by Cllr George Duggins - Labour's Finance Spokesman

Made in Coventry remains one of the city's proudest refrains.  However the backdrop to the City Council budget was created in Coventry. And the location is fair and square in the council house.

The Tories have given us:

A total debt of £355m. It was £247m 2004

Debt repayments of £31m now, £18m 2004.

Reserves of £47m now, £72 m 2004.

This has nothing to do with Coventry Labour Councillors nor anyone in national government.  Not to mention a completely avoidable provision of £1 million  for equal pay.  What could be done with this £1 million?  Eventually the chickens were bound to come home to roost as they have during the last few budgets.  And this while the council has been funded generously by a labour government.

 We know what would you get with a Tory government.  But if people in this country need reminding then tell them to come to Coventry.  A feature of the political management of the council is of cancelled meetings – a democratic deficit laced with a competenancy deficit. Whether it is new sickness reporting arrangements or the death of the city region there is no apparent political management audit trail. 
 
 Only a fool would anticipate that the same level of real term resources will be available for public services that have been in the last ten years.  However, Labour is determined that service provision will improve.  A child's education and well being can not be put on hold for five years. Neither can the needs of our elderly be put on hold. Nor can the regeneration of our city.  Our strategic goals are clear: service improvement and regeneration of the city.

 (Full details of Labour's alternative budget are after the link)

This year we are proposing:

To increase constituents' feeling of security - and in the process increase an ability to provide round the clock recording of anti social behaviour - we are suggesting two moves.

The first is to ensure that kilo 2 becomes a 24 hour service. Many constituents point to the fact that kilo 2 finishes at 2am but noise nuisance goes on beyond this time.

We would also redirect the warden service to the priority areas maximising their impact where they are most required.

A reconnection of service provision and priority areas will reverse the conservatives promise to decouple the 2 in 2004.

Our second proposal is to employ a second empty homes officer. It is crucial that we are aware of the housing stock number that is available in the city and can be brought back into use. It is our duty to bring back into commission every last empty house.

The third element is that over the lifetime of the medium term financial strategy we would wish to explore the possibility of delivering on a long term goal of the labour group and that is to build an older peoples centre in Coventry.

Firstly we need to explore with older people's groups how we can take this work forward and we suspect that this could take us up to the beginning of year  2011/12.

There after we would look to invest £2 million capital to bring this policy to fruition. We would make this a priority for the capital programme.