Protect County Council Front-line services, say Lib Dems

4.09.00pm GMT Wed 18th Nov 2009

Councillors Jenny Hannaby and Zoe Patrick campaigning for Youth Services in Oxfordshire

Oxfordshire County Council has announced that they are looking for £106 million of savings over the next five years. Alan Armitage, Liberal Democrat spokesman for Wantage and Didcot, said: "This will result in very severe cuts in the youth services, day-care facilities for the elderly, and road and pavement maintenance. People will wonder how the Conservatives have realised only now, with the county council elections safely out of the way, that such dramatic cuts are needed. Is this the way we can expect the Conservatives to behave if they get elected to Government next year? I call this deceitful."

Lib Dem group Leader on Oxfordshire County Council, Zoe Patrick, commented: "We have called for some years for backroom functions and the council's slick marketing to be scaled back - it is appalling that elderly people are faced with losing day care services, for example, when the County wastes money on needlessly glossy publications, on spin and on box ticking. No-one will die if one piece of paper is not moved from desk to another in the policy unit, for example, but if a care worker doesn't show up to an older person needing care at home, then it could be life or death.

Meanwhile, the Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust (PCT) which manages and funds healthcare in the county has announced that it will have to cut about £80 million a year from the budget it had been told it would have to improve health services in Oxfordshire. This is the result of decisions made by the Labour Government.

"The PCT must come clean on where the cuts will fall", said Alan Armitage. "The Labour Government's boom and bust investment in the NHS has left the Primary Care Trust facing a massive shortfall of cash and it is hard to see how frontline services and jobs will not be severely affected. The PCT needs to tell people what services they are looking at."