Paying the price of spending cuts (From Bournemouth Echo)
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Paying the price of spending cuts
10:31am Friday 11th January 2013 in Opinion
TODAY’S Daily Echo reports two striking examples of how the public spending cuts are starting to bite.
The first is the case of Dorset Police’s diminishing band of traffic officers – just 34 full-time equivalents now compared with nearly 50 last year.
That is bad news for anyone who believes that technology can never satisfactorily replace traffic officers.
And is is all the more worrying in the light of our recent report on the rise in fatalities on Dorset’s road last year.
The second story concerns the continuing argument about the impending closure of Dorset Enterprises, a factory staffed largely by people with disabilities.
Bournemouth council will save £471,000 a year by shutting it – but the taxpayer could pick up a bigger bill if redundant staff have to remain on benefits for long.
Both these cases concern spending “cuts” which could end up costing the public dear later on.
Comments(4)
rayc
says...
7:14pm Sun 13 Jan 13
Dorset Police believes road safety in the county will improve overall.
Ch Supt Martin Hiles said: "The road traffic officers have been asked to go and work with their general patrol colleagues doing local safer neighbourhood and response patrol policing, and teaching them about road safety".
Was it a success? There were therefore 36 Traffic Officers after that initiative and now there will be 34. So were there actually 50 last year 2012 as the article states? The figures do not stack up unless there has been some creative bookkeeping.
There never seemed to be a shortage of Traffic Officers to man the 'surround a town' No Excuse operations or to shut of the Upton bypass for Top Gear.
rayc
says...
10:00pm Sun 13 Jan 13
Thus they are still employed by Dorset Police and the CC could reassign them back to traffic if he considered it a priority.
speedy231278
says...
2:22pm Tue 15 Jan 13
Only if their benefits rack up to more than that, and being only 19 disabled employees, I would doubt they require vast benefit levels otherwise surely they'd be unfit for working even in a factory adapted to cater for their needs?
paul.p says...
9:38pm Fri 11 Jan 13
Personally I think it's disgraceful of the Govt. to force Dorset to cut more Officers even when Dorset was the 2nd lowest funded force in the country, talk about kicking you in the nuts when you're already down!
This Govt. sucks.