Mike Thornton, LibDem Candidate, still peddling untruths

In response to continuing Liberal Democrat accusations, it is necessary to put the record straight again.

Schools

Councillor Roy Perry says "Every child in Hampshire was offered a school place at the beginning of this term - well over 95% in a school of one of their 3 choices and almost 90% in their first preference.

 "There is no crisis, no shambles but there is a marked increase in the birth rate, and people moving into the area which is certainly increasing the pressure on school places.  Measures are in hand to increase school building over the next fifteen years so that there will continue to be no shortfall."

Police

Hampshire Police Authority state that there will be no reduction in front-line police officers.  Savings will be made by cutting bureaucracy.

Libraries

Regarding libraries, out of the 54 in the county, there will be no change in 17 of them and only an average reduction of 2.5 hours in the rest.  Two libraries will be run by the community because of a drastic decline in their usage over the last 5 years, North Baddesley by 33% and Stanmore by 50%.  The latter is used by only 3% of the population.

Buses

Bus services have been hit due to a 33% cut in the subsidy from central government, but council chiefs say they have made journeys to work, the shops and hospitals a priority. Council bosses have promised that no village or housing estate with a current bus service will be left without a public transport link.”
Despite LibDem claims to the contrary bus passes for the over sixties will NOT be affected.

Child Centres

4Children vision:

“for every child, in every community, to have the opportunities to realise their  potential – to learn, develop and be with friends – and for every parent to access the support they need to build a better future for their family”

This is what Hampshire County Council says:

We want to make sure that the funding cuts have as little effect as possible on the work children’s centres do with families, particularly those who need the services the most. The changes we are thinking of making would keep centres open and available for families everywhere to use.

To achieve this, we are proposing an approach that would:

·               Keep children’s centres open and accessible across the whole of Hampshire.

·               Take half of the savings out of the County Council’s central costs of running the children’s centre service.

·               As far as possible, protect staff who deliver children’s centre services directly to families - so that people who use the centres are affected as little as possible.

Keep enough managers across the centres to understand the needs of local families and to organise and supervise activities.

·               Reduce the costs of running the centres, for example allocating less money for travel and equipment. 

This is what Councillor Roy Perry said:

Commenting on the range of bids Councillor Roy Perry, Hampshire County Council's Deputy Leader and Executive Lead Member for Children's Services, said:

"I am delighted at the levels of response to the tendering process. We have had 17 bids involving at least 32 organisations with all clusters attracting more than one bidder.

"We have had significant interest from a range of local and national voluntary organisations and schools following the invitation to tender for the management contracts of up to 15 clusters of children centres. The centres will continue to deliver services through over 81 local centres and a variety of community-based venues."

In May the County Council approved the transfer of all its Children's Centres to third party management in a bid to secure the long-term future of Children's Centre services across the county and achieve savings in the wake of cuts in Government funding.

So don't believe the scaremongers!  The children's centres are safe.

More money is being spent to improve Adult and Children Services. No Children's Centres have been closed - all 81 of them are open and providing more services such as speech and language therapy.  

A Better Town Centre??

That remains to be seen.  Fortunately, Sainsbury's have withdrawn their plans for extending their store so at least the Rec and market are safe. 

But the LibDems are still intending to go ahead with their disastrous plans to move the civic offices into the town centre. There will be virtually no parking space and thus inaccessible not only to staff but also to those who need to visit the council offices.  Inevitably, it will have the effect of making parking for shoppers in the centre very much more difficult and lead to reduced trade for shopkeepers.  They intend to move from here:

 to here

at a cost of £12 million.  They say they'll recover £4 million by the redevelopment of the existing site.

Now that Sainsbury's have decided not to go ahead with their development, there is going to be a serious shortfall in parking for the proposed new council offices.