Staffordshire is champion council of the week

Local Government Minister Brandon Lewis with his series celebrating excellence in our Town Halls

As I said last week, I am going to use this column to highlight examples of Conservative councils who are taking big steps to ensure that council tax is kept down and your money is spent efficiently.

This week’s Champion Council is:

Staffordshire County Council which has saved £133m over the past four
years while still delivering great services and freezing Council Tax.

Not only this, the council have taken a number of impressive steps to encourage private sector investment into the area, creating jobs for local people and economic growth for the region.

They have signed a contract with Capita officially creating a new joint venture company for education support services, which will bring over £50 million of new investment into Staffordshire. The partnership will have its headquarters in the county and provide an extensive package of services from school improvement to catering, ground maintenance and performing arts. This will protect around 4,000 jobs and create and extra 1,600.

Not only this, they have teamed up with the Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent NHS Partnership Trust to form the biggest integration between Health and Social care services of its kind in the country. This means that people can get more treatment at home, freeing up hospital beds and saving around £30 million a year.

These are just two examples of innovative schemes which have allowed Staffordshire to deliver the third lowest county council tax in the country. Another example of good conservative governance, delivering for residents and good value for money.

Thank you for the emails I have had giving me good examples of what you are doing, keep them coming and I can start to highlight more than one council each week. so......As ever, please get in touch if you know of a Champion Council who deserves recognition for their sensible use of taxpayers’ money. Please contact [email protected]