This will I'm sure get voted through nice and easy on Wednesday night.

OK it's not called that really – it's actually called 'devolved spending for local initiatives'.

What that means is that local councillors will have the chance to spend £90,000 of our hard earned council tax money on their pet projects in their own wards. This will be spent on the things most likely to get them re-elected come the next elections – to the tune of £10,000 per ward.

As a Conservative, I'm all for decisions on spending being taken at the lowest level. However, the problem with this is that there's no way this, without any checks and balances (which are missing from the budget report) can represent value for money.

There's also no explanation as to who will have the authority to spend this cash.

Will it be the councillors on their latest whim? Will it have to go to a committee? How will value for money be obtained?

Let me give three examples of why this is a bad way of spending our money.

One – If a local park in a particular ward needs new equipment – then of course that's a good thing that the councillors should be able to make happen.

However, the problem is that ten grand goes practically no-where on this equipment.

And there's also an equality issue. The local councillor in Ward A may be able to identify what is the worst equipment in their area – but would that be the worst in town? Probably not.

Therefore Ward B would be penalised if Ward B's councillor wants to spend their ten grand on something else.

That's why items of this nature should be looked at strategically over the whole town, and the appropriate budget given – this also has the advantage of better purchasing deals, giving better value.

Two - Would the Devonshire Councillors be able to give 'Plumbers Mate' lower business rates, which might mean they'll remove that sign that slags the council off on Seaside (the old Bingo Hall).

To recap – Plumbers Mate spent a fortune doing up the site, only to be penalised as the council then insisted that the business rates should rocket.

It would have been simpler for that entrepreneurial local business, trying to do a good thing, to just leave the site to go to rack and ruin.

Anyway, if the council were able to offer better business rates on that example, how can that possibly be seen to be fair to any other business in other parts of the town?

Three – If this cash is to be spent on removing graffiti, or extra road sweeping/cleaning or grass cutting etc – this is all standard council stuff that should be covered by the councils regular budget.

So the only way to look at this is that councillors will now have the ability to spend big chunks of our money on their latest pet project, a sort of fix-it pot, designed to curry favour with their own local electors and anyone outside their ward can go without…

Nice work if you can get it…

By the way I've had enough going on about the council budget - next week I promise to say something nice about the Lib Dems! There is one aspect of the new budget that I wholeheartedly support!

Have a good week!



Ian writes his own blog at www.iloveeastbourne.co.uk