News from Westminster Labour

Westminster Conservatives to scrap £2 million ward budgets

Local projects to be axed as Conservatives’ £17 million failed-Icelandic bank investments claim their latest victims.

Westminster Conservatives are to axe the Council’s £2 million a year Neighbourhood Ward budgets in order to cut costs after putting at risk £17 million of Council Tax payers’ money in now-failed Icelandic banks. In a report to the Council’s Cabinet on 8th December, the Council’s Director Finance that “significant savings are proposed” including the “ending of the £2 million neighbourhood ward budgets from 2010/11″.

Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg, Leader of the Labour Group, said:

“The neighbourhood ward budgets are the latest victims of the Conservatives financial incompetence. Putting at risk £17 million of Council Tax payers’ money in now-failed Icelandic Banks will mean the end of scores of local projects across Westminster which had been started over the past 12 months by local Labour and Conservative Councillors. Having raised the hopes of local residents across Westminster, the Conservatives’ wreckless financial gamble chasing high interest rates in Iceland will now bring misery to many. It is a sorry state of affairs for which the Conservatives have yet to apologise or take responsibility.”

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