County News
More Cash
Good news this month from the Government Spending Review.
Since the annual deficit on our national spending has been hugely reduced after years of austerity (not all a bad thing in my view. Lots of good initiatives have resulted), the Chancellor has loosened the purse strings.
We don’t have all the detailed County figures yet but it looks as if-
Not only will school spending rise but ESCC will have nearly £6m more for special educational needs.
There will be an additional £8m for social care grants to individuals and over £10m more for Adult Social Care.
Tax rises will be kept below 2%.
In addition of course, there is more money for policing Health, homelessness and many other programmes.
All of this is,of course, dependent on fast changing political events but it will improve local services.
Over the last 8 years there has been a massive increase in Health spending combined with a massive decrease in Local Government spending. We now spend 38% of national public expenditure on health compared with 28% in 2010.
Highways
Lots of new road resurfacing is being done at present. We are seeing improvement to many main roads but also to some of our country lanes.Work will soon finish on an excellent safety scheme on Daleham Lane, Fletching.
Wealden
Waste performance is much better with Biffa. In the last week of August there were only 136 missed bins. With Kier, a good week was 500 missed bins.
There continue to be problems with collecting unused brown bins but these are being resolved.
We are keenly awaiting the Planning Inspector’s Report on our Local Planning and the future of local housing development.
Applications are now invited for Wealden community grants with a deadline of November 30th. Local groups and charities can apply to [email protected].
Roy Galley
September 6th 2019.
Your local Councillors.
Roy Galley. [email protected]
01825 713018
Peter Roundell. [email protected]
01825 722030
Toby Illingworth [email protected]
01825 732115
Francis Whetstone [email protected]
01892 771184