Thursday 31 July 2014

Musical Offices: when the music stops ....

The Council recently announced that they have been able to guarantee the future of the old North Cornwall offices at Wadebridge. These are to meet the 'strong service need' of Cormac for a 'professional headquarters'.

The other services vacating the Wadebridge offices are going to help fill up the new £15m office building in Bodmin. The LibDem/Indie administration supported the spend on that office on the basis that it would bring jobs to North Cornwall.  If now appears that these jobs may simply be transferred from elsewhere in Cornwall including from Truro.

The Council feel able to guarantee the future of offices but I wonder if anyone has heard them guarantee the future of (any) public services.
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STOP PRESS

The copy above was submitted on Monday to this Week's West Briton. As of yesterday there is an exception to this. The Council has now guaranteed the future of one out of four of the mobile library vans. It will mean the preservation of 172 out of 665 of the stops but on a less frequent basis. The guarantee is subject to the important caveat that any remaining stop which does not have at least 3 regular customers can be cut at a later stage.

When I took issue with the Council's proposal to budget £25,000 a year for (an old) mobile library van, they promised it would be a new one. They have not taken forward my suggestion of using volunteer drivers, which was made to save money to help preserve the budget for the rest of the library service, which is under threat.

I have managed to secure a guarantee of holiday/sick cover for the remaining van so that residents are not left at the side of the road waiting for a van that may never turn up.

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