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West End Extra - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 20 November 2009

Fools on finance

Westminster City Council has a £20million hole at the heart of this year’s budget, according to the latest council financial monitoring report.
The major reason for this is because the council has collected £17million less in parking fines than it originally budgeted for.
The £20million shortfall will to lead to further job cuts, in addition to the 300 redundancies announced a few months ago, and more new charges for services, such as the £20 fee for the collection of bulky refuse.
The Conservatives have known about this massive hole in the budget for the past six months but have deliberately kept it quiet.
This latest financial disaster exposes the council’s folly of basing much of its finances on income from parking fines. For years it has assumed parking income would keep increasing, but the reduction in offences following introduction of pay-by-phone parking and the impact of economic downturn has taken the Conservatives by surprise and thrown the council’s finances into disarray.
This is another spectacular piece of Conservative financial mismanagement which will lead to more misery for many, as more jobs are cut and new charges for services introduced.
Residents are entitled to ask why the Conservatives allowed such a financial mess to develop and who is responsible for these huge losses. We need answers not excuses.
We need to know how services to the most vulnerable will be protected.
Far from being the party of economic competence Westminster Conservatives have again proved themselves to be financial fools.
cllr Paul Dimoldenberg
Leader of the Labour Group

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, West End Extra, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@westendextra.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Wednesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld.
Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number.
Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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