Labour's Vendetta Against Coxford

Labour Council Leader Richard Williams seems hell bent on attacking residents in the Coxford Ward after two of the local Labour councillors left the Labour Party to become Independents. Our worry is that he is now on some sort of vendetta to punish these councillors and local residents who have opposed Labour's cuts and broken promises. In recent months Labour have:

- Shut Oaklands Pool despite a clear promise before the election not to do so.

- Tried to pretend that money was not there to do repairs on the pool despite this clearly being the case.

- Been working on secret plans to develop high rise flats along Lordshill Way, taking away green space, not consulting with councillors or residents. 

- Tried to cut ALL of the local youth and children's facilities including the popular Zoe Braithwaite centre

- Announced plans to charge residents living around the hospital to park in their own street.

Labour To Demolish Oaklands

Labour have set aside HALF A MILLION pounds in the city council budget to demolish the Oaklands site.

Local Conservatives warned that Labour planned to demolish the site and have been calling for the swimming pool to be reopened and for the former school to be made into an asset for the local community - as a community centre and for other uses like space for a nursery or even small businesses.

There has been no consultation about this and it is again another betrayal of the local area by Labour. Labour said that they wouldn't reopen the swimming pool because it would cost too much for repairs and here we have them planning to spend half a million pounds demolishing Oaklands! It is a perfectly good building and local people have been crying out for a permanent community centre for years. I want to know what our local councillors are going to do about this.

Labour Budget Will Hit Freemantle Ward Hard

As a local councillor representing the Freemantle Ward I was extremely disappointed and angered to read the budget plans of the new Labour Administration. Many of the cuts and hikes in charges will disproportionately hit those that I am elected to represent.

Labour came into office full of promises and as predicted, one by one they are breaking them. They immediately u-turned on their pledge to keep Oaklands Pool open. They promised to invest more in SureStart and they are cutting £1m a year from this service. They promised to spend more on libraries, yet they are slashing opening hours, bringing local libraries to the verge of closure. Shirley Library is having its hours cut by 15 hours a week. Pensioners are having their council tax raised by 12%, despite a last minute pre election promise by Cllr Richard Williams not to do this. Even the weekly bin collection was due to be axed and it was only spared because of a grant from the Government.

A 35% reduction in street cleaning in local roads will mean lots of more litter. Local residents associations are fighting an ongoing battle to keep the area clean, with regular litter picks and this will come as a real slap in the face to many people. I am very worried about the cuts to the upkeep of local parks. We already have problems with drinking in Lake Park and cans and glass left behind as well as the ongoing problem of dog fouling. We have more and more young families in Freemantle and keeping the local parks clean, tidy and safe is essential.

Parking is one of the biggest problems faced by residents in Freemantle Ward. I have fought for a long time to stop new charges coming in for first permits in residents’ parking zones. Labour tried to bring in charges last time they were in power and now they are back they are quick to charge residents to park. Worse still this doesn’t even guarantee residents a space in their road. Residents’ Parking enforcement stops at 6pm so many residents will end up paying for permits and much of the time they will be worthless. Labour plans to introduce on street parking charges in the evenings in the city centre will mean more workers parking their cars in local roads after 6pm, making it even harder for residents to park. Also charging people to park when they are shopping in Shirley will hit local businesses hard, damaging trade and costing jobs, at a time when everyone is struggling.

Labour have not thought through their proposals. They were elected with no plan and no vision for the city and now residents are suffering the consequences.

Labour Need To Honest About City Council Finances

My Letter in today's Daily Echo regarding Southampton City Council's finances:

Dear Sir

 

Labour Councillor, Simon Letts complains that previous Conservative Council mismanaged the council's finances (Echo Letters 22nd October). In fact the previous Administration delivered a £6.9M revenue under spend in the last municipal year, presented a balanced capital budget and had in place a robust plan for dealing with the financial challenges faced by the council in the years ahead. 

On the 11th July at the Full Council meeting, Councillor Letts acknowledged the under spend publicly and extra funds this provided his new Administration. I did say to him then that if he tried to misrepresent the Conservatives' management of the finances that I would remind him of this and what he said in the council meeting and so I am doing so with this letter.

 

It is very true to say that Southampton City Council faces difficult times financially. The worrying truth is however that Labour came into office with no serious plan to tackle the situation. They immediately set about rewarding themselves with extra paid councillor roles, started spending money on unnecessary pet projects and abandoned the partnership arrangement with the Isle of Wight which would have allowed Southampton to protect services through sharing them with the Island. They have refused to contemplate selling any of the thousands of works of art that the City Council owns, to plug the financial gap, yet are quite willing to axe services like Oaklands swimming pool. Worse still they have spent the last six months arguing and fighting amongst themselves rather than knuckling down and getting to grips with the finances. The result is utter chaos in the Civic Centre and a budget delayed at the eleventh hour. Labour urgently need to get a grip and they need to start being honest with the residents of Southampton.

