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Money for services remains the same
• I AM writing to complain about a quite appalling letter you printed in last week’s CNJ from Mr John Stratton (Back door political letters are cowardly). I do not know Mr Stratton, or anything about him, except that he has his facts all wrong.
Mr Stratton criticises earlier contributors to your letter columns for “failing totally to mention the minor detail of the proposed 43 per cent savage cuts in the social services budget”.
No wonder others did not mention it. There are no such proposals. A 45 per cent cut in the social services budget would not be just “savage”. It would be devastating. No one has for a moment considered such a thing.
This figure of 43 per cent cuts has been bandied about with nil regard for the truth since your paper reported a council executive proposal last October “to review grants worth around £8 million – around 40 per cent of the annual Voluntary and Community Sector’s £20 million budget”.
In other words, not cuts but a review to determine who should get the money. And not the social services budget, but the money going to the voluntary and community sector, to which Camden already gives about four times the amount provided by other London boroughs.
Mr Stratton’s mis-statement of the council executive’s proposals is the wildest I have yet seen, but not content with that he then follows up with another – alleging “proposals to sell off chunks of council housing to associations despite the known oppositions of tenants”.
Again, there are no such proposals. What Mr Stratton has seized upon is just one of a number of possible options set out in a consideration of what Camden might do should the Labour Government continue to withhold money intended to bring Camden’s housing up to decent standards. If Labour pay out the money they owe, no sell-off need be contemplated at all.
Our Liberal Democrat-led administration is pledged to consultation and open debate. Untruths like those Mr Stratton propagates cause needless anxiety for tenants and social services’ clients, the very people we are pledged to support and fight for.
CLLR FARUQUE ANSARI
(Lib Dem) Athlone Street
NW5
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