Making a difference to the people of Medway

Deputy Leader Alan Jarrett: Keeping tax as lowest in the county

Article posted on Friday, 19 March 2010

Budget setting is over for another year, and it is pleasing to report that the Conservatives in Medway have set a budget that will benefit everybody.

It was a difficult juggling act with limited resources, and involved the use of almost £1.7 million of new investment. Our concern was to spread the money across Medway where it would do the most good.

Firstly it was vital to maintain Medway’s council tax level as the lowest in Kent by a considerable margin.

This has once again been achieved.

Next we had to look at priority areas of spend – youth services, disabled provision, transport, car parking, festivals, parks and roads. We brought forward a raft of new initiatives, all of which were opposed by Labour, LibDem and Independent councillors.

There will be three new or improved public car parks in Strood, Chatham and Gillingham. Extra money has been allocated to repairing the potholes caused by the recent bad weather, and the popular yellow bus scheme will be extended to the Hoo Peninsula.

We froze the cost of parking permits for residents and businesses for the next three years; introduced disabled play facilities in some of our play areas, and made companions passes for those accompanying disabled passengers free.

There will be more disabled parking bays on our streets.

We put more money into our free festivals so that they could be enjoyed by even more people over the years ahead, and introduced the community hub concept that will see our libraries being extended to provide a wider range of facilities for the local communities.

We will spend more money on Upnor Castle, the Central Theatre, Grain Country Park and Capstone Country Park, in order to provide better facilities for people visiting those areas. We will be spending another £150,000 on allotments.

We decided to allocate a massive £290,000 for the provision of more facilities for youth that will bring forward a range of initiatives; all aimed at giving youngsters something to do and somewhere to go.

We allocated almost £100,000 for child protection – crucial at a time when safeguarding responsibilities have been rightly emphasised.

When asked which of the above schemes Labour would scrap to fund its own idea the answer was brutal – “all of them”.

I say no more!