The Labour Coalition of councillors on Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council have dealt another blow to people with disabilities, as well as other community groups who most depend on local authority support being under its savage cuts agenda.
The delusional socialist administration at RCT Council hope to generate £1.134m (approx $1.9m) additional income by charging people with disabilities more for services they are already struggling to afford and would likely give up due to financial difficulties that have already hit home because of the policies of the Con Dem Coalition government in London. The so-called Disability Related Expenditure (DRE) Disregard of RCT Council would be reduced from 40% to 5%. Non-residential care service users would have increases in charges of over 40 per cent. Hourly charges for domiciliary care will increase to £17 (approx $30) and an increase from £13.40 (approx $22) to £17 (approx $30) for each visit to day services.
Mike Powell is a Liberal Democratic Party councillor for the Trallwn ward. “It is unbelievable that once again the Labour administration is targeting frontline services and the more susceptible members of our community,” he said. “They are playing political games and the stakes for those affected are very high indeed.
“We have said from the start that this piecemeal approach is wrong, that there should be full scrutiny of the entire budgetary spend in RCT, but requests from opposition councillors for further in depth figures have been flatly refused by the finance director.
“Everyone knows that savings have to be made, and there are some proposals that we may not disagree with given the time to examine them properly, but RCT council should have started tightening their belt a long time ago.
“It is disgraceful that whilst they are making such draconian changes to education and social services, there is no mention of cuts for example to their over inflated PR department.“
