Suffolk Liberal Democrats launch a County Manifesto

Saturday saw me in Claydon, on Presidential aide duty, as the Party President, Baroness (Sal) Brinton, came to town. Now, admittedly, we're kind of used to having a Party President in Mid Suffolk, having had Ros in the role in 2009 and 2010, but it's always nice to see someone new. And, as someone had to navigate Sal from lunch in Claydon, to her afternoon event in Henley (no, not that Henley), it fell to me to do the honours.

That gave us a nice chance to catch up before she attended the launch of the Suffolk Liberal Democrat manifesto for May's County Council elections.

We did rather better than might otherwise have been the case in 2013, especially in Mid Suffolk where, despite getting just 14% of the vote across the District, we held our three seats and were only forty votes short of a gain in Stowmarket South. And, as since then, our poll standings have rebounded somewhat, we approach this year's elections in rather better spirit.

That is perhaps reflected in the main thrust of our manifesto, an outward looking, positive document. The Conservative-led administration (they don't quite have enough seats to have technical control) have, in spite of the cuts in central funding, squirreled away nearly £40 million into reserves over the past four years, whilst steadily cutting services across the piece. They've underspent even in terms of the budgets they've set, which makes you wonder what justification they have for taking the money from council taxpayers in the first place.

So, Suffolk Liberal Democrats are proposing to do something with the underspend;

• a £5 million boost to adult social care
• investment in the infrastructure to support new housing – roads, schools and doctor’s surgeries
• funding for a county-wide mental health programme in schools
• fixing our roads and pavements
• investment in local bus services and make park and ride buses more frequent
• protecting our libraries as a community facility

Frankly, we're not talking about going mad here, although I'm sure that Colin Noble will scream blue murder about events more than a decade ago anyway. But, with an aging county - Suffolk has significantly more people over the age of 65 than the national average, and it's likely to become even more of an issue over the coming decade - if there is to be meaningful adult social care provision in ten years time, action needs to be taken soon.

And, sometimes, you simply need to invest to save over the long time.

I'll be covering the manifesto in more detail over the next few weeks, with my own personal thoughts on the content...