Last nights Overview & Scrutiny Committees focussed on two areas of interest to residents:

a) The budget

b) How we keep people informed in future

With the budget fresh thinking focussed on “What can we deliver for this amount of money.”  This is very different from the usual process of “Salami slicing” where, faced with inflation, new responsibilities from government (but no extra funding) we have been forced to make cut after cut to keep things going.  As tax payers ourselves we want a decent, cost effective service.

The second part of the meeting looked at how the council should communicate in future.  We did ask for more effort to be put into things like e-mail newsletters and working with partners to reduce the overall amount of paper going to residents by working together.

Either way, the Liberal Democrat controlled council is aiming, like last year, for a below inflation increase- unlike the Tory County Council which has continued to increase their part of the Council Tax at a crippling rate.