Cambridgeshire: County forced to announce savage cuts

2.34.43pm BST (GMT +0100) Wed 25th Oct 2006

Cambridgeshire Lib Dems have today successfully managed to persuade the County Council to release some details of their controversial cuts to services across the County. Lib Dems have been campaigning for this information to be made public and would still like the full details to be publicly available.

The cuts are being enforced by the Conservative administration in order to deal with the millions of pounds of overspends incurred so far this year.

The cuts were announced today at a seminar for County Councillors and include

• Around £500,000 of cuts in Highways and Access including bridge and carriageway maintenance as well as the minor schemes announced earlier this week

• A massive £1.3 million cut in adult social care described by one officer as "an enormous amount of cash in 6 months. This will include what is euphemistically described as "reviewing packages of care". The Council is also hoping to get more money from the NHS to cover its costs. Given the financial crisis facing the local NHS this seems unlikely.

• £100,000 cuts in the book fund so that libraries will not be able to replenish their stocks

• Further (unspecified) cuts in community learning and development, customer services, environment and regulation and sustainable infrastructure

The total cuts in just one of the three Council offices, Environment and Community Services, total £2.8 million.

Councillor Julian Huppert, Leader of the Lib Dems on the County Council, commented:

"I'm pleased that the Council has finally told Councillors and the public the true nature of their cuts. These will have a very serious impact on people across the County and at least now they will know what is going to happen to them.

"We are still calling for the full details to be made public and hope that the Council will do this straight away to allow proper debate at Tuesday's Council meeting.

"This latest move just shows how poor the Conservative financial management is. Like in so many years they have racked up huge overspends and have had to cut savagely mid-year, without proper discussion, in order to balance the books."