 

Yours faithfully

 

Cllr Jeremy Moulton, Deputy Leader of Southampton Conservative Group

Labour Need To Be Clear Over the Future Of Oaklands

What a complete mess Labour are in over the issue of Oaklands Pool. Broken promises, deceit and incompetence are fast becoming hallmarks of the new council Administration.

One of Labour's first actions on taking control of the council was to announce the closure of Oaklands, despite their election pledge just a few weeks before, promising to protect it. 

Since then we have had total confusion over the future of the site. On one hand we had Labour saying the long term maintenance costs of the pool were too expensive, then we had a statement several months later from council Leader Richard Williams saying he might commit to repair costs. We had Labour on one hand saying that they would not pay the ongoing running costs, then them spending even more money this year keeping it closed, because of the ongoing costs of wages, building costs and lost income from visitors. We have had Labour on one hand saying that they would welcome a private company or charity taking on the pool but on the other hand had them saying that they planned to demolish the whole site within 2 years to make way for a new Sainsbury's. Now Sainsbury's have announced that they won't be proceeding with plans for a new store anyway.

Labour's policy is in total chaos. The pool should have stayed open and the pipe work repairs that were being carried out by the previous Administration should never have been stopped. If Labour won't allow Oaklands to remain a council pool and if they are serious about finding an alternative operator they need to be proactive and clearly spell out whether or not they will commit the council to ongoing repairs and how long any deal with a swimming pool operator will last. Labour also need to be clear about the future of the former Oaklands School building. Months ago the Conservatives called for the building to be used for community use and for other options like business use or nursery provision to be considered, but Labour voted our proposals down.

Labour Announce 240 Council Job Cuts

Another broken Labour promise by Southampton's new Council Administration as a hit list of 240 jobs is revealed, ahead of the draft city budget announcement next month.

Labour went into the local elections in May saying there would be no council job cuts as a result of their new staff redeployment model based on one adopted in Sunderland. They renamed this approach the Solent model and described it as their plan B for the council. The scheme would have seen the staff redeployment period extended to 12 months. Immediately after the election this was watered down to 8 months and today the final scheme will be agreed by the Labour Cabinet - just 4 months. At the Council's Overview and Scrutiny Management panel meeting on Thursday Labour admitted that they hadn't researched the policy properly and upon taking control of the council they realised that it was totally unaffordable. They also admitted that the policy was only intended to last one year to get them through the election period and was then due to be scrapped anyway.

However the biggest bombshell was revealed at Full Council on Wednesday and then clarified at the Overview and Scrutiny panel meeting the day after. Labour has been working on a secret hit list of staff who will be axed - all council staff on fixed, short term temporary contracts. The list of staff includes over a dozen bin men, library staff, sure start and nursery workers. These staff will receive no redeployment. Labour say that the union bosses have been working hand in glove with them on the issue.  Not only is this a betrayal of City Council staff who Labour have misled it is very disrespectful and totally unprofessional for Labour to once again reveal job cuts in public before speaking with those involved. After leaking their summer mini budget to the media, Labour were rightly chastised for having Oaklands Swimming Pool staff first hear about their jobs on the radio. Now Labour have done it again, announcing 240 job cuts in the public meeting of the Full Council, before having the decency to speak with those affected, some of whom have been with the council for up to 7 years.

Labour are proving time again that they cannot be trusted in Southampton and that they were prepared to say anything before the elections in order to win power, but had no intention of keeping their promises once they got in. Will the the local union bosses do anything about it? No of course they won't because they are Labour Party people who represent their own interests and that of the Labour Party - jobs and services are not their priority and once again this is being shown to be true.

Labour/Union Pay Deal Will Cost Jobs and Services

A deal between the union bosses and the new Labour Administration was always going to come fairly quickly once the elections were over. The industrial action was political from the start, with the senior union negotiators all Labour Party people. However the recently announced deal doesn't mark the end of this sordid story. The cost of the deal is £2.8M a year, and this comes on top of the very large budget gap that the council faces in order to balance the books. The previous Conservative administration made terms and condition changes to keep more people in work and to protect the services that residents rely on.

The price of the Labour/Union deal will be lost jobs and services. However we won't know exactly who and what will be axed until November when next year's draft council budget is published.

Labour and the union bosses are keeping that information under wraps until after the council staff are balloted on the pay deal. It is very underhand to present this as good news to staff and ask them to vote on it and then a month later reveal to them exactly what it costs to pay for it in lost jobs and services.

We have already seen the start of Labour's cuts hitting the front line. The pay agreement alone is the equivalent of 10 Oaklands Pool closures.

