Cutting to the Point: George Binnette

Camden, the borough with the highest concentration of University of London students, is among the local authorities hardest hit by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition’s programme of slashing public spending. As some 400 demonstrators occupied Euston Road on a damp Monday evening, the Labour-led council agreed a budget on 28 February that entails an estimated £35 million in cuts in 2011-12 with fewer than 50 people in the public gallery to witness the debate. The spending cuts translate into the loss of at least 970 full-time equivalent posts, nearly one in five current Council employees, with union officials receiving written confirmation of 700 job losses between 31 July and 31 March 2012. For the council’s tenants, rents are now set to rise by more than 7%, while a wide range of service charges will rise at levels outstripping the headline rate of inflation.

But this is just a part of Camden’s chronicle of woe. The cuts budget is likely to slash 65% of funding for the borough’s award-winning play service. Direct council provision of play would cease and a summer-time programme for 2,000 children aged 4-12 could go as a result. Two of the borough’s Sure Start centres are also due to shut, with the Caversham centre first to go in August as part of an overall cut of £3.2 million in services for younger children.The coming three years could also see huge cuts to provision for disabled children and others with special educational needs. 19 of 41 central teaching posts providing vital support to such children are due for the chop.

Four of the borough’s day resource centres for older people, operated by voluntary sector organisations, face the prospect of closure between spring 2011 and October next year, while the current Meals On Wheels service, already outsourced to a contractor, will cease before the year is out. A fifth resource centre for dementia sufferers has received only a temporary reprieve. In short, the very old and the very young will suffer as a result of the cuts.After the previous Lib Dem-Conservative council partnership axed dozens of library workers’ jobs, at least three of the borough’s 13 libraries may well close, though a consultation exercise, itself costing tens of thousands, is still under way. Then there’s the £170 million in capital funds, stripped from Camden six weeks after the May 2010 election.

Finally, despite promises to the contrary, Camden’s hospitals already face an enormous squeeze with University College Hospital management looking to cut some £30 million, and unconfirmed reports suggest that the Royal Free in Hampstead could slash spending by around £70 million.Of course, as with most other boroughs the tab for consultants runs into the millions. Multinational giant PWC and individual partners have raked in more than £2.75 million from Camden since April 2009, having overseen sale and redevelopment of residential care homes, and, crucially, restructured the council’s processes and staffing for the procurement of goods and services.Resistance in Camden has seen innovative protests, including a bouncy castle across from the Town Hall to highlight opposition to play service cuts and 95-year-old women in their wheelchairs staging a lunch-time demo against the threatened closure of their day centre. As for the workforce, the Camden association of the NUT, which represents over 80% of the borough’s teachers, is currently conducting an official strike ballot over job losses and there is a real prospect of a walkout on 30 March alongside Tower Hamlets’ teachers.UNISON members in the council are in favour of action by more than two to one.

Camden United Against the Cuts will be staging a rally and feeder demonstration to join the TUC-initiated “March for the Alternative” on Saturday 26 March. Protesters will be assembling for 11.00am at Lincoln’s Inn Fields by LSE. The campaign is on Facebook

(http://on.fb.me/dWIBIM) and on the web at: http://camdenunited.org.uk