Liberal Democrats on Walsall Council are within £100,000 of producing a legal balanced alternative to the Tories Budget proposals for 2016/17. “Our proposed alternative budget includes a plan to save all seven of the libraries at threat from Tory cuts” said Lib Dem Group Leader Cllr Ian Shires.

Also included in the Lib Dem proposals are plans to keep the funding for the Citizens Advice Bureaux at current levels whilst at the same time getting to grips with providing the support needed for the voluntary sector at a time when local government services are at threat from a heartless Westminster Tory Government.

Locally Tories have plans to shift decision making further than ever away from the people Local Government is supposed to support. If the Tories get their way at the budget meeting on Thursday 25 February out will go the six local Area Partnerships along with the neighbourhood management much valued in getting local issues resolved. From April the last tenuous links with the District Centres of Willenhall, Darlaston, Aldridge Brownhills and Bloxwich will be severed. In future all decisions will be made at the centre in Walsall much of it it has to be said will be made behind closed doors: unless that is the Tories can be stopped in their tracks.

Are the Tories so bereft of ideas that they can’t see just how inept an idea this is? At a time when councils need to be talking with their citizens, trying to find ways of making what little money there is available go further. Slamming the door in their faces is the last thing that councils should be doing.

There are better ways of doing things and the Liberal Democrats will not stand by and let the Tories have their way. “Contained within our plans are proposal to turn Area Partnerships into Area Councils” said Cllr Shires. “By working more closely with its citizens we can attract funding that the council can’t attract on its own. We know it won’t be easy, we will need others to back our proposals but it has to be better than what the Tories and their friends are proposing.”