The Alliance Group, the controlling party of the Isle of Wight Council, says that the budget it has put forward for 2023/24 is the most difficult ever experienced by the Isle of Wight Council.
For months, the Alliance Administration has been working ‘tirelessly’ to pull together a workable and acceptable budget proposal for the coming year.
As previously reported by Island Echo, the proposed budget will see £3million of savings made whilst bumping up the Council Tax bill by 4.99%. There will be a further £6million of cuts in the coming years.
The Alliance Group says that the situation is a direct result of more than 10 years of Conservative governance, whose austerity measures have stripped the Isle of Wight Council’s spending power by £93million.
Councillor Lora Peacey Wilcox, Leader of the Isle of Wight Council, has this week said:
“Since May 2021, the Alliance Group has had a strong focus on understanding and coming to terms with the many challenges the Council faces so that it can deliver a positive future for the Island and its community.
“The Council has a distinct legal responsibility as a ‘place leader’ under the Local Government Act. Because we are an island that responsibility is even greater as we do not benefit from a neighbouring authority’s support of the economy for example through the provision of jobs or housing. The ongoing failure of Government to treat the Island differently, compromises our ability to provide that hope.
“The national and international pressures we face mean this remains an aspiration as we cannot do what we want and what the Island needs, with the crumbs Government gives us and the ongoing failure to recognise and fund the Island properly.”
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Councillor Chris Jarman, Cabinet member for Strategic Finances has added:
“Through our sound management we have been able create a legal and lawful budget. Others in the same position have failed. Local Councils, including Croydon, Thurrock and Slough, issue a Section 114 Notice, effectively declaring bankruptcy. Others are rumoured to be close to doing so as well.
“The scale of the challenges faced in reaching a balanced budget demanded extraordinary efforts from all involved and a recognition that it was better we remained to represent the Island residents and businesses with the difficult decisions required. Surrendering to the situation as other authorities have had to do was unthinkable being a betrayal of those we represent.”
“Everyone will find something they don’t like but we have to say it will be difficult to find any better alternatives. If you take something out of the proposals, something else has to take its place.”
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Councillor Ian Stephens, Deputy Leader of the Isle of Wight Council said:
“We can only act within the boundaries set by the Westminster Government. As has been the case for many years, they restrict what we can do and seemingly try to make it as difficult as possible for local councils to survive. Yet we are the ones responsible for looking after Children, Adult Social Care, Education, Waste Collections and so on.
“Despite this, they continue to cut our funding and have done since 2010. All this in the face of a growing demand for the services and support for our community that we want to provide. In many cases, we are legally obliged to provide.
“We have managed to avoid cuts to Adult Social Care Support, Leisure Centres and Libraries. We have been able to provide services in alternative ways. We have been able to honour our undertaking to increase Council Tax Support. We have no wish or intention to go bankrupt. The damage to the Island if that were to happen would be severe.
Councillor Lora Peacey Wilcox concluded:
“There is much more to be discussed about the proposals and we will be keenly listening to the views people express when they have read what we are putting forward.
“We just ask that in doing so people pause to think about why we have to produce a budget like this and consider what the alternative might be?”
Well if you got rid of 5 or 6 of the useless councillors at county hall, you know the ones, those that stand around in the corridors gossiping about the holidays or the new car they will get this year. Think of the savings there. Corrupt to the core I’m afraid.
Three million in cuts but willing to lay out over a million on updating offices and electric cars.
Am i missing something? If i ran my business like this i would be bust. Oh hang on we are!
Tell you what Laura (and the rest of your Alliance Cronies).
Instead of continually moaning and whining about ‘having’ to make cuts whilst still gouging the (few) people who actually work for a living and get ripped off at every turn…
Why don’t you do what Liverpool did years ago, defy Westminster and set a PROPER budget.
They will then have to intervene directly – your defence ‘we were thinking if what the Electorate want’. The bad press then falls directly on the incompetents in Westminster!
For once in your miserable lives, stop whining and stand up to central government!
Laura knows that she is very well paid, as are her close allies, hence if she declares the Council are bankrupt her massive income and perks end there.
So they won’t do that.
Nor will they stand up to Central Gov as they are wise enough not to bite the hand that feeds THEM so well.
Hence we will be paying for more chav muvers, to dump more chav feral kids, to demand more chav estates to outbreed in a few short years, making life even worse as time goes on.
End paying people to breed, and put an end to this endless cycle.
If they had not wasted millions on the floating bridge there would not be a problem
So much money is wasted on people who are sponging off tax payers.
We should not be funding any asylum seeker, migrants, and their endless scattered children dumped in foster homes costing a fortune or paying people a vast sum to adopt what they dump on our society.
Much is wasted on adult care, and whilst plenty is needed, there is no need to be so lavish with homes for such. We all have to cut back now, yet these people pay nothing have fully heated flats yet never contribute anything into society only take.
