MY experience of 30 plus years working in the private sector is that when faced with major reductions in income, then an organisation will often undertake a fundamental review of its business functions and identify both the essential, core activities and separately those activities and services that are non-essential and therefore candidates for either cut-backs or even a complete cull.

I have seen no evidence of this sort of action coming from the VoG Council. The general approach seems to be to spread the pain across all services – with the result that every service then degrades – essential and non-essential alike. The immediate response to the announcement of budget cuts by local councils is always to collectively gripe and finger-point (all political parties) followed almost immediately by the usual knee-jerk reactions – raise council tax and threaten to degrade services (further).

It was interesting to listen to the LGA spokesman on BBC News say that council tax would almost inevitably rise ‘by just about the same as last year – four per cent’ delivered in a tone that made it sound insignificant. Hello. That is three per cent more than I’ve had as a wage increase over the past three years - in five years my council tax has risen by £641pa – which comes from income I’ve already paid tax on and I can see little, if any, impact from that increase in council tax.

The council and its councillors seem more concerned with defending themselves against any moves to reorganise local authorities than with delivering the services that tax payers expect. I realise that expecting otherwise would be the same as expecting turkeys to vote for Christmas - but oh boy, do we have some turkeys on our council.

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