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Funding is vital for this women’s centre
• WE are writing as the three Labour councillors for St Pancras and Somers Town ward to highlight the disgraceful cut put forward by the Tory/Lib Dem administration of £25,000 of council funding to the Hopscotch Asian Women’s Centre which serves Somers Town and the surrounding areas, some of the most disadvantaged in Camden.
With this money Hopscotch family support workers provide a vital service to the Bangladeshi community. Supporting and working with families where children have a physical or learning disability, giving help and advice around parenting, and raising awareness around anti social behaviour, drugs, child abuse and forced marriage.
Hopscotch have a well deserved national reputation for achieving results and a huge range of expertise that other organisations would not be able to replicate.
It is not that long ago that the then Tory MP and Cabinet Member, Sir Brian Mawhinney, sneered at Hopscotch from the platform of the Conservative Party Conference: sadly not a lot seems to have changed since then, when the first act of the new Tory/Lib Dem administration in Camden is to propose a cut in their funding.
We urge the new administration to use the two weeks that are still left before the budget is set to change their minds and reinstate this vital funding.
Cllrs Nurul Islam, Roger Robinson and Anna Stewart
Labour Councillors for St Pancras and Somers Town
• IN order to keep to its pledge of a zero per cent council tax rise, the new administration in Camden will cut services, hike up charges and create financial uncertainty for the voluntary sector by introducing commissioning.
Also, despite all the new administration’s green talk, there will be little extra funding for the environment or charges aimed at incentivising environmentally friendly behaviour.
Though the administration talks about “efficiency savings” rather than cuts, we will lose part of our free legal advice sector – that means the helpful advice outreach workers who advise on debt and benefits so critical for the wellbeing of many. We will amongst other things lose support to vulnerable families (through cuts to Home-Start), cuts will be made to play centres (like the Highgate Newtown Holiday Playscheme and Kilburn Grange) and 20 posts in mental health services are under review.
In addition, in order to raise money, charges will go up on services such as play schemes and old people’s luncheon clubs hitting vulnerable service users once again.
Significant reductions in council tax, after several years of efficiency savings, can’t be made without either cuts or increased charges.
The draft budget will mean that the most vulnerable will pay the price of these cuts. In the longer term these cuts don’t pay.
It will be more expensive to deal with the fall-out of poor services whether this means higher costs for the NHS or higher private child care charges for families. Protecting our environment also costs money but this can be recovered in time and of course there are other gains in terms of real well-being.
But the draft budget would mean that vacant posts for parks will not be filled, door to door waste collections on the few estates that have this will be stopped, a sustainability officer for the planning department will no longer be recruited and five staff will be lost in planning amongst other things.
So the new administration in tying its own hands as to how much it spends today is losing the opportunity to tackle climate change, waste and also to improve our local environment – our parks, streets etc.
The small sums of money promised are negligible in the scale of the council budget.
What Camden’s residents deserve is transparent discussion on how we spend our money. Instead we are getting cuts in services and job losses cloaked in the language of efficiency savings.
These cuts will hurt the most vulnerable and the job cuts that go with this, if staff are not assisted in finding alternative employment, will also cause real pain for staff and weaken morale in the council.
Cllr Maya de Souza
(Green)
Highgate Ward, LB Camden |
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