Following this mornings meeting of Overview and Scrutiny which i attended, it was agreed for the Lib Dem budget proposals to be sent to Cabinet for consideration and comment. I hope that they will listen constructively to these proposals and include them in their budget. Past experience says that they will ignore us.

Our fully costed proposals include:

Reducing the cuts to library opening hours, protecting frontline jobs in neighbourhood services including wardens, enforcement officers and pest control officers and litter collectors. Additional capital funding for improving community centres and extra cash for road and footpath repairs. Also a fund of upto £1m to help schools get students to high tech manufacturing training centres and provide concessions for transport for apprentices and their training.

This is to be funded through for example reducing the number of directors, merging and reducing communications teams, scrapping county news whilst retaining the annual services booklet, higher recycling targets and increased capital spending. All fully passed by officers as plausible options.