Liberal Democrat's on County Council Budget reserves

Following the announcement by the Secretary of State Eric Pickles urging Councils to use their reserve funds, the Liberal Democrats have responded with a call to allocate some reserves to establish funds to benefit local communities.

Group Leader Simon Galton CC said: "We have always believed that some of these reserves, along with any under spends that the council has, should be ring fenced into a simple fund that we can use to support projects and services that are important but can not be afforded from the main Council budget due to cuts in public spending.

These reserves cannot be used to fund ongoing expenditure - but they can be useful to establish a one off fund, that the Council can agree and set annually and use it to target money at services that people need.

Back in February we proposed taking £1m out of the reserves to support local voluntary groups such as befriending schemes and Youth groups. This would offset the cuts the Tories are making to huge parts of the County's budget. The Tories rejected it then but now with the reality of the cuts biting, this might be a prudent solution to keep services going through these difficult times."