Is Every Service at Council to be Privatised?

The Liberal Democrats and Trade Union has expressed concern over draft proposals to outsource many services provided by Conservative run Bath and North East Somerset Council.

Althgough the plans are yat to be finalised, the concept is to reduce the Council down to a Core of just 700, with many direct facing services, such as home care and street cleansing to be privatised or delivered in partnership with other orgainsations.

The draft policy document, The Future Council, says: "The future council should be strategic rather than operational - focused on convening and working with its partners to prioritise and commission public services rather than delivering services itself."

Other councils that have gone down this route, services that had been privatised included home care, sheltered housing and social services.

The Conservatives have said the authority needs to make 5% efficiency gains in the coming year. By Privatisation of services savings might indeed be made, but at what cost to delivering services to our residents?

Even between services the holistic approach of being one council does not exist, you only have to look at the fiasco with waste collections and cleansing. If the waste collection team arrives to collect your waste and your bag has been split they leave it to the street cleansing team, but do they think to actually let them know that a mess exists for them to tidy up?

Discussions to start on the Rapid Transit Link for the London Road

Council highways officers and local businesses at the end of September will be leaving the Guildhall at and walking the route to the Lambridge training ground. The purpose of this is to give residents, councillors and businesses an early indication of the proposals, but more importantly to share their concerns over highway and pedestrian safety along this route.

The Council have now reconsidered Lambridge as the prefered location for a park and ride site and Mill Lane near Batheaston is now the prefered location, this will deliver 540 more car parking spaces for cheaper, but will of course mean higher volumes of buses using the London Road bus lane and the Bath Package include London Road and Walcot Street as a rapid transit link, similar to that planned to rail road through people's gardens in Newbridge.

Cllr David Dixon said, "Although this will not be an open public tour, the views of residents who use Walcot Street and the London Road are important to us as local councillors. Anyone who has a particular view that they would like to share are encouraged to contact us on 01225 462590 or by email david_dixon@bathnes.gov.uk . We want to help get this right, hopefully then we can ensure that the delivered scheme is responsive to the needs of local residents and businesses, and will go someway to improving highway safety along the London Road."

Following pressure from a number of councillors including Cllr David Dixon and and Cllr Colin Darracott, the Council is currently advertising for a Road Safety Accident Investigation and Prevention Engineer. This person's role would revolve around looking into accident clusters and coming up with ideas for remedial measures. It is envisaged that the first area for the new engineer to deal with will be the London Road.

Calls for a Safer London Road

With so many accidents occuring on the busy London Road, local residents and ward Councillor David Dixon, are calling for more safety measures to be introduced and for the bus lane to be reconsidered as 24 hours.

Cllr David Dixon said, "This stretch of road is becoming very dangerous and the Council must come up with solutions and put them in place. People are having accidents, in some cases very serious ones, due to the lack of visibility and speeding traffic coming along the bus lane. Vehicles are also ignoring the merge at the end of the bus lane near Morrisons and are quite often cutting up traffic as they pass the lights."