It’s a deal that favours better paid staff and it is likely that it will be lower paid staff that bear the brunt of the job cuts.

Under the Conservative Council those earning less than £17,500pa (40% of staff) received a pay rise. The Conservatives were offering to protect those on £22,000pa and under from pay cuts and restore previous pay cuts, backdating them until last summer. It is ironic that the vast majority of bin men would have been better off under that arrangement, by about £600 compared with Labour/Union deal. Labour and unions were happy to use bin men for their own means during the strike but have secured them a worse deal.

This new deal will also be cold comfort to those staff which the union leaders managed to convince were due thousands and thousands of pounds if they took the council to court.

The tragic outcome of this long political campaign will be felt not only by staff themselves when Labour announce their extra job losses but by the residents of the city who will see more of their services axed.

Our Local MP Should Stand Up For Oaklands Pool

Southampton Test's Labour MP is strangely quiet over the issue of the closure of Oaklands swimming pool. He is very quick to criticise the government who he says are not spending enough money on sport. He says in this month's local Compass magazine "It seems perverse to me to pull-the-rug-from sports funding at just the point when people might be more receptive to the idea of getting involved in local sports clubs or teams at school." I think its perverse that he can make a comment like this but remain totally silent about the decision of the Labour Council to shut Oaklands, which is heavily used by local swimming clubs and schools.

The decision to close Oaklands is wrong. It is a betrayal of local residents by Labour Councillors, who in opposition campaigned to keep the pool open. The handling of the announcement, leaking it to the press before telling staff, was totally disrespectful and unprofessional. If Alan Whitehead is really concerned about sport he should do the right thing and stand up for the pool and the community he is elected to represent.

5 Years of Labour Deceit Over Oaklands Pool

Labour 'supposedly' fighting to keep Oaklands in Winter 2009

The deceit of the Southampton Labour Party and their contempt for local residents knows no bounds. For 5 years Labour have been 'fighting for the future of Oaklands Pool', or so they say.


Back in 2007 when in opposition on the council, Labour proposed closing the pool but following the backlash from local residents and swimming clubs, did everything they could to back peddle. Consistently since then they have told residents that they were on their side and that they would protect the pool. In Winter 2009 local MP Alan Whitehead, launched a campaign in his taxpayer funded leaflet to keep the pool. Now just weeks into a new Labour Council administration they announce that they will be shutting the facility. How low can you get!? It seems Labour have been deceiving residents all along. What is even more galling is that they can find extra money to create additional jobs and chairmanships for Labour Councillors at the expense of the taxpayer but at the same time they cut the local swimming pool. 

Labour to Axe Oakands Swimming Pool

Southampton Conservatives warned that a Labour Council would take an axe to libraries, SureStart and leisure centres.

Labour councillors have today announced plans later this month to permanently close Oaklands Pool.

Labour tried to close the pool in 2007 and now within less than 2 months of taking over running of the Council they have wasted no time in axing Oaklands, cutting 20 jobs in the process.

During the 5 years the Conservatives ran the council we made sure that valued services like Oaklands were protected and our election manifesto pledged to keep open all our leisure centres. We will do everything we can to stop this dreadful betrayal by Labour of the local community.

Conservatives will be moving a motion at the Council meeting on 11th July, calling for the pool to be kept open and for the council to invest in properly maintaining it.

Free Swimming Launch!

Last Saturday I was pleased to attend the official launch of the under 16s free swimming scheme in Southampton at the Quays Swimming Pool. The scheme was recently approved after a deal was struck by the city council, the Primary Care Trust and local schools to meet the short fall in government funding.

From April 1st all young people aged 16 and under, as well as people aged 60 and over, will be able to use Bitterne Leisure Centre, Oaklands Pool and The Quays Swimming and Diving Complex for free during public sessions.

Free Swimming for Under 16s

With Cllr John Hannides at the Quays

Last week Southampton City Council announced that it was pushing ahead with a two year scheme for free under 16s swimming. A deal was struck with local schools (including our two new city academies) and the Primary Care Trust to find the extra money needed to meet the shortfall in government funding for the scheme. Funds from the government will meet less than a third of the cost, meaning that locally we have to pick the rest of the bill.

I am delighted that working with other partners in city we have managed deliver the scheme. Sport is high on the agenda with the Olympics fast approaching. Locally we are doing all we can to meet the challenge. The under 16s scheme comes on top of a similar scheme announced last year for over 60s and our schools sports partnership with Southampton Solent University which is already proving a tremendous success.

Tackling Crime in Southampton

Crime is a huge problem in Southampton and one of biggest concerns of local people. In addition so called "anti social behaviour" increasingly is a blight on the lives of local people.

