The Council Must Have a Plan!

9.46.00am GMT Tue 17th Mar 2009

"The Council's Liberal Democrat administration has expressed its dismay at the voting out of the Council Plan by opposition parties at last week's council meeting, and has announced its plans to get this important document agreed.

The Council Plan is a very important document. It sets out the priorities that all council staff need to work on in the coming year. These include actions to improve the key area of children's services, including educational attainment.

Liberal Democrat Council Leader, Councillor Isobel McCall, said: "I am astonished at how irresponsible the opposition parties have been, especially as all members of the Council are under the Government's spotlight at the moment. There was every opportunity for the opposition to propose amendments to the Plan but no-one did so, or signalled in advance that they had any difficulty with it. We had already included the small change that Labour had asked for when we discussed it at Cabinet. At the Council meeting it looked to me as if the two old parties voted it down on a whim, leaving the Council without this important Plan to guide its work from 1st April.

"The Council Plan is so important that we have decided that we need to bring it back again. We will bring it back to Cabinet on 7th April and full Council the week after.

"We have listened to comments made by Labour that the Council Plan should include a priority about tackling the recession. We think they have a fair point so we intend to add an additional priority to reflect this. The work to identify the original priorities took place in the summer before the economy took a severe nose dive, and we accept the world has moved on."

The Liberal Democrat administration has already put over £2 million into funding initiatives to tackle the effects of the recession on local businesses and residents. This includes construction schemes that will keep people in jobs."