Bridgend Labour Council: Redefining The Perception Of Services To The Vunerable

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

For reasons won't bore you with I need to Bridgend Town this afternoon before I go to work. It is only a fleeting visit, so apart from one particular curiosity I'm not going to be wandering around  chatting about it tomorrow in this blog.

But as I was checking on the internet, seeing whether I needed to go at all an article came up about cuts in Blog villain Bridgend Council's Highway Services which stopped me in my tracks.

Some posts back I was chatting about the Bridgend Council leader's statement in the local paper that "unpopular" cuts would be made but the aim was to protect services for the venerable in our community. I made the point that most cuts would affect the venerable in our community the most. Citing as an example, the closure of a library.

However what this particular report suggested was that amongst the cuts proposed would be some that would directly affect the most venerable.

Three in particular stood out :

1) School Crossing Patrol Service: Lollipop men and ladies in my day. There to help children as they walk across busy roads on their way to school.

2) Council Subsidised Bus Services: Which help the elderly and unemployed (especially in the remote parts of the borough) travel around the area

3) Shopmobility: Which is a service that helps disabled, or people with mobility problems travel independently.

Now at time of writing they are just proposals, which may be watered down (as I suspect - the old trick of publicising the worst possible option and settling on an option that's not as bad as the original proposal but still worse than what they had before) or even dropped. Still these services have a direct effect to the venerable in the Bridgend area.

Was the Bridgend Council leader lying? Well it's obviously a guess but I don't think so. I think he was talking about the councils statutory services to the venerable. These examples are, as I understand it, non statutory.

Still stinks though.

So if you could be considered  "venerable" and live in Bridgend borough. Perhaps you should pay attention to proposals coming from other departments of the council in the future.

Until the next time.