As readers will know from previous posts, Barnet Council is considering a £950,000 cost cutting exercise which will leave many vulnerable residents in sheltered accommodation without the warden service they have come to rely on.
The council’s on-line consultation for residents to give their views can be found at: http://snaponline.snapsurveys.com/surveylogin.asp?k=123494868473
Please note that the closing date for the on-line consultation is 5pm today, 31st March 2009.
You will be invited to propose alternative savings which the council could make. Frankly, that is what officers are paid to do, but here are a few suggestions anyway.
Scrapping the wardens is Cllr Lynne Hillan’s big idea. In the clip below, she attempts to justify her actions.
Don’t leave it to others! Let the council know what you think of these proposals.
6 comments:
Hello, David,
I hope it's not the last day to save the service. It is the last day to respond to the consultation, but they have to plough through the many responses, which are sure to be against the proposals, and then make up their minds. And even after the consultation closes people should still
- email their councillors (especially if they are cabinet members)
- attend the council meetings (and the lobbies that will be organised around them) to ask questions
etc.
But, yes, this is the last day that anyone with an interest in the issue (and who doesn't have one?) can respond to the consultation. So please do! The consultation document is a piece of propaganda -anyone that hasn't looked at it, I would urge you to have a look.
Best wishes,
Vicki
You are absolutely right Vicki - today is the last day of the consultation period, but residents can keep lobbying their councillors right up until the decision is taken. I would urge people to write to Cllr Lynne Hillan, as well as their own councillors, as she is the Cabinet Member driving this forward.
Call me a skeptic but when the saving has already bee identified in the administrations budget which has been passed how likely is it that they will backtrack? I would dearly like to be proved wrong on this.
Duncan,
hm... they've also agreed in advance how they can plug the gap in the budget if they DON'T make the cuts. So let's carry on campaigning!
Another thing I've learned from politics is if you make it easy for them (whoever they are!), they'll all over you again and again and again.
Best wishes,
Vicki
Vicki
Oh agreed. You campaign as hard as you can and put as much pressure on them as you can. I'm just cynical about the consultation process.
According to Barnet Council Leader
this proposal is a governemnt agenda for independent living they seem to think wardens are only 9-5
this is totally untrue.If you compare S/A in other areas such a Edgware without SHO it is miserable the building looks neglected they have no extra activities or the benefit of confiding in someone they know and trust. B.C. says they are not saving money by scrapping SHO's so why are they doing this. I'm sure Cllr Hillan wouldnt like her mother to live like that. Have asked Labour MP Ivan Lewis promoter of so called independant living as yet I have not received an answer. By the way B/C also claim that no money has been lost in the Iclantic Bank.
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