In presenting the Liberal Democrat Alternative Budget to Walsall Council tonight Group Leader Councillor Ian Shires will say:

As we have already heard there are many theories as to why we are where we are in respect of the Budget reductions this Council faces tonight.

One thing most of us agree on is that whatever happens doing nothing is not an option. Unless you are foolish enough to think that the residents of this Borough would be happy to see an increase in their Council Tax of somewhere in the region of 30%!

The usual process on Budget night has been for the controlling group to put forward its proposals followed by opposition groups putting forward a raft of amendments all using the same amount of funding. In recent years with Labour in opposition once all their amendments had failed they would abstain on the substantive motion?

That’s not going to happen this year. The Liberal Democrat Group said way back in September that we would produce an alternative Budget. Others have since followed our lead.

Not only have we produced an Alternative Budget, we have also taken the unusual step of telling people what was in it ahead of the meeting, and we have shared it with both Labour and the Tories in order to give them chance to see if there is any common ground on which we could get a majority vote through this Council tonight.

What we have put together is well thought out. It seeks, as far as is possible, to protect the most vulnerable in our society. It tries to continue to address the inequalities issue which puts many in the West of our Borough at a disadvantage as far as life chances go to those living in the more affluent East. This results in around an 8 year life expectancy gap.

As a result we have tested our proposals against the Marmot Objectives inequalities gradient. Something we feel Labour has failed to do with their Budget proposals.

We are putting forward a composite proposal. It’s not a menu. You can’t pick and mix and the whole thing is conditional on a Senior Management Review which goes further than that proposed by Labour.

Our proposed Senior Management Team consisting of just three people. A CEO, an Executive Director for People Services, along with an Executive Director for Place Based Services.

Underneath this would be lean, tight management structure which would reflect the slimmed down structure we know will happen no matter who wins the General Election in May.

On the political side of things we propose to get rid of the Cabinet and Scrutiny model which concentrates power into the hands of a few people. We propose to replace it with the more inclusive, transparent Committee System.

It’s our view that the Cabinet model has been the cause of much of the decline in people using their vote since it was first introduced back in 2002. Politically balanced committees ensure that issues are fully debated out there in the public arena. They are transparent and inclusive.

We are also proposing that Area Panels be replaced by Town Councils based in each of the six “Towns” which make up our Borough.

Elements of Central Budgets would be devolved to these Town Councils. They would also have a say in schemes and planning applications which impacted on them shifting decision making closer to the people.

We recognise that there are a number of services the Council will be unable to afford to continue to deliver on its own. We will need to rely more on Partner Agencies including the Voluntary Sector.

We want to give those employees who are going to lose their jobs as the Council shrinks in size the opportunity to look at creating not for profit Mutual organisations and Community Enterprises.

We want to create Community Hubs to enable people to access, not only the Councils Services, but the services of partner agencies. We would keep all Libraries open enabling them to be re modelled and become part of the offer through Community Hubs.

Labour’s proposals for young people are abysmal in that their review is rushed and very narrow and confining itself to the few remaining community associations.

Our proposals seek to re phase the savings into year 2 giving time to explore in depth all options including those in the wider voluntary sector.

Moving on to Children’s Centres, we see Labour’s proposals.  We understand the need to remodel the service. This was another good idea by the last Labour Government which was doomed to fail in the longer term because there was no exit strategy. The money simply stops leaving Local Authorities to pick up the bits.

We find the cabinet’s strategy of dumping The Lighthouse and Fibbersley Park Children’s Centres onto the schools they are attached to very High Risk and this is borne out by the Council’s Equality Impact Assessment report. Hence our proposed retention of these two Centres to the West of the M6 where both serve areas of high deprivation.

We have also removed Labour’s proposed savings on Garden Waste collection and cuts to Street Cleaning.

Finally we are concerned that Labour’s proposal to cut a number of Public Health initiatives sends out very negative messages to our partners on the Health and Wellbeing Board.

Not funding these initiatives stores up problems for the future which inevitably will cost us dearly in the long term. Our proposals show a way to continue to fund these services using unallocated current year Public Health Grant.

All in all this is a fully costed sustainable approach to lessen the impact on the vulnerable whilst addressing the need to radically change the way in which this Council delivers its services.