Supporters of Leicester’s Adventure Playgrounds Say No To Funding Cuts

Hundreds of frustrated people were forced to march around Leicester Town Hall earlier this afternoon shouting loudly that they refuse to let our Labour Council effectively close our city’s ten adventure playgrounds.

Sarah Russell, who is Labour’s Assistant City Mayor for Children, Young People & Schools, spoke to ITV News and said: “We are really hopeful that they won’t close”.

So the question remains, if this is so why are our Labour Council cutting funding for our adventure playgrounds by a whopping fifty percent — a cut that the people who run the playgrounds say will result in their almost certain demise?

Unfortunately as a result of the Council’s lack of interest in resisting Tory austerity, many other local services are presently facing the axe, including Belgrave library and a large proportion of our city’s children’s youth services.

Our predominately “New Labour” Council has made it crystal clear that they will continue to carry out Tory cuts, so it is important to note that two major trade unions, Unite and GMB, have both supported a call for Labour Councils to refuse to implement any further cuts to services.

Instead of passing on Tory cuts to the people of Leicester our Labour-dominated Council (which holds 52 of the 54 available ward positions) should have passed a motion earlier tonight agreeing to refuse to implement cuts, and to call upon other Labour Councils to do the same. As has been said before:

“The 58 Labour-led councils that had elections this year alone have £4.5 billion in general reserves. If these were pooled every Labour council in the country would be able to implement legal no-cuts budgets. This could be used to launch a struggle against Tory austerity which could defeat the government.”

Our Labour councillors now have a major challenge before them: they can either choose to fight alongside the people of Leicester in fighting cuts to services, or they can sit on their hands and do nothing while the people of Leicester suffer.