The problem has got much worse under Labour and their policies are failing the city.

Labour's Asbos are worn as a batch of pride by young thugs and Dispersal Orders simply move the problem of anti social behaviour from one road or neighbourhood to the next.

Labour have talked tough on crime but they have failed utterly to deliver.
The police are drowning in bureaucracy and paperwork and are not allowed to get on and do their jobs effectively. They are straight jacketed by centrally imposed targets which get in the way of delivering local priorities.

We need more police on the streets. Today only 1 in 59 policemen are actually on the beat. This is a shocking statistic. Locally Southampton's Conservative Councillors want to do all we can to support the police. We have proposed scraping council tax for people that become special constables. In other areas this has helped encourage more people to sign up as specials. If we could recruit an extra 50 or 100 specials in Southampton it would make a big difference. It would also show that we value and respect local people who come forward to help make their communities safer.

We need much greater accountability for the police. Nationally Conservative Party has advocated bringing the police under direct local democratic control. This is something Southampton's Conservatives are very keen on and we believe that we could really improve things if we had the police focusing on local priorities rather than central government targets.

Last year local Conservative councillors fought very hard for the council to take seriously the problem of attacks in the city centre parks. We had to fight tooth and nail to get money for extra lighting but after a long campaign we had some success.

Improving street lighting around the city would make a difference to city safety or certainly perceptions of safety. Thousands of the councils streetlights need replacing and the council is aiming to secure £22m of government PFI money to replace old streetlights. Southampton's

Conservatives backed this and also managed to persuade the council to ensure that its PFI bid included plans for new street lights to have a plug on top of them to allow WiFi CCTV cameras to be installed. This would mean in thousands of locations around the city CCTV could be put in place quickly and cheaply should there be a local need.

We of course need stronger sentencing and there needs to be a real deterrent to would be criminals. However we need to do much more than simply send people to prison for longer.

We should be supporting families in the city, especially those families that have difficulties such as drink or drug problems. We were very pleased that through our positive involvement in this year's budget setting meeting for the city that we were able to keep open all family centres in the city. These centres, in Bitterne, St Marys and Lordshill support families which have serious problems such as domestic violence and drink and drugs and ensure the safety and well being of children in the city. Labour planned to axe £333,000 from the budget for this service. We felt that this would have had a terrible impact in the city and were pleased that we prevented it.

Southampton has been made a Respect Agenda city by the Government. A small amount of additional government money has been made available to the council and this is to be spent on a "super nanny" who will help to improve parenting skills in the city. There is a real irony in that we are receiving this money from the Labour government whilst at the same time local Labour councillors are trying to close down one of the very centres in which this new person will based!

Conservatives believe that we need to provide good leisure facilities for young people and ensure that there are things for them to do. That is one reason why we fought against Labour plans to try and close Oaklands Swimming Pool.

The Council needs to be tough on anti social behaviour. It seems as though it is happy to fine people perceived as an easy target for minor misdemeanours but is reluctant to peruse people who might not pay up.
Where council has leverage such as when dealing with council tenants it should make it clear that unless decent standards of behaviour are adhered to, tenants will be evicted.

Save Oaklands Swimming Pool

Last week Labour proposed the closure of Oaklands Swimming Pool. At the city council budget setting meeting they proposed to cut the budget for Oaklands pool by a crippling £160,000 (approximately 2/3rd of its annual budget). This would have forced the closure of the pool within a few months from now.

I am not entirely sure why Labour did this. In the budget debate Labour Councillors were unable to offer any satisfactory explanation.

Conservatives by contrast proposed that the pool stays open and that its opening hours remain unaffected.

I was astonished to read on Alan Whitehead's website that he is slamming the Conservatives over plans to reduce the opening times of the pool!

I can only conclude that his party on the city council do not talk to him or that he is simply trying to mislead people. The truth of the matter is all a matter of public record.

I am meeting the chairman of Eastleigh and Oaklands Swimming Club tomorrow to discuss how best we can secure the future of the pool.

It is not on that every year the pool is under threat from either closure or partial closure.

Conservatives Secure Key Changes To City Budget

Yesterday afternoon the City Council set its budget for the coming year.

I am really pleased that Conservative Councillors were able to successfully lobby for changes to improve the budget.

Some of the key concessions achieved by the Conservatives were:

1. Keeping the weekly bin collection.
2. Preventing the introduction of night time car parking charges.
3. Keeping Cobbett Road Library open.
4. Preventing planned cuts to vital children's social services.

We were also able to presuade the Council to reduce the council tax increase from 3.5% to 3.3%.

These things were funded by bureaucracy savings.

During the budget debate Labour Councillors were exposed over their U-Turn on providing free buses across Hampshire for pensioners and over their plans to close Oaklands swimming pool.