Same with the mentally disabled children, their parents are furnished with extra money and often a car, let them fund what they have bought into the world. A risk you take when having a child.
Your comments are concerning, as are those of the people who agree with you and have upvoted this. Especially your comment about families with disabled children, what a sad life.
Stev makes so valid points. When the parents of joey children are paid so much extra for basically burdening society with a costly problem for ever, it is only right that they should forego somethings and have one of them to stay at home to care for it.
Why should they get care workers who WE pay for, and then expect charities to look after it and then expect normal children’s schools to try to entertain it, when they are paid extra for it?
They often get mobility cars too.
The useless in society are getting far too much now, hence the growing numbers some genuine and many milking the system.
Time the parents paid for it, NOT us
Sound management?, You mean corruption. Stop waisting money on County Hall, fleets of electric cars, decorating like Shanklin lift etc, so much also waisted on consultants, out side workers etc. What’s wrong with showing Government can’t cope and go Bankrupt. Think Government could do a much better job – why do we have a Council, then town and Parrish councils and so many councilor’s?.
I have absolutely no sympathy for you at all Alliance Group. To start with how much public money has been spent on the so called floating bridge,and why all the secrecy re the ‘compensation’ that was obtained? What is this rubbish about air conditioning in county hall? Open the windows like the rest of us have to do? And not to mention the painting of the lift?
How about making sure the millions given to Island Roads? Just look at the state of some of the recent ‘works’? And you pay for that? I wouldn’t. And how much for the new CEO? Decimal point far too far to the right.
Get a grip, you are there to represent those who voted for you and not to protect the inhabitant of the Palace of Newport.
As I understand there was no compensation obtained becuase the company would have gone bankcrupt before paying anything.
The only problem with getting them to open windows instead of having air con is that they would also have to learn how to turn the heating down or maybe even off!
As for Island Roads there a lot of so called re-surfaced works that have been done in the last few years that haven’t lasted very long and are already in need of doing again properly where the surface has already broken up or subsided.
Staffing is one of the largest costs, and those top people clearly will ensure that ‘they’ are invaluable, whereas many likely aren’t.
Leisure centres could be closed as IF there is a need, then a private company would certainly take on such.
IF as I suspect the only reason these places are in demand, is ‘because’ the benefit growing brigade get ‘free’ entry, then perhaps they ought to be paying, as they have free or subsidised rent, council tax, free school meals, free uniforms, free transport to school, extra help with heating and cost of living, have NO need to put money aside for house, boiler, home insurance as we need to.
They get thousands a year if bothering to work just 16 hrs p.w, in tax credits as well.
Blaming the government for their own inadequacy as usual. The millions they have squandered on the floating farce, unnecessary road schemes, virtuous signalling and every other useless scheme they have come up with could have halved our council tax bills by now. Utterly useless morons, just like the last time they were in charge.
What is Bob Sealys job and what has he done to help the Island ?
Alliance????
All we see is you each blaming someone else !!!!
If you got your finger out of your backside and stop being so smug….you maybe able 2 see that people are struggling, yes we had covid yes there is war in Ukraine ( and that is terrible I feel for them all ) but if the council didn’t waste money on air con computer system floating bridge !!!!!! tarting up the council office, painting the lift in shanklin etc , electric cars etc etc etc ….the list goes on maybe just maybe you wouldn’t need to keep ripping us cash cow’s off ….
Our wage plt isn’t elastic!!!
Such a shame that all the decent council housing got sold off and the Council at the time wasn’t forced to replace it 1 for 1. Prior to sell-off rentals would have made a profit. Now they’re only the worst of the stock, let to those who cannot afford to move elsewhere & dependent on State benefits.
Also, many young couples can’t afford to become parents (nurses, teachers, firefighters and the like) because they can barely afford the private rent on salaries that have decreased in real terms over the last decade. These would be the families that create the next generation, to support the increasing number of elderly people (from the post-war birth-boom generation) that are set to retire soon, many of them in-comers to the Island.
Hmmm not sure if it can be deemed the hardest budget,,,, more like a hopeless Council.. as they certainly know how to spend & waste..
Remember folks, they are cutting £3 million in services, they are not reducing their budget by £3 million – the money from the services they are cutting will then, along with the maximum allowed rise in council tax, be going to fund lots of climate change, diversity and inclusion officers and other Whitehall woke nonsense, whilst the rest will be going into their salaries and gold plated pension fund
If, as councillor Jarman states, the council have created a legal and lawful budget why do we now need any overpaid councillors.Let the massively overpaid bosses on the top floor carry it out.
Why don’t they do the same as Wales and charge mainlanders with second homes three or four times the council tax bill for there 2nd home which stands empty for 10 months … this in turn would probably free some housing up for islanders who wish to purchase … it works in Wales !!