"Local councils in England are facing a 2.9% cut in overall Government funding for 2014/15, it has been announced."

Can we now hope that out Council will concentrate on core services and get rid of all political projects. If money is to be tight then core customer services are essential rather than other pet projects like training to get on and off buses.

Council tax should now be frozen like most other councils, so that the government hand outs can be received to give the essential help to all those of us who pay the wages, salaries and pensions of all the employees.

Retaining front line services should be considered to be paramount and with our reduced workforce, should now come a review of all the pen pushers and people whose actual work fails to aid those for whom they are working, the tax payer.

Ivory towers now need to be emptied and sold off, maintaining essential services has to become the watchword, that is what the council is in business for, not the creation of no-jobs like equalities jobs, green initiatives jobs etc. The area should be run like a business, keep the lights on, grass cut, and maintain essential front line jobs.

Above all the council must not spend money going abroad to, as they say 'see how other people do things'. If they don't know then they should not be in their jobs. Nor should lots of meetings be called for enhancing the expense accounts of our beloved councilors in discussing overmuch the way to deal with the government subsidy, again from tax payers, keep them short and get the right answers. This is not the time to start charging extra money for things like brown bins, that was a charge too far, it must not happen again with anything else, the costs bear disproportionally amongst council tax payers as it is and it must stop here.

I agree with you. Sadly the careless attitude to spending public money, cascades from the top.

A council building i delivered papers to has been empty for around 3 months and i noticed the central heating boiler was still on. Could have been a frost stat kicking in but it was a fairly mild day around 10/11 C. Reported it.

sorry, I forgot the link

http://news.sky.com/story/1183327/peer-earns-300-for-40-minutes-of-work

As the government today have stated that they intend for council tax to be frozen for a further two years, one wonders if this council will take what's on offer or refuse the funding again. They are really pushing their luck if they hope to play more of their political mind games with the council tax payers in this borough.
Has anyone encouraged new businesses to the area? That could solve a few problems . We hear not of anything positive happening, only meetings of one form or another. If they are not able to bring business to the area, when Liverpool is 10 mins away, then I suggest someone is being paid very well for producing nothing and not very good at negotiating skills.
One wonders who ?