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29/11/2010 :“ConDem Coalition is planning to get out of public consultation as it slashes services,” says Labour:
Labour’s lead on communities and neighbourhoods, Cllr. Bet Tickner, says special interest groups will be aghast at the proposal from Reading’s ConDem Coalition to discontinue seven public forums where elected Councillors and officers drawn from the Council and other agencies meet with representatives of community groups and members of the public.
The forums, listed in a report coming to the Council’s Cabinet on Monday 29 November (page Q5), are the Pensioners Working Group, Access Forum, Ethnic Minorities Forum, Green City & Open Spaces Forum, Transport Users Forum, Arts Forum, Sports Development Forum and the new Safer Reading Neighbourhood Action Group Forum.
Cllr. Tickner says: “There was a meeting of the Ethnic Minorities Forum on Wednesday, and I raised this issue although it wasn’t on the agenda. Community representatives were aghast, as they value the chance to talk to Councillors, Council officers and each other about the services their communities receive.
“At the same meeting we heard the Government is, after 44 years, ending the special funding for teaching pupils from communities who may not have English as a first language. That’s bad news, but without something like the Ethnic Minorities Forum it could have been buried somewhere deep in the Council’s budget book.
“Perhaps that’s the idea! George Osborne’s Comprehensive Spending Review, which is demanding £28 Million cuts in the Council’s budget over the next two years, is going to force some major reductions in services. So is it a coincidence, for example, that on the same Cabinet agenda as the proposal to slash the numbers of elderly people who will be helped by the Council is a proposal to end the Pensioners Working Group which might want to talk about that and propose doing things a different way?
“It appears that when the going gets tough the ConDem Coalition goes into hiding!”
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