theprice of speed awareness courses to£100 or more. They currently cost £75and allow motorists to avoid points ontheir licence. It is hoped the move willreduce the need for councils tosubsidise the safety partnership, which

NORTHWOOD STADIUMSavings: £ 4 0,0 0 0

FORD GREEN HALLSavings: £ 5 8 ,0 0 0

WEDGWOOD MEMORIAL COLLEGESavings: £28,000 per year

SPEED CAMERASSavings: £ 4 0,0 0 0

R E CYC L I N GSavings: £ 1 70,0 0 0

LITTER PICKINGSavings: £ 1 8 ,0 0 0

SWIMMING SUBSIDYSavings: £7 1 ,0 0 0

THE MEADOWS/CARE HOMESSavings: £ 678 ,0 0 0

A L LOT M E N TSSavings: £ 2 1 ,0 0 0

■ Budget of £968,000 forcommissioning services from charitiesand voluntary groups to be cut with all“non–essential” services dropped –£100,000;

■ Duke Street respite facility, in HeronCross, to be sold or handed to theprivate sector – £225,000;

■ Shelton Day Centre, which providessocial opportunities and support foradults with learning disabilities, willclose. The council will aim to providebetter training and voluntary workingopportunities while those with complexneeds will move to a centre atNewstead – £140,000;

■ Pensioners and the disabled will haveto pay to travel on Stoke-on-Trent’sbuses before 9.30am for the firsttime.

As citywide savings of £20 million are rubber-stamped, Alex Campbell reports on where the axewill fall - and what is being done to counter the cuts

A NATIONAL Governmentcash incentive for localauthorities to freeze taxwould have seen the citycouncil receive£2 million.The government’s offer isequivalent to an increaseof 2.5 per cent.But, unlike a similar offerlast year, which the citycouncil did accept, thetax freeze cash is onlyguaranteed for one year.It is like receiving a bonusinstead of a pay rise.The money can only bespent once and does notincrease the base linefrom which future taxincreases are added.The council would be leftwith an immediate£2 million cost pressurein April 2013 if it took thecash.City councillors haveinstead approved a taxincrease of 3.49 percent, which will raise anadditional £3 million in2012/13, and every yearindefinitely.It will see the city’s69,101 Band Aproperties pay £788.97,up from £762.37.The decision to reducethe increase from 3.5 percent, dubbed“patronising” and “aninsult” by campaigners,was made as aprecaution followingthreats of Governmentintervention to authoritiesincreasing bills by morethan 3.5 per cent.

Why authorityrefused £2mcash incentive

cuts to services across city

■ Government fundingcuts: £8.6 million■ Cost pressures likeinflation and loanrepayments:£10.9 million■ Mandate for Change“save to invest”strategy:£4.6 millionTotal: £24.1 million

To fund this, the citycouncil will:■ Cut staff and servicesto save: £20 million■ Increase council tax togenerate: £3 million■ Borrow from cashowed to back-up cash toraise:£1.1 millionTotal £24.1 million

How the bookswere balanced..

PROTEST: Oscar Halstead,aged 10, from Stoke, joinsthe anti-cuts protestoutside the civic centre.

Picture: Alex Severn

©NM

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