My comments at Breckland Council meeting on 5th July 2012 regarding play area transfers

Thank-you Mr Chairman, I wanted to comment on the play areas issue if I may because it is very pertinent to the wider debate that this Council will be having over the coming months; indeed a debate that Councillors will be continuing after this very meeting.

Now call me an old cynic, but I do not see that this ongoing handing over of the play areas is entirely for the reasons as altruistic as Cllr Sherwood refers to in these notes. The point I was making at the meeting was that surely when as a Council we are reviewing what services should be provided by Breckland, and what could be provided by others, we should have a very firm eye not just on cost, but also on value for money. For example, I don’t suppose that Breckland has much of an idea about the cost to Breckland of providing play areas, versus for example Dereham Town Council and others individually providing them. If the Chair of Dereham Town Council Finance committee is to be believed, tax payers in Dereham will ultimately be picking up the bill for the offloading of this particular service, referred to of course as the transfer of assets, when in reality it is the transfer of community assets, with the associated financial liabilities. If the public ultimately end up paying more for the same service, because those economies of scale have been removed, what has been gained? Do the public mind too much who they pay? No, they care about how much they pay and the public will view this as Breckland sidestepping another responsibility.

In short, the point I am making is to of course consider services and who is best to provide them, but also consider the cost, and the value for money. Or is this council about offloading as much as it can, to keep its own share of the council tax down at any cost to the public through other avenues.

Will this commitment to localism see Breckland hand to Thetford Town Council the 300,000 square feet of office accommodation / retail units that it owns, and the £1million plus yearly income that they yield? I think not.