The Truth About the County Council

With a County Council election looming and their popularity plummeting Lib Dems have launched their usual negative campaign to scare people into voting for them and to paint an ugly  picture of the Conservative run County Council that they would like electors to believe.

They want people to think that, because the Council has to cope with funding cuts in a time of rising inflation, it is going to cut the services needed by local people - but nothing could be further from the truth.

Their claim that we are cutting back on Children's Centres is completely untrue. All 81 centres are open and are now delivering the additional service of speech and language therapy for children with special needs.

 With a County Council election looming and their popularity plummeting Lib Dems have launched their usual negative campaign to scare people into voting for them and to paint an ugly  picture of the Conservative run County Council that they would like electors to believe.

They want people to think that, because the Council has to cope with funding cuts in a time of rising inflation, it is going to cut the services needed by local people - but nothing could be further from the truth.

Their claim that we are cutting back on Children's Centres is completely untrue. All 81 centres are open and are now delivering the additional service of speech and language therapy for children with special needs.

So is their claim that there will not be enough school places for Hampshire’s children. No child in Hampshire will be without a place in any one of Hampshire’s excellent schools that are acclaimed for achieving above average results. Not only that, but we are also providing funding for more apprenticeships to improve the life chances of our unemployed young people.

Because of the efficiencies we have made in reducing our running costs, we have been able to increase service budgets to care for vulnerable adults and children by an extra £14 million this year to cope with the rising numbers needing our care. Also we are setting aside £45 million to fund the building of over 500 extra care units to cater for our ageing population.

We are spending more money on bus services than the districts and Boroughs had to spend and having repaired the 30,000 potholes caused by severe weather conditions we are now rolling out a multi- million programme over 5 years to make them resistant to further such damage.

Unlike other Counties, all our Museums and Libraries are not only open but improving the range of services they provide.

Their claim that we are reducing the number of Police Officers is also wrong. Not only do we have no control of the police or its staffing but we also understand that the Police have no plans to cut the number of officers.

Lib Dems deplore our new initiative to use unspent funding from Councillors’ own budgets to broadcast, on our website, our Cabinet and Council debates that allows the Public to see how their taxes are being used.

Perhaps Lib Dems fear it will show to the public their ineptitude in debate and reveal how wrong is their description of the County Council they portray in the leaflets they push through people’s letter-boxes.