Last night, Councillors met to try and form a leadership group for Bristol City Council. The Lib Dems tried on three separate occasions to gather enough support for them to take control, but Labour, Tories and the Green Councillor came good and solidly opposed them.
It means the meeting was suspended for 7 days to give everyone time to talk. One thing is clear, the plan to privatise the Home Care service will have to be shelved.
Let's see what discussions with all political parties over the next few days will uncover. They need to take responsibilty for a high quality, well managed, accountable, responsive, secure, service user focused Home Care service which puts the quality of the relationships between Home Care workers and service users as a top priority - just like the older and disabled people of Bristol asked them to!
JOIN OUR RALLY: Sat 3rd SEPT, 12.30-2pm Meet at Greenway Centre, Southmead, BS10 5PY
Councillors come good? Leaving the city illegally leaderless because Labour simultaneously refuse to take control, and refuse to let anyone else control is your idea of 'good'?
ReplyDeleteAny particular reasons you're not mentioning the way Helen Holland's labour party managed to privatise the majority of Bristol home care two years ago?
Its dealt with elsewhere on this blog. The Labour party did not privatise the service two years ago, that is a gross over simplification. For the past eight years the council has retained its inhouse service whilst gradually purchasing an increased amount of service from the private sector. It is now at a position where 50% is in house and 50% is private. This information is all over this blog.
ReplyDeleteWe are not and have never claimed that the private sector have no role to play in delivering Home Care services - what we are campaigning for is an in house service which retains 50% of the work in the City. We believe that this best protects the interests of older and disabled people in the city. Bristol must not participate in a race to the bottom where poor employment standards led to poor care standards. The role of the council is to monitor commissioned services PROPERLY and to manage directly provided services PROPERLY.
This is not a party political issue and yes, it is good that the Lib Dems were prevented from taking control because they havent agreed to Keep Bristol Home Care. The councillors all need time to sort this issue out. We dont mind who takes control of the council as long as they do it with a committment to the in house Home Care.
"This is not a party political issue"
ReplyDeleteSo why did your union flood Southville with leaflets saying "Don't Vote Green" just before the election?
Because the Green Councillor didnt support us when we needed him to. To be fair he has since apologised and now is showing his support. That didnt happen though until we targetted Southville along with other wards. You might not like it, but we have the right to express our views and to campaign anywhere we like in the City. We targetted Southville and Labour narrowly scraped in. If we had enjoyed support from the Greens back then, like we do now, it wouldnt have happened.
ReplyDelete