Response to the Opposition Budget

The budget moved by the labour party did not make financial sense and did not add up!

Firstly they wanted to rob Peter to pay Paul, taking money from reserves to prop up revenue spending with no plan of how to pay for these things in future years.

Secondly they admit in their budget amendment that their budget would create a "black hole" of £347,000 next year, again with no plans for how to deal with this.

And finally their budget proposals didn’t add up, because they have not factored into their budget the charges and taxes levied upon us by the Labour Government if we don't change the towns waste contract. There will be Landfill taxes to pay, because of the higher amount of waste going to landfill as well as higher "gate fees" for taking the rubbish lorries back to the dumps and higher "tipping away fees" for each extra time we tip away the waste. Remember the new waste collection will get us closer to 50% recycling rates rather than the low 20%'s at the moment.

The Labour budget proposals were nothing more than political opportunism!

Yes we would all like to have given more money to HWRA and the grants budget, and that would have been much easier had the Labour government dealt with Harlow fairly.

We got a misely 0.5% increase in our government grant, whilst most councils got 4.2%. Had we got that amount we would have had an extra £322,000 to spend on advice and grants. Why was the government so unfair to Harlow?

The Liberal Democrats claim to be the opposition in Harlow, yet they were unable to put together a budget. They claim they don't want to make cuts, they claim they don’t want to increase income, for example from parking charges, but they won't be honest with the people of Harlow and tell us where they would find the savings from. Is pets corner and the playhouse top of their list to cut? I think they should have the guts to be honest with us.

What do you think?

In the interests of being fair I publish below the other parties budgets so you can see for yourself:

Labour Proposal

Liberal Proposal