LETTER: Cllr Dakers - CIP was never given a chance to excel

12.00.00am GMT Tue 19th Feb 2008

Cllr Dakers, Leader of Hounslow Liberal Democrats, fears that services will be trimmed further to cover the costs to the Council of the debts accrued by CIP

Dear Editor, I congratulate CIP Unison representative James Marshall for his courageous statement and letter to the press. The staff of CIP (and thus the users of its services) have been let down by successive cuts from the former Labour administration and the Conservative-led administration. Furthermore, whilst the cuts continued for over a decade, CIP trustees have failed to speak up loudly for the organisation and defend the interests of service users. Meanwhile Hounslow Council failed to put in place an asset management plan for the facilities and parks CIP operated.

CIP was never given a chance to succeed. The Conservative-led administration has failed to encourage the appointment of a new board over the past eighteen months, a new business plan, and establish a fairer contractual relationship. Instead it is allowing the organisation - whose creation all the political parties supported in 1998 - to fold.

We should not kid ourselves that there is not a risk that things will go from bad to worse under a new contractor. That is unless the Conservative-led administration is prepared to pay a realistic sum for contracting out the services currently run by CIP.

An assessment should be made of rises in real costs of such services since the last time they were run by the Council directly. After a decade of cuts a commitment to realistic annual inflationary increases must be part of any contract. In the current climate of cutting anything to be able to say Council Tax is not being increased, I fear that services will be trimmed further to cover the costs to the Council of the debts accrued by CIP as the financial screws were forever tightened.

Yours sincerely

Cllr Andrew Dakers

Leader of Hounslow Liberal Democrats