Commenting on yesterday's Budget delivered by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mayor Dave Hodgson has noted that the claim that 'austerity is over' has proven to be simply not true, and called on the government to cut out the spin and reverse the ongoing cuts for local services.
Schools across Bedford Borough are facing a combined cut of £1.3m as their budgets are slashed by the Conservative Government. The amount allocated to Bedford Borough for each child in school is being cut, leaving the whole area with over a million pounds less to fund our schools in 2019/20.
With national restrictions coming to an end next week, the Government has announced that Bedford Borough will be in Tier Two- High Alert from Wednesday 2 December.
It is just 100 days until we have elections here in Bedford Borough.
Commenting on BBC Three Counties Radio this week, Mayor Dave Hodgson called for an end to the uncertainty and distress caused to patients and staff by the proposals of the CCG-led healthcare review 'Your Health in Bedfordshire'. The £3 million review's long overdue 'Progress Report', published at the end of October, concluded that either Bedford or Milton Keynes Hospitals must be downgraded to become an 'Integrated Care Centre. In practice, it is likely that this would mean a series of urgent care services reduced, with fewer births, for example, and a reduced Accident and Emergency service. This threat of severely reduced services has been placed over Bedford Hospital in spite of the fact that is rated very highly by the health watchdog the CQC, and is serving growing population. The review followed on from the discredited £2.2 million 'Healthier Together' review, which also placed Bedford Hospital under the threat of a severe downgrade In his live interview on Iain Lee's programme, Mayor Dave made clear he
A Bedford Borough Council project to replace all street lights with low energy, low cost, high quality units by 2018 has won £5.3 million in government funding. The Council's invest-to-save project beat off competition from around the country to become one of only 28 successful bidders to the Department for Transport's Highway's Maintenance Challenge Fund, out of well over 100 applicants.
