In my last contribution to Party People I speculated on what the next Medway budget would hold in store of Medway. I hoped it would be a good budget and so it was.
Finding £30 million during one 9-month period is never likely to be easy, but we managed to do so by a variety of measures, some of which were not easy or pleasant to put in place.
However the Conservative administration was focussed on maintaining services to a high standard, but also to enhancing them where we could. This we were able to do by redirecting some expenditure and by the careful use of £1·4 million of reserves.
In a shamefully callous display of not caring one jot for the people of Medway the whole of Medway Labour Group voted against the budget. These are the things they tried to stop us introducing.
We have frozen council tax, and have untaken to freeze it again next year.
We have allocated an extra £92,000 on library books, when Labour said we were planning to cut library services.
We have fully funding our 19 Sure Start centres, when Labour said we were going to slash them.
We have introduced free swimming for those under 11 and over 60, in order to support healthy living and sports and play.
We recognised that getting around Medway can be costly for our youngsters, and we have allocated money to help us move towards a freedom pass.
In order to support businesses in Medway and alleviate some of the youth unemployment we have introduced an apprenticeship support scheme. This will entail Medway Council encouraging businesses to get young people on the first step towards learning a trade.
We will be investing more in our play areas and allotments — areas that would see spending cut under a Labour administration.
All across the country Labour run councils have been cutting services – closing libraries and community centres, introducing fortnightly waste collection schemes, and generally making life more difficult for those they purport to represent.
In Medway the story is completely different. The Conservatives have built a range of top quality services over the last 11 years, and judging by Labour‘s voting record they would undo all that in record time.