Council Costs
February 13th, 2009
A letter to the Editor of the Bury Free Press which was published on 13th February 2009.
The Bury Free Press is the long-established local weekly paper of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk.
One wonders how representative was the survey which Steve Boor (council engineer) reported last week as showing only 24 people out of 351 surveyed objected to an increase in car park charges.
Ten pence on the £1.30 minimum charge at the large Ram Meadow car park represents almost an eight per cent increase, double the four per cent increase mentioned in the five options for increases and much greater than the likely rate of inflation in 2009. This raises the question about a sixth option – no increase at all.
It may not have yet dawned on council bosses, but this country is in the midst of a major economic crisis in which hundreds of thousands of our fellow-citizens are losing their jobs and, possibly millions by now, are on short time or having their wages cut by anything up to 40 per cent in order to keep their jobs and firms going.
It is high time councils, here and elsewhere, implemented cost cutting in their own activities, not by withdrawing services but by reducing their staff costs by a substantial amount, say 10 per cent.
A 10 per cent reduction in staff costs over the next year can be accomplished by a combination of salary cuts, job losses through efficiency gains, reduced holidays and a reduction in employer pension fund contributions, all of which have been happening throughout the private sector for several years.