Norwich Protest Against Massive Cuts
Channel: Roger Blackwell
Date: 2017-03-03

The News Line Tuesday February 21 2017 PAGE 3

COUNCILS are announcing a bonfire of jobs and services across the UK from April, at the same time as they are hiking council tax by almost 5%. 

The Local Government Association (LGA) said yesterday that most councils across the country are to increase Council Tax by 4.99% in April, blaming a rise in the cost of social care along with Tory cuts in central government funding. 

The LGA says that councils spent £16bn last year on services for elderly and disabled people after funding from central government was cut by a third in real terms during the last Parliament. 

They are now setting their budgets and announcing mass job cuts, library closures and bin collection and other service cuts. 

In Liverpool last Friday, Mayor Joe Anderson claimed the council has a £90m funding black hole, despite the 4.99% Council Tax hike. 

He then announced four libraries closures, 300 job cuts at Liverpool City Council, major cuts to the council's One Stop Shops, where people access council services, and the authority's contact centre is to have its opening hours slashed. 

Anderson blamed the ongoing 'attack' on local authorities by the Tory government and its austerity policies. 

Warwickshire County Council leader Izzi Seccombe said: 'It is really looking like we're cutting into the bones of services that matter to people. 

'It's not just social care. Things like roads, highways, bus services which are subsidised, libraries, access to leisure centres, waste services, children's services as well.' 

Seccombe said an extra £1.3bn was needed for social care in the next financial year alone. 

Demonstrators campaigned yesterday outside Norfolk County Hall, Norwich, yesterday to oppose Norfolk County Council's plans to cut the £10m Housing Support budget for the most vulnerable people, such as the homeless and disabled. 

On 23 January the Norfolk County Council Adult Social Care Committee voted to make further cuts to adult social care services which will increase homelessness and put pressure on other services used by some of the most vulnerable people in Norfolk. 

Over the next two years the council want to more than halve the Housing Support budget to just £4.5m, at a time when the number of homeless people has increased massively, by over 50%, in Norwich, Kings Lynn and Yarmouth.