Last night, Conservatives gave a second chance to the Marjorie Richardson Centre by funding it another £10,000 and accepting the excellent business plan that the centre had put together. Mary Painter, a Horseller and Lib Dem activist was very instrumental in that and she deserves praise for the document she helped produce.

Unfortunately, the decision hasn’t stopped sanctimonious sour grapes from Cllr Denzil Coulson, who is trying to claim credit for the Lib Dems for”saving” the centre. Rubbish.

“It is most unfair that community services such as the Marjorie Richardson
Centre have to pay the price for Tory financial mismanagement of the Council to
“plug the £1 million + hole” in council finances.”

he says. That would be the financial black hole that first emerged under the Lib Dems in 2006 /7, then, wouldn’t it? And the one that has been excerbated not by mismanagement but by a lack of funding from government and the effects of the recession?

“Residents and community organisations have already started paying
the price of Tory cuts being applied to fill their financial hole in the council
accounts.”

he continues. Wrong – the finances will be balanced in 2010/11 without recourse to any cuts in front-line services. The community organisations are not services run by the council and don’t receive continuous funding from WBC in most cases. Rejected applications happen every single year and the organisations should be quite capable of finding funds elsewhere – these are not cuts, they are simply a decision not to give a discretionary contribution.

To paint them as cuts is a typical distortion of the truth from the Lib Dems. Although the Lib Dem ranks contain people who are financial professionals, they are clearly choosing to ignore the basic business facts behind the MRC issue.

1) The centre was spending more on management costs than it was earning in sales
2) The centre was relying on Woking Borough Council solely to plug that gap
3) There was no proper business plan in place
4) The number of users is small and declining

Mary Painter and others have produced a good business plan seeking to address all the points above. I have given her credit for that – maybe the LDs would be gracious enough to give the Conservative Executive credit for keeping faith in the centre against the odds listed above.

No? I thought not.