Cuts, cuts, cuts

Cornwall Council is talking about nothing but cuts at the moment. The rhetoric coming from the 4th floor at County Hall is that we will have to make £110 million of cuts over the next four years.

The last message to members from Leader Alec Robertson is that they have identified £100 million of cuts which, they claim, will not have an adverse impact on front-line services. It is only the last £10 million which will affect John and Jane Taxpayer. And so the Leader is inviting ideas from councillors across the spectrum for how to save that final £10 million.

The Council is also planning to hold four public consultation events across Cornwall next week to ask the public for their ideas. These events will be in Penzance, Saltash, St Austell and Bude. I hope that members of the public go along to them but I fear that, unless the publicity machine goes into overdrive, few people will actually know they are going on until the last minute.

The Bude event (the closest to Launceston) will be taking place from 6pm-7pm on Friday 15th October at the Parkhouse Centre. If any Launceston resident wants to attend but cannot get there, please give me a call or drop me an email (details in the 'About Me' section the right).

I do think it is interesting that the Council claims to have found £100 million of cuts already and that these will not affect frontline services. If this is true then I congratulate them. We will have to wait until the Cabinet Meeting on 27th October for any details, however, as the planned discussion on 13th October has been postponed.