Your chance to have a say on the next lot of cuts
Thursday, 8th September 2011.
Next week a random selection of people across St Edmundsbury will get a questionnaire from the council about what services they are prepared to lose in cuts.
In a new departure the council, faced with having to save another £3.5million over two years, is asking its residents to give their views on a series of possible places where the axe might fall - or where cash could be raised by charging for services.
Among the possibilities - which the council stresses are not firm proposals yet - are reduction of CCTV coverage; increasing car parking charges; charging for blue badge parking for the disabled; cutting staff by sharing services with other councils; making services like planning, licensing, housing and environmental health more web-based and charging for additional personal help; reducing community work; getting rid of community centres; reducing standards of maintenance for parks and open spaces; cutting the ranger service; and a series of changes specific Bury St Edmunds such as charging for the Abbey Gardens toilets, axing the tourist information centre and cutting opening hours at Moyses Hall museum.
Launching the initiative yesterday, council leader Cllr John Griffiths said: "Nobody's got all the answers. We have frozen council tax for the past two years and not made redundancies, but the blunt reality is that we have to save another £3.5m over two years."
He thought the council had been very good and finding savings and efficiencies, but it had also invested heavily in the two main towns, investment which was beginning to bring rewards in the form of more jobs.
The new consultation, which is costing £10,000, began with a series of focus groups in Bury, Haverhill and the villages to narrow down what people might find acceptable.
Past consultations, asking for ideas from the public, have resulted in responses which were far too general to be useful, or which were not practical because residents are often not clear on which services the council has to provide by law and which are discretionary and can be cut.
This time the aim is to be much more specific.
"This is not a fake consultation," said Cllr Griffiths. "We want people to think seriously about what is and is not acceptable, so we make sure we get constructive input from the people we serve."
But he did not shy away from the significance of the savings which had to be made.
"Some of these will have quality of life impact," he said. "They will have an impact on residents and on staff.
"You can say you don't like any of them, but we will almost certainly have to do some of them."
The council, which has an annual budget of around £65m, has reduced its staff from 700 to 500 in the past four years and frozen recruitment for the past three, but it is prepared to countenance more jobs going.
The questionnaire goes out to 2,000 randomly selected residents next week, and will also be available on line next week at the council's website, for other interested residents to make suggestions or comments.
For the lucky 2,000 there is a £50 prize draw from those forms returned, as long as they are not done anonymously.
In a new departure the council, faced with having to save another £3.5million over two years, is asking its residents to give their views on a series of possible places where the axe might fall - or where cash could be raised by charging for services.
Among the possibilities - which the council stresses are not firm proposals yet - are reduction of CCTV coverage; increasing car parking charges; charging for blue badge parking for the disabled; cutting staff by sharing services with other councils; making services like planning, licensing, housing and environmental health more web-based and charging for additional personal help; reducing community work; getting rid of community centres; reducing standards of maintenance for parks and open spaces; cutting the ranger service; and a series of changes specific Bury St Edmunds such as charging for the Abbey Gardens toilets, axing the tourist information centre and cutting opening hours at Moyses Hall museum.
Launching the initiative yesterday, council leader Cllr John Griffiths said: "Nobody's got all the answers. We have frozen council tax for the past two years and not made redundancies, but the blunt reality is that we have to save another £3.5m over two years."
He thought the council had been very good and finding savings and efficiencies, but it had also invested heavily in the two main towns, investment which was beginning to bring rewards in the form of more jobs.
The new consultation, which is costing £10,000, began with a series of focus groups in Bury, Haverhill and the villages to narrow down what people might find acceptable.
Past consultations, asking for ideas from the public, have resulted in responses which were far too general to be useful, or which were not practical because residents are often not clear on which services the council has to provide by law and which are discretionary and can be cut.
This time the aim is to be much more specific.
"This is not a fake consultation," said Cllr Griffiths. "We want people to think seriously about what is and is not acceptable, so we make sure we get constructive input from the people we serve."
But he did not shy away from the significance of the savings which had to be made.
"Some of these will have quality of life impact," he said. "They will have an impact on residents and on staff.
"You can say you don't like any of them, but we will almost certainly have to do some of them."
The council, which has an annual budget of around £65m, has reduced its staff from 700 to 500 in the past four years and frozen recruitment for the past three, but it is prepared to countenance more jobs going.
The questionnaire goes out to 2,000 randomly selected residents next week, and will also be available on line next week at the council's website, for other interested residents to make suggestions or comments.
For the lucky 2,000 there is a £50 prize draw from those forms returned, as long as they are not done anonymously.
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