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.
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.
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.
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.
The Borough Council is embarking upon widespread consultation concerning proposals to charge Blue Badge holders for parking in its car parks. The survey has been sent to 52 local groups via the Council for Voluntary Services (CVS) and to several other local stakeholders. It is available on the council's website until 17th May and will be sent to the council's own Citizens Panel. More consultation via Focus groups will take place on 27th May.
When the Lib Dems put questions to the council, they did not expect the torrent of party-political statements which were produced as answers.
Liberal Democrats on Surrey County Council are calling for the Conservative administration to show restraint in increasing Council Tax in the 2012/13 Budget.
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.
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.
Liberal Democrats on Surrey County Council are asking "Where is Conservative-run Surrey County Council's Budget?"
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.
