Council chief tells government: Trust us

CENTRAL government should practice what it preaches and trust councils to run things locally.
This was the message from the leader of Warrington Borough Council, Ian Marks, and other senior Lib Dem councillors from across the country, at a Downing Street reception.
The council chiefs met Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg at the reception.
Cllr Marks (pictured) said: “Localism. localism, localism is the cry, but still the government in London wants to keep too much control over local decisions.
“Whichever government had won the general election, huge savings needed to be made. Forward thinking councils like Warrington prepared for this 12 months ago.
“Local government accounts for a quarter of all public expenditure so we were always going to play our part in fixing the black hole in the nation’s finances left by the last Labour government.
“But we are disappointed that the Government has not listened to the request from local government to take some of the sting out of the cuts by spreading them more evenly over the next four years.
“We made our views about this clear to David Cameron and Nick Clegg.
“We lobbied them both about localism too. Councils welcome the scrapping of red tape and centrally imposed targets. This gives us extra freedoms to do what is best for local people. But we are concerned that central government is still trying to keep a say over too much. We urged them to let go and trust us.”
* Cllr Marks is also one of a number of Lib Dem council leaders who signed a letter to “The Times” calling on the government to slow down on cutbacks.