Notts County Council reverse £4.6m of cuts

Today the Nottingham Evening Post reported that Notts County Council have decided to reverse £4.6m of their proposed £33.3m of cuts. Some of the reversals in the proposals are:

** Residential care - original savings of £1.6 million will only be £800,000
** Meals - currently cost £2.35 a meal and it was proposed to increase them to £3.95 - this has been revised to £3.00.
** Welfare Rights - originally proposed to cut by £250,000 now proposing to cut by £150,000.
** Sale of residential care homes - Cllr Mel Shepherd, cabinet member for adults, social care and health, also said planned sale of the council's 13 residential care homes was unlikely to be carried out in the next financial year.

We are delighted that the council have started to listen to what we are saying. The reversal of £4.6m of the cuts is to be welcomed. But as we have demonstrated the council have the scope to reverse a further £19m of cuts to protect vital services for the most vulnerable. The people of Nottinghamshire are counting on them to do the right thing.

This has only been possible by vigorous campaigning making use of excellent local government finance advice from head office, coordination the media and external campaign by the regional office and relentless workplace activity by the branch.

A formal response from UNISON to the consultation will be submitted by Friday 22 January and we hope that the council will listen to what we have to say as we believe they can prevent nearly all of the propose service cuts.

We will post the formal response on this blog in due course.