In his last column to the Gazette local Tory leader Jason Stacey accused the Labour administration in Ealing Town Hall of accepting tough cuts in services that had previously been rejected by the Tories when presented to him by officers.

He also, in another story reported by the Gazette about Police cuts to Safer Neighbour Police Teams, complained about the loss of Police resources in his Ward.

On both these issues there was a deliberate blindness by Cllr Stacey that the reason the Labour Council and the Police are making these difficult decisions is a result of his national Party’s decisions to savagely cut budgets too quickly and too deeply in a reckless ideological gamble to remove the deficit in four years. The ability of Cllr Stacey to completely air brush this reality away is breathtaking.

The cuts that Cllr Stacey piously says his Party rejected previously, such as the closure of day care facilities are now impossible not to take. I don’t want to take such decisions but in order to set a balanced budget, as I am legally obliged to do, I am having to. I am angry that the government is forcing me into this position and I am angry that local Tories pretend they and their party are nothing to do with this.  

Another criticism of Cllr Stacey is that Labour locally is not coming up with innovative new ways of delivering services. A consequence of the government making cuts ‘too deep’ and ‘too fast’ is that it doesn’t give Councils any time to come up with such thinking. Local Government Secretary of State Eric Pickles has significantly ‘front loaded’ the cuts in our budget in the first year thus forcing us to make cuts immediately.

Cllr Stacey calls for ‘blue sky’ thinking, citing Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster’s ‘Super Council’ idea, but mergers whether they be private or public sector have a poor track record of making the savings heralded at the grand announcement.

The reports from Tory Barnet’s ‘Easy Council’ that efforts to make savings have actually cost local Council tax payers money show how difficult it is to deliver budget reductions.

Over the next 3 ½ years we will come up with innovative ways of delivering services. Joint working with our West London Alliance Council partners, trust models and social enterprises and making full use of modern technology will all be part of the solution.

When the local government ‘sun’ shone the previous Tory administration in Ealing failed to fix the IT ‘roof. Our basic IT is Neanderthal – we still use Windows 2000! When the Council shut down for a week a couple of years ago – costing Council Tax payers upwards of £1m - due to a virus the cause was via a USB stick that Windows 2000 security systems couldn’t pick up because they were developed before USB sticks were invented! We are putting this right. Also if we expect a diminished work force to deliver more for less to local residents we must give them the tools to do so.

We will deliver better ways of working but the previous Labour administration’s IT Response Programme and Tory Barnet’s Easy Council failure show that we need to proceed with caution and without undue haste.

This we will do but the government’s front loading of cuts in the first year and the sheer scale of the Council’s budget reductions mean we are forced to make some very unpalatable decisions now.