UPDATE
See HERE for an update following the launch of Cumberland Council's budget consultation.
MY CAMPAIGN
At a time when council taxpayers are hard-pressed, I'm campaigning for our new unitary local authority - Cumberland Council - to pass on the savings they're benefitting from, by cutting council tax for everybody across Cumberland.
In recent years, council funding from government has been much higher than budgeted for, which allowed Cumbria County Council to bank nearly £10m while increasing council tax by the same amount. Roads budgets have increased but we're not seeing the benefit here in Cumberland, with the bulk going to Labour and Liberal Democrat boroughs in South Cumbria, and government continues to help vulnerable families with schemes delivered through councils such as the Household Support Fund.
In April 2023, Cumberland will be the only council for residents in the current Allerdale, Copeland and Carlisle districts. From day one we should see the buck-passing stop, we should see much-reduced duplication and we should immediately start to see the financial benefits of streamlining local government. Join me in calling for these savings to be passed on.
Protecting our services
Unfortunately, all the noise emanating from the new Cumberland council to date suggests that they're not taking our issues seriously - that they're wasting their time looking for headlines on things they have no control over. There's a raft of issues they should be dealing with:
- Our children's services are in crisis - judged as requiring improvement or inadequate in every inspection under Labour leadership since 2013 while they were deemed to be 'performing well' under Conservative leadership. Services are deliberately under-budgeted by the current Labour council every year. It’s failing children and it’s failing parents. We have a huge opportunity to reset - and recent sad news should mean it’s at the top of the list.
- Staff are on four different wage structures with no plan to fix it on April 1st, this will lead to unrest and impact on council taxpayers.
- Allerdale has the lowest council tax in Cumbria thanks to successive Conservative administrations, and that must be protected. Carlisle and Copeland should be brought down to match.
- Allerdale has weekly bin collections that Carlisle and Copeland don’t. Officers wanted to move to fortnightly but Conservative administrations promised to protect them and did. Labour must now do the same.
- When I was Deputy Leader of Allerdale Borough council, the new Conservative administration started the long, hard slog of reversing decades of Labour outsourcing and privatisation. Competition is great, and can drive down costs while improving delivery - but in Allerdale we were ending up in the absurd position of only have one viable tender. That’s not competition.
- We brought bin collection, recycling, events provision and markets back in house which gives us much greater flexibility to adapt services to the end user, and to try new things - like the new market in Cockermouth. This reversal of Labour’s disastrous policies must continue.
- I believe that it's important that you can see someone in the council face to face when you have an issue, even though that may only be very occasionally. Your Conservative administration in Allerdale have protected accessible frontline service centres in our town centres, and prior to local government reform were working to extend that offering in all our towns, and to move a customer service centre into Workington town centre.As the new council undertakes a property rationalisation exercise, our frontline customer service centres are at risk. What could be the perfect opportunity to deliver real change, embedding staff in our towns, could easily be lost in Labour's retreat from engagement with residents.
We must LEVEL DOWN council tax, and we must not allow Labour to level down our services, our opportunities or our aspirations.
Mark Jenkinson MP
