Louise Harland-Davies gave a presentation on the What Really Matters consultation which covered why the savings have to be made, the results of the first stage of the consultation and the next steps. Louise also paid thanks to Woodchurch Road Primary School who submitted over 80 filled in questionnaires from the children.

A discussion then took place resulting in the following questions being raised

Q. John Brace: Are all the comments being published for people to see?

A. Louise Harland-Davies: Yes the comments will be available to the public

Q. Paul Haywood: The tick box part of the questionnaire is easy to analyse but will people’s comments be taken into account? Someone may have a good idea but because its just one person’s comment it may get lost in the system?

A. Chris McCarthy: We will take this comment back and look at the capabilities of the system.

Q. Cllr Alan Brighouse: What will be for the format for the next stage of the consultation?

A.  Louise Harland-Davies: We will be working with all the groups that we visited in the first stage of the consultation. The second round of the consultation will provide more detailed questions

Q. Mr Merrick: Questions were so generalised that it was impossible to make budget decisions on them. We needed proper budgets and figures to be able to answer the questions. Instead of the consultation focusing on cuts it should have been branded as an opportunity for the council to work better and more efficiently like all businesses do every year.

A. Cllr Paul Doughty: All the Council departments are available online for anyone who is interested in looking at them. The reason why the first questionnaire didn’t give details of department budgets as the council was trying to obtain peoples’ priorities in the services they use. These cuts are being forced on us and the council has no option but to consult in the manner it has.

A. Cllr Pat Williams: I object to the term cuts and we have to look at the best way of running services. I think it would be useful if people knew which council services were statutory and non-statutory in the next stage of the consultation.

Q. Andrew Taylor: The consultation will get difficult because of the savings that have to be made. Are the savings going to mean that whole services are withdrawn?

A. Cllr Paul Doughty: If people were aware of the statutory services that the council has to deliver they would understand the scale of the problem the council faces.

A. Chris McCarthy: This consultation will help the council develop a 3 year budget plan. The first questionnaire was just the first step of that.

Q. Ken Tomley: Does the council have to find £100m which is a third of the budget over 3 years or 15% of the budget based on the councils £800m income.

A. Chris McCarthy: The council has to save £100m which is a third of the net budget.

A. Cllr Stuart Kelly: The information to the public has to be more accessible to understand. Councils have always been asked to reduce expenditure and find different ways to deliver services.