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Council rethink on £1.6m service cut
CONTROVERSIAL plans to cut £1.6m from services for people with learning disabilities have been scrapped in Northamptonshire County Council's final budget proposals for 2008/09.
In December, the authority revealed it intended to modernise day care services for people with learning disabilities as part of a programme which would save 1.6m over three years and could lead to some day centres no longer being needed.
But yesterday county council cabinet member for adult care Rosemary Bromwich announced that while the plans, which include giving people with learning disabilities more say over their budgets, would continue, the authority no longer needed to save the money.
The budget is based on the county council increasing its share of the council tax demand by 4.2 per cent, which will see an increase of 38.50 for people living in an average band D property.
Cllr Bromwich said: “We have received a lot of feedback from users and carers, some of whom were worried about the implications of what we are proposing. I want to reassure them we will not be forcing anyone to take direct payments.
“We will continue to provide building-based day care for those who need it. We will allow people to exercise choice and will not force them by closing facilities or making radical changes in service provision prematurely.”
The Conservative-led council also revealed it has budgeted to spend an extra 1m during the next two years to improve road gritting around county villages and will run a trial scheme in Kings Cliffe and Woodford Halse to introduce village clean-up gangs to work with parish councils and community groups to improve and maintain rural areas.
It also plans to invest an extra 150,000 in the Royal and Derngate theatres, introduce more 20mph zones around schools and accident hotspots, work with the probation service to get people on community service orders to take part in clean-up work such as graffiti cleaning.
It will invest 40,000 in a project to help young people access the county’s archives to find out more about the area’s heritage and put an additional 112,000 into the fire and rescue service.
The authority also hopes to stop funding the county’s music service over time by enabling it to become self-sustaining and to save 120,000 by helping outdoor education services become self-funding.
The council will spend 379m on services, including 71.7m on children and young people’s services, 131.9m on community services and 91.6m on schemes such as highways maintenance and waste.
The council’s budget is due to be finalised on Thursday, February 28.
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Thursday 09 February 2012
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