Womens International Group (WIG) are holding a follow up meeting from our 9 December one – the council budget Cuts will be announced soon.
The meeting will take place on:
Wednesday 14 January
at Royston Wardieburn Community Centre at 6-30pm.
We are hoping the local councillors will be in attendance to be able to answer questions regarding the cuts .
All welcome
Anna Hutchison (on behalf of WIG)
COUNCIL BUDGET NEWS:
It was announced this week that more than 1,200 council jobs could go over the next three years under proposals to plug the city’s £67m funding gap.
The council insists there will be no compulsory redundancies and said the planned ‘transformation of services’ was designed to make them more efficient and customer focused.
City council Finance Convener Cllr Alistair Rankin said: “Of course change on this scale brings challenges but we need to take decisive action now to meet our targets and create a stronger, leaner, more agile council to better serve the people of Edinburgh.”Among the proposals under consideration are offering more services online, having a neighbourhood approach for face-to-face services and cutting grants to the voluntary sector by as much as 10%.The latest restructuring proposals will be considered by the Finance and Resources committee on Thursday and consultation with staff and trade unions is also being planned.
See below for relevant Council reports:
Item_7.3___BOLD_business_cases___delivering_a_lean_and_agile_Council
Please follow and like NEN:
The top heavy bureaucracy is almost impossible to approach with sensible ideas. The finance and resources committee does take deputations though.
Next Thursday the Finance Committee are meeting. I have just read through the 400 odd pages which makes depressing reading and gives a sense of the scale of things. I think it is interesting how the report is full of talk about efficiencies, realignments, leaner opportunities, agile, improvements, re-engineering, reduced wastage etc.
George Orwell would be proud of this doublespeak (doublethink). This distortion of language can be used to “distort and obfuscate (apologies but it is Orwells quote) reality…defence of the indefensible.”
One short paragraph I leave you with in terms of social care:
“Despite these significant service volume increases, there are currently 331 people (including 94 in hospital) waiting for 4,145 hours per week of domiciliary care”.
In a rich city like this – this is where we have reached in the 21st century.