Letter to Bury Labour Party Leader Mike Connolly

Dear Councillor Connolly, 

Thanks for your courteous response to our questions before the election and congratulations to your group on taking control of the Council.

We are pleased that you plan to share power through an Executive and to open decision-making processes to public scrutiny. We will encourage individual members to take advantage of this new openness to pursue their own concerns about particular localities or services. As a group, we hope for an ongoing dialogue with you as leader, with members of your executive and with council officers as they implement your decisions. We see this letter as the first step in this dialogue.

We welcome your statement that ‘the transformation strategy’ is ‘dead in the water’ and that service reviews will start from the assumption ‘that services will be delivered in house’. We are pleased to hear of your intention to reverse planned cuts and particularly your commitment to a universal youth service, to the LAPs, to school crossing patrols and park rangers.

At our meeting on Tuesday 10th May we noted with concern that some job cuts have already been implemented and that others are in train. In changing the direction of travel of the council your administration will have to overcome bureaucratic inertia and may meet opposition from officers committed to the path they have started on. We will offer our support for your efforts to protect specific services and keep them in the public sector. However we reiterated our opposition to all cuts in Council jobs and services resulting from the settlements imposed by the coalition government for this and future financial years. We will not support policies which save prominent activities but cause deeper cuts in other vital areas.

To begin our dialogue, please could you answer the following questions:

• You have changed the perspective of the STAR process from the focus on privatisation in Councillor Bibby’s original plans, but we assume some such review process is still going on. 
• What is the timetable for departmental review (including those already in process or completed)? 
• What are your plans to open the process to public scrutiny? 
• Since April 2011 how many posts have already been removed and employees lost? 
• Of these: how many were voluntary/compulsory? 
• What category of workers were they and from which departments of the council? 
• What is the net revenue saving as a result when costs are taken into consideration? 
• What assessment has been made of the impact on service users of the deletion of these posts? 

With regard to the “universal Youth Service”: 

• Will the youth team be restored to its previous numbers? 
• Will the Phoenix Centre be kept fully open so that the youth clubs and other activities can continue as at present? 
• Will youth clubs at other centres be continued as at present? 
• Is it planned to redeploy Youth staff, including those who had been listed for redundancy? 

With regard to school crossing patrols: 

• Will all the patrols be maintained, including those where there is a traffic light? 
• We welcome the retention of the Local Area Partnerships. Is it the plan to retain all 6 Local Partnership managers?

Senior management staff: 

• There has been no transparency regarding the severance pay for those leaving, or the enhancement of salaries for the senior staff remaining. We would be interested to see what savings are expected and a much more transparent accounting of senior management salaries. 

We appreciate that this is a very busy time for councillors but we hope for a response to these questions and an opportunity to meet with cabinet portfolio holders and other councillors in the near future.

Yours sincerely

Sue Arnall

Chair