A block on spending at Shepway District Council has left workers stressed and understaffed, according to a leading politician.
Cllr Lynne Beaumont, leader of the local Liberal Democrats, has accused the Tory leaders of SDC of cutting every budget and not advertising for new staff in a bid to plug a gap in the authority’s finances.
She also said the council’s financial reserves had been drained.
“If you talk to officers they are saying ‘We can’t spend anything unless it is an emergency or it is for health and safety’,” said Cllr Beaumont.
“This is dreadful. The knock-on to the staff is absolutely appalling – they have about 30 vacancies at this point in time, with only three being advertised.
“We are holding vacant posts, which means that the people who work here are going to have an awful lot more work to do with very little money to do it.”
Cllr Beaumont paid tribute to council employees, whom she said were working hard to maintain services in the face of the spending freeze.
“They are working extraordinarily hard to deliver a service they are very proud of,” said Cllr Beaumont.
“Without the cash to do that, and without a full staff team, that is very difficult.”
When asked why she thought the moratorium had been imposed, Cllr Beaumont was in no doubt where the blame lay.
“We have run out of cash and all you will hear from Conservative leaders of the council is ‘We are balancing the books’.
“They are balancing the books because they have taken so much money out of the reserves, I think we are down to our last £100,000 – back in May we had £900,000.
“Anybody can balance the books by taking money out of the reserves.
“Everything has been slashed and things are slowing down – it is a dreadful state of affairs.”
Cllr Beaumont accused the council of wasting taxpayers’ money.
“You can’t keep wasting a million on sports centres, or a million on recycling lorries when nobody decided to test them, and passing that debt on to the council tax-payers of Shepway – somewhere it has got to stop.”
However, a SDC spokesman said: “We are certainly not a well-off council, but we have made huge progress over the last three years to stabilise our finances and put ourselves on a stronger footing for the future.
“It is important that we maintain this grip on our spending in the final three months of the financial year.
“This does not mean we have stopped essential spending that is focused on our priorities, or that we will not take on new or replacement staff.
“It simply means that there would have to be justification for taking on new staff and that appointments would have to be approved by our corporate management team.”
Cllr David Monk, deputy leader of the local Tory party and district secretary for finance, denied Cllr Beaumont’s accusations about the state of the SDC reserves.
“We have £700,000 left and that is a restatement of the account the auditors requested because we were accounting for some earlier retirement payments over a period of years.
“We haven’t dived into our reserves – the council is in actuality no better or no worse off than it has ever been.”
“If you are going to put a moratorium on, then you don’t spend any money, but of course we are not that stupid.
“There are certain things that have to happen and there are certain things that go towards the objectives of the council, so we focus on those.
“If your budget is predicted to go over, then you don’t just sit there and let it go over. If you do, then it messes up all the future financial planning – you have got to have discipline in your budget.”
Cllr Monk also refuted the accusation the council was understaffed.
“At any one time there are 30-40 jobs available, that is just the way things go. If we have only advertised for three, then these are the most important three at this time.
“She keeps trying to say the morale of staff is low and it is not. You can come down to the civic centre – staff morale is as good as I have ever known it.”
POSTED: 30/01/2008 07:30:00
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