A LEADING Conservative councillor has been accused of bringing Worcestershire County Council into disrepute over his handling of the controversial changes to children centres.
Coun Marc Bayliss faced the criticism during a heated meeting of the council last Thursday (January 12) and was urged to apologised by the oppositon Labour party.
Back in October a £6.4million fund for 32 council-owned children’s centre was slashed to £3million, with campaigners losing their battle to stop it.
The Conservative leadership has always pledged that no sites will close but 18 are being hit by service reductions.
However county health chiefs revealed how health visitors previously based at children’s centres would alter their roles following the removal of the service from children’s centres
Health visitors will join with other professionals including school health nurses and the breastfeeding support team to provide care to children and young people aged 0 to 19 years.
Coun Paul Denham, the current Mayor of Worcester, called on Coun Bayliss to apologise and said city parents had been fed a ‘diet of spin and misinformation’.
“What has happened is our Tory Government has cut our funding,” he said.
“It’s clear the Tories don’t care about public services, they just want to pretend they are carrying on as before but with less than half the staff to do the work.”
Coun Denham said parents from deprived areas would be put off from going to centres too far away and demanded an apology from Coun Bayliss.
Labour group leader Coun Peter McDonald said Coun Baylis’ actions had reflected badly on the county council as a whole.
Coun Bayliss hit back and accussed the Labour party of ‘politics, politics, politics’ and claimed the party wanted the ‘string the issue out until the elections in May’.
“There is nothing new here in the comments that have been made,” he said.
“There have been no misleading comments or broken promises, all 32 children’s centres are open and delivering services.
“We are in a period of transition from providing services costing more than £6million a year to an operation which costs £3million a year.
“I regret there are reductions in services, I am sure we would all have the same feelings when we have to make difficult decisions like this.
“But we have been open and transparent from the start with councillors, with staff and with parents,” he added.
• What do you think? E-mail [email protected] with your views.
