08:19 Wednesday 16th December 2015
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire
DOTTY MCLEOD: Yesterday Cambridgeshire County Council had their last Full Council meeting of 2015, and they came close to voting for a letter being written to the Prime Minister about the funding cuts. Our political reporter Hannah Olsson was there. A bit of a difficult end of year for the County Council Hannah.
HANNAH OLSSON: Yes morning Dotty. Yes the Council needs to save £100 million over the next five years, because it says it’s expecting to get less money from the Government, whilst the number of people living in Cambridgeshire continues to rise. Now last month they told us how their proposals were going to work for doing this. It included big cuts to care, as well as services including gritting, libraries, even lollipop ladies. Now so far all of the discussions about the proposals have been in the individual committees. So there’s a Children’s committee, a Transport committee, and the idea being that the focus of these is on detailed decisions and discussions rather than party politics. But that all seemed to go out the window in yesterday’s Full Council meeting. One of the Labour councillors, Jocelynne Scutt, suggested the Council write to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, to tell them the effects the cuts would have here in Cambridgeshire. And this prompted a lively debate about austerity, with political colours on full show in the Council Chamber. Here’s LibDem councillor Lucy Nethsingha, followed by Conservative councillor James Palmer and Labour’s Ashley Walsh.
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