BBC Radio focuses on council cuts

Date published: 01 March 2010

Today BBC Radio Manchester is focusing on the likely cuts in council budgets across Greater Manchester.

Following Rochdale Online's publication of an Open Letter to the Leader of Rochdale Council by Father Paul Daly, Parish Priest of St. Joseph's, Heywood, Father Daly was interviewed live by Heather Stott.

He pointed out that the two intermediate care homes that were being closed were specialist centres offering rehabilitation to those recently discharged from hospital but unable to return immediately to their own homes. Although the four current centres had an almost two-thirds occupancy rate, half of the provision was being withdrawn. That, Father Daly said, would make it harder for patients to access the services and would clog up hospital beds.

Heather Stott asked where funding cuts could come from. Father Daly pointed out that these proposed closures would save £1.8 million but the Council's own PR department cost £2 million. Maybe, he wondered, cuts could come from spin rather than from care. Maybe, he wondered, a look could be taken at the salaries paid to those at the top in the council offices.

He pointed out that care was a human right; not a commodity to be bought, sold and traded but a service to be provided.

The closures were but the latest in a series of cuts to adult care in Rochdale; the dismantling of the long-term in-house care service, the withdrawal of resident wardens, with some residents being informed on the evening of Christmas Eve and now discussions about replacing Meals on Wheels with alternatives such as a weekly delivery of frozen meals.

Finally, Heather Stott asked Father Daly what reply he had got from the Council to his Open Letter. "I have heard nothing from the Council about it", he replied.