Massive Overspend Threatens Care of the Elderly

10.51.32pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 20th Oct 2009

"The prospect of massive cutbacks in spending within Community Care services announced today could clearly threaten the quality of service provided to our elderly and vulnerable adults in West Berkshire" said Liberal Democrat Community Care Spokesperson, Owen Jeffery. Calling on the Council to use some of its superfluous financial reserves instead of cutting spending he added, "Reserves are there to deal with 'rainy days' and right now this service is suffering a downpour!"

The Council is now predicting extra costs for this service of around £1M this year.

Despite action taken by the Council officers to reduce costs, this year's overspend is still predicted to be around half a million pounds. The Conservatives who control West Berkshire Council have stated that the overspend was unpredictable. They are blaming other organisations and poor statistics for the size of the budget deficit. If this is the case, these are excellent reasons for allocating a significant part of the Council's bloated reserves to manage the one-off budget pressures.

However the Conservatives have apparently decided not to do this.

Liberal Democrat Finance Spokesperson David Rendel is warning, "The vulnerable must not be made to pay in poorer services when the Council has £1.5Million above what they need just sitting in the bank. The public could well ask why the Council's reserves need to be so high and cannot be used to deal with such a serious crisis as this.

"It is time to use the Council's excessive bank balances to support this vital service, which the Conservative Administration has so clearly failed to provide for adequately."