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w w w. t h i s i s s t a f f o r d s h i r e . c o . u k

Established 1854

NO U-TURNphases leading up to September 2014;■ Three of the 43 lollipop patrols facingredundancy in a £101,000 cut will besaved after new safety assessments.

Council Tax will be frozen at £952.47for Band A properties in exchange for a£600,000 Government grant, equivalentto a one per cent increase.

The council has come under fire overits plan to sell the Civic Centre andother buildings in Stoke and invest upto £55 million in its CBD project.

But Labour and council leaderMohammed Pervez said private busi-nesses will follow the council into theCBD – generating footfall for theplanned new City Sentral shopping

centre, creating 4,000 jobs and bringingin new business rates. He said: “Wemust reiterate that we cannot borrowthe CBD money to run services. We canborrow money from Government atlow interest rates to fund regenerationprojects. It will carry on cutting untilwe can provide nothing but basic stat-utory services. If we are to continue toprovide services, the income has tocome from new businesses and we haveto provide the right conditions.”

‘No-one listened and it’s a sad day: Page 2

Is the council right? Email us atletters@thesentinel.co.uk

BY ALEX CAMPBELLalex.campbell@thesentinel.co.uk

DEFIANT council leaders today con-firmed £21 million cuts will go ahead –and insisted a new HQ in Hanley is theonly way Stoke-on-Trent can prosper inthe future.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s finalbudget proposals for 2013/14 includealmost no concessions for campaign-e r s.

It means St Michael’s care centre inChell will shut, half of the city’s schoollollipop crossing patrols will be axed,24-hour CCTV monitoring will bescrapped and free nursery class pro-vision will fall from 30 hours a week tothe legal minimum of 15 hours. And 200more jobs will go from April.

The council said Government fund-ing cuts will have triggered savings of£100 million by 2015 – forcing theauthority to abandon all butthe services it is legallyobliged to provide.

Raising new income frombusiness rates will be one ofthe few ways to offset spend-ing cuts, and leaders todayrestated their view thatHanley’s Central BusinessDistrict (CBD) – wh i chincludes the new civiccentre – is vital for sparkingeconomic growth.

Chief executive John van de Laars-chot said: “If you can't generate the

income, you can't provide the services.It's as simple as that. If we're absolutely

serious about curing thebiggest malaise in the city –the high levels of workless-ness – then we have to stickto our guns.”

Last-minute changes tothe budget include:■ The £191,000-a-year envir-onmental crime unit totackle fly-tippers and litter-bugs cut by just £50,000rather than shut down;

■ Free nursery care will be halved to15-hours a week, saving £1.7 million,but changes will now be introduced in

G O I N G. . . . GONEG O I N G. . . .

CUT: 24-hour CCTV monitoring in Stoke-on-Trent, safety crossing wardens and St Michael’s Day Centre, in Chell.

CAMPAIGNER Julie Baileybelieves the scathing reportinto the Stafford Hospitalscandal will put patients atthe ‘top of the agenda’.But she says nothing willchange until thoseresponsible for the tragedy,which saw up to 1,200patients die unnecessarily,are held to account.Miss Bailey, above, whoformed the Cure the NHScampaign group after her 86-year-old mother Bella died atthe hospital, also called forthe resignation of currentNHS chief Sir DavidNicholson, who was chiefexecutive of Shropshire andStaffordshire StrategicHealth Authority at the time.She said: “We can’t havehundreds of people die atStafford and nobody to beheld accountable for it. Weneed a change inleadership.The report showsthat general hospitals likeStafford are not safe.”Inquiry chairman RobertFrancis QC refused to bedrawn on whether StaffordHospital should bedowngraded.But Newcastle MP PaulFarrelly has called on thePrime Minister to prevent arepeat of the scandal at theUniversity Hospital of NorthStaffordshire.He said: “‘The tragic eventsat Stafford are having acontinuing impact on UHNS.“So when rather distantbureaucrats at theDepartment of Healthrespond to these pressures,will they put patient safetyat the heart of thatresponse?”

Patients let down bycatastrophic failings: Pages6&7

SO R E N S E N :CO U L DIT BETHEE N D?BAC KPAG E

FIVE YEARS,1,200 DEATHS,NOW SOMEONE

IS LISTENING