Calling all Town Centre Residents
The ongoing problems of noise, vandalism and general disruption in the early hours in Epsom town centre is the focus of a meeting to be held on 20th May.
15 May 2010
News
Epsom and Ewell News
Petitions to Surrey County Council
Surrey County Council's Conservative administration has recently decided to allow members of the public to submit petitions at meetings of the whole Council, not just at committee meetings. This is something that the Liberal Democrat Group at County Hall have requested many times in order to open up the Council, but which until now has always been refused by the Conservative administration, even as recently as March this year.
29 May 2010
Agency Staff Savings
The Liberal Democrats on Surrey County Council have for many years regularly suggested that the County Council could make significant savings by reducing its reliance on costly agency staff by reducing the number of agency staff and using its own directly-employed staff instead. At last someone has listened.
27 May 2010
Cuts in Respite Care for Disabled Children
Improving services for disabled children was one of the requirements of the Improvement Notice issued to Surrey County Council in 2008, after inspectors said Surrey services for vulnerable children and young people were 'inadequate'. Yet Ruth House, the residential facility for respite care attached to Freemantles School for autistic children, is reducing the number of beds offered from twenty to ten, whilst the opening of Applewood, the new children's home at Banstead built to provide respite care for disabled children with complex needs, has been deferred, even though it has recently been approved by Ofsted as ready for use.
22 May 2010
Youth Work - Cinderella Services at the Cutting Edge
For years services for young people such as the Youth Development Service have been Surrey's Cinderella. Budgets have been cut, with staff posts left unfilled and then frozen.This year a re-organisation at the top takes away the Youth Development Officers who lead the work in each Borough and District and further managers, replacing all thirteen posts with just four operations managers to run youth work for the whole county.
19 May 2010
"School special" buses - an endangered species
Proposals to cut "school special" bus services, in some cases from this September, brought such strong public opposition from parents and schools that none of them will be removed before September 2011. However, this is just a reprieve. All "school special" bus services across the county are still being considered for closure, with the Cabinet expected to come to a decision on 13 July.
16 May 2010
Surrey County Council News
Lib Dems call for Council Tax rise restraint
Liberal Democrats on Surrey County Council are calling for the Conservative administration to show restraint in increasing Council Tax in the 2012/13 Budget.
31 Jan 2012
Lib Dems call on County Council to abandon expensive legal battle
Liberal Democrats on Surrey County Council are calling for the Conservative administration to abandon their plans to replace professional staff in 10 of the County's libraries with volunteers, rather than continue with a costly legal fight against Surrey residents in the High Court.
24 Jan 2012
Secret Surrey stifles scrutiny
Following the announcement by the Conservative Leader of Surrey County Council that he is proposing a 2.99% rise in Council Tax, Liberal Democrats on Surrey County Council are demanding to know why councillors have been denied papers to properly scrutinise the proposals by the Conservative administration for the County's 2012/13 Budget.
22 Jan 2012
Lib Dems ask “Where is Surrey’s Budget for 2012/13?”
Liberal Democrats on Surrey County Council are asking "Where is Conservative-run Surrey County Council's Budget?"
16 Jan 2012
Conservative Surrey fails to see the light on Solar Power
The Government introduced the Feed-in-tariffs (FiT) to encourage early take up of renewable technology in April 2010. Surrey County Council finally approved a scheme to install solar panels on 25 buildings in July 2011. Yet when the Government announced a cut to the FiT rate, they still had not installed a single solar panel.
2 Jan 2012
1 Jan 2012