PRESS RELEASE: BAG on the upcoming Council Elections

Bury Action Group has written to all candidates standing in Bury’s council elections to give them the opportunity to say how they would protect our vital public services.

The Group thinks all councillors should oppose the cuts. They will make the country’s economic policies worse not better. They will damage the lives of everyone in Bury to no benefit. Healthy local communities depend on the delivery of local services by council employees.

Group Chair, Sue Arnall, explained:

"We know that none of the three main parties are prepared to challenge the government by setting an illegal budget. In the end, each of them would have to make some cuts. Our letter gives the independent and small party candidates the chance to say whether they agree. Do they have an alternative approach?

The main parties do have some choice about which services to protect and which services to cut. Some councillors also claim to be able to deliver services despite cuts or to protect the quality of services whilst privatising them. We challenge the candidates to explain how they believe they can achieve this".

The letter asks specifically about the Youth Services, Park Rangers and School Crossing Patrols and Local Area Partnerships. How can Youth Services continue without staff? How can the groups who use our parks carry on without ranger support? How will the safety impact of withdrawn Crossing Patrols be monitored? How will the people of Bury’s townships participate without local area partnerships and managers to run them?

We challenge each of the councillors to make sure they know about what is happening in each of the departmental reviews under the ‘transformation strategy’. We ask them to intervene in the process to challenge and overturn any decision to hand over services to the voluntary and private sector. We also believe this process should be open for public consultation. We challenge the candidates to use their positions if elected to fight for public involvement.

Over recent years new legislation and decisions of the Council have reduced the number of decisions councillors can make. We think this should be reversed and we challenge candidates to tell us what they will do to strengthen council democracy and openness to the public in council meetings.

There have been two important votes in Council in recent months: one setting the budget and another adopting the ‘transformation strategy’. In both of these the Liberal Democrats abstained, allowing Labour to vote against whilst knowing that the motion would be carried anyway. We are challenging candidates to tell us that they will stick to their principles in the future even if it means voting down the Council budget or a major area of council policy like the transformation strategy.

Responses received will be posted to Facebook where possible