Over the last few weeks the people of Swindon will have seen the reasons why our town desperately needs a change of administration.
In the last two weeks we have discovered that Ofsted deem Swindon Council’s education system as “failing at all levels”; that the Council have put on notice of closure most of Swindon’s community libraries; and the town’s road network has become gridlocked because of the shabby work the Council did on Bruce Street Bridges.
We also learnt that Moirai, the company that Swindon Council gave a 99 year lease to develop the Oasis site, has now been petitioned to be wound up through a court order after 5 years of doing nothing to develop the site. And we learnt that the private enterprise set up by the Council’s Tory administration to deliver adult social services in Swindon now is in liquidation owing the Swindon taxpayer £726,000.
This recent terrible news comes on top of the Council looking to transfer Lydiard Park to a private bidder; the wasted £1m to fund the unpopular Superfast Broadband scheme in North Swindon; and the racking up of a council debt of over £100m with annual debt charges of near to £10m. In order to plug their budget blackhole the Council is setting up an expensive new layer of bureaucracy, Parish Councils, to deliver services, all of which will have to be funded through the largest council-tax increase in Swindon’s recent history. These are all things the Swindon people never voted for and have vigorously opposed.
North Swindon MP, Justin Tomlinson, last week added further scorn on the Conservative-run Council in his Adver column, saying the Council shouldn’t be putting the funding of Council quango, Forward Swindon, above the funding of core services. He said the £1.5m council budget for the “ineffective” Forward Swindon should be cut. We are pleased the Conservative MP agrees with the Labour Group as we had been calling for this for years and it’s a shame the ruling Conservative administration doesn’t agree with us.
This waste, incompetence and blatant disregard for the wishes of the Swindon public shows that this town is in dire need of a change of administration and a new approach.