EAMONN O'BRIEN: We chose to be on your side at budget time

At budget setting time, there is a bright spotlight on those choices.

Do we acquiesce to the government and raise taxes, or do we cut services even further?

Do we cut now or do we use our reserves to protect services for as long as we can?

Do we support our key workers, our carers, our cleaners, our school kitchen staff or do we leave them in poverty pay?

The reality is, these choices have become harder and harder to make each year.

Why, because every year the unfair funding system punishes Bury by millions of pounds a year.

This is why we launched our Let's Fix It Together campaign, calling for a fairer distribution of funding.

But it has also got harder as we live through another year of Conservative chaos and incompetence.

We've had 14 years now of this and public services are at breaking point.

We now find ourselves in recession and in the middle of a cost of living crisis.

So when it came to our choices at budget time this year, we did so with enormous challenges in front of us.

Our priorities were clear though, we wanted to invest more into our support for children and families who are struggling, we wanted to do what we could to reduce inequalities in our borough and we wanted to remain ambitious about regeneration and brownfield first housing delivery.

That's what our budget did, it made choices based on our values and on what our residents had elected us to do.

Bury Council leader, Cllr Eamonn O'Brien (Image: Eamonn O'Brien)

Of course in difficult times it also included choices that were extremely hard to make.

But the alternative is worse, it hits those struggling the most.

Take for example the Bury Conservative's proposal to remove the Real Living Wage.

This would have stripped our poorest paid frontline key workers of much needed pay in the middle of a cost of living crisis.

After Covid we promised to look after our key workers properly and breaking that promised was not something we felt we could do.

Pushing the poorest paid back into poverty pay might be Conservative policy, but it will never be Labour's.

Despite the gloom, this budget also invests record amounts into our roads for repairs and improvements, invests more into play areas and parks, invests in our housing stock.

So choices have been made and in the upcoming elections the choice will ultimately be yours.

But just remember, when we chose at budget time, we chose to be on your side.