Wirral deserves a greener and fairer future

The headline for this year’s budget is that overall Council income gone up by £36m. An increase of 11% from last year’s [to £366.5m].

Both Adults Social Care and Policy & Resources have a net increase of £16m each, Children’s Services £5m, while the budget for Leisure, Environment and Regeneration, there is almost no change.

As Cllr Williamson said, this is a Labour budget. Well you can’t really have it both ways. If this is a Labour budget this year, it was a Labour budget last year. The Labour budget that cut frontline services.  

The Green councillors voted against the budget last year because of the cuts to libraries and leisure and so on. Perfectly legal proposals were put forward to save frontline services. But they were voted down last year by Labour and Conservative councillors.

This year we’ve got the Labour budget, which is kind of beige. A budget with no vision. This is the best we are going to get, after more than a decade of Labour being in control and in charge of Wirral Council.

In March 2021, there was over £125m in reserves. Was there any need at all to borrow £12m from the government, in the first place? Most other Councils across the country didn’t need to take extra government loans at that time.  

Wirral does deserves better. We deserve a greener and fairer future.

We’re facing a cost of living crises, when we need frontline services more than ever.

For example, Bromborough no longer has a library, thanks to the political choices made by the Labour and Conservative councillors last year. The communities I represent, they don’t have any Council funded centres – apart from a children’s centre and some services from Age UK and Autism Together.

We have no library, no warm hub, no play scheme, no youth centre, no leisure or civic centre. All these services in my ward have been cut by the Labour-led council to ‘balance the budget’ apparently.

Labour are so obsessed with balancing the budget they are missing the social and environmental services that we need to be provided. It seems that their mission is “Don’t Go Bust”. Well, Wirral can do better than that.

In terms of fairness, Wirral Council are paying the Real Living Wage, at least £10.90 per hour, to its direct employees. But unlike many other Councils, we are not a Living Wage Employer, accredited externally. Because there’s poverty pay paid by some Council providers particularly in Adults and Childrens and some schools.

We should consider - while that happens, while our carers, cleaners, caterers and other frontline workers are paid less than the Real Living Wage - we should consider whether it’s appropriate to pay the Chief Executive £217,000 a year, in that situation. That’s more than ten times the amount of the most lowest paid workers.

I’ll just conclude, the Green Party support real term pay rises for all public sector workers.