Black holes must be filled in
By Tim Archer
A budget has to balance sooner or later; black holes cannot be financed forever and they cannot be ignored. It's therefore interesting that the Labour-run council chose to overlook the fact that its books contain a £54million gap. Putting that into context, council tax in Tower Hamlets would have to rise by almost 30 per cent a year for the next three years just to plug that gap.
What's the Conservative alternative?
We'd hand back the keys to the flash office block, currently half empty, that the council rents for £8million a year, and use the existing empty office buildings that the council already owns.
In fact, we've identified over £2.5million of savings from cutting spending on communications, consultants and councillor allowances, without reducing any frontline services.
The Conservative alternative budget would have invested in critical services like providing 17 extra police officers for the borough, additional dog, litter and park wardens and providing free English classes.
The parallels between Tower Hamlets Council and the Government could not be clearer.
The Government is now the biggest advertiser in the UK, while Tower Hamlets produces the biggest and most frequent free council newspaper.
Both are in denial about the effectiveness and the excess of their spending and, in both cases, it is the taxpayer who will have to pay the price.
- Tim Archer is Conservative councillor, Blackwall & Cubitt Town Ward & prospective MP
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Tower Hamlets council also blows £1.5 million a year on their propoganda rag East End Life!
plus the head of communication Alex Louis is on a whopping £80k a year!
The head of communications is someone else and one man's propaganda is another's interesting read...