ANGRY politicians across Brentwood have joined forces to lash out at Conservative council leader Louise McKinlay's "forward-thinking" Town Hall budget speech last night.
In a "tense" council chamber on Tuesday evening, the Tory frontbencher unveiled her plans to freeze council tax for the year ahead, while cutting 12 jobs at the administration.
With the full backing of her Conservative colleagues on the night, Mrs McKinlay also pushed through a three year plan to make the council "more commercial".
Her budget speech was in reaction to an 11.4 per cent reduction in central Government funding from April 1 to March 31, 2014.
The amount received by Brentwood Borough Council from Westminster will be £10,237,270, compared to a planned spend of £11,345,190, leaving a shortfall of £1,107,920.
Mrs McKinlay says that cutting jobs, tougher negotiations with suppliers and streamlining the number of interim workers will save £630,290 and the rest (£477,630) will be taken from council coffers to balance the books.
It also plans to reduce support for some community events.
But Brentwood Labour Party leader, Cllr Mike Le Surf, described the budget as "dangerous".
"I thought it was a disgraceful budget, it didn't address the problems that Brentwood is facing, it is damn right dangerous," he said.
"They are in a Tory bubble and will do whatever the Government tells them to do.
"Louise McKinlay is putting in a budget that is going to make 12 members of staff redundant and another four managers, and there we were sitting in a meeting with six to eight senior managers in the room and the Tories were applauding as she announced she was cutting jobs."
He added: "She thinks she is running this council like a business, well if she is, she's not very good at it, you can run things in a business-like-way but the council will never be a business.
"And after years of saying you cannot touch the reserves to top up the revenue funding, that's exactly what they are doing.
"It's another typical Tory Budget and in the next few years we are going to fall off a cliff edge because we won't have all the money to do the things that we need to do."
Lib Dem, David Kendall, the leader of the opposition believes Mrs McKinlay hasn't done enough to stand up for Brentwood in the face of Westminster funding cuts.
He said: "The 11.4 per cent cut in the government grant is the worst in Essex and I asked last night what representations Louise has made on Brentwood's behalf and I just got told that 'she had meetings with various people'
"We are concerned that once again Brentwood has been hit again with the biggest cut in Essex.
The Lib Democrats put forward two proposals at the meeting to tackle a rise in burglaries across the borough and anti-social behaviour which would have been supported by a 1.98 per cent rise in council tax.
Both of them were thrown out.
Mr Kendall added: "We are concerned with the direction of travel that this administration is taking and we are not confident that they are going to be able to deliver what they say they will do.
"Louise McKinlay said over the next two or three years she will freeze or council tax and for her to make that statement now when local government finances are in such a mess is not a sensible thing to do, there is so much uncertainty about how much grant we will be given."
William Lloyd, the leader of breakaway Tory group Brentwood First, said the Conservative controlled council is "lost in the mire".
"It's a bit of a backwards budget to be honest," he remarked.
"The council has spoken a number of times about how they want to be more entrepreneurial and unfortunately it just continues to be rhetoric, there is no clear proposal on how revenues are to be raised from commercial initiatives.
"And they based the building of their corporate plan on a consultation which involved just 14 people."
He added: "Throughout the whole budget there is no plan for tackling Brentwood's social housing problem or the need to build more homes for first time buyers.
"And they have announced a freeze in council tax for the year ahead and we support that, but in reality it's not a freeze, it is very quickly thawing out because at the same time they are putting up fees and charges for everything from sports clubs to buying a plot in a cemetery."
Mrs McKinlay told the Gazette that a three year plan for tackling the funding deficit – called New Ways of Working - was essential.
"Without a three year plan, the council would carry on going doing exactly the same thing.
"This is a big reorganisation project internally to make sure we save as much as we can, while still delivering frontline services, and to do that we need to take a visionary approach that clearly involves deciding what the priorities are for the future."
