Many local residents in Hartlepool have seen at least some changes to the way their local authority’s been run day to day.

Over the last decade council services have been stripped so far back that many departments are not even offering a fraction of the services they did, this is despite housing growth in the town & Council Tax revenues increasing…

Services should be getting better...... not worse....!

According to Hartlepool Borough Councils own accounts for the financial year, the local authority gained nearly £4.0 Million pounds in extra revenues than it did the year previous, yet continues to implement some of the most savage spending cuts to departments where services have been cut so far back that staffing levels have been left dangerously low….

Staff morale at the local authority is said to be at its lowest its been in the last 15 years, with numerous former employees who’ve left the organisation starting to speak out over just how cuts to local services had left the organisation in their words “a dangerous place to work”...

Cuts to the councils social care services has left dangerous voids in the councils ability to successfully operate, with vulnerable adults requiring social care services expected to wait between six & ten weeks sometimes longer to be just allocated a social care officer for an assessment..

Cuts to local council services has seen bin collections around the town go from a regular service to “patchy” at best, with “service issues” technical problems & vehicle breakdowns all blamed for the councils inability to undertake its statutory services demanded of it under the law…

The council recently decided to change the collection of Garden waste Brown Bin collections from fortnightly to monthly, with those bins are now said to be "too heavy" or overflowing for bin collection operatives to safely empty, raising the potential risk of injury to workers...

It comes as no surprise then that Hartlepool now has a local council that's now seriously top heavy in the management department, despite numerous restructures, with services chopped continually from the bottom, leaving whats left of those local services stripped almost completely bare, with the Local Authority still demanding you pay approx £1800.00 a year for services that might aswell not exist...

If this was your broadband provider, & they continually offered you a patchy unreliable service, at sky high rates, you’d be looking to stop paying your bill & take your custom elsewhere….

If your mobile phone company continually offered you poor coverage, but still wanted £100.00 a month from you, you’d certainly want to go elsewhere…

Hartlepool is getting provided with exceptionally poor council services at a sky high price….

That's simply no longer acceptable…

Therefore its only right that the public now gets a voice in this matter, & more importantly gets rapid action on the issue, because at the moment, elected councillors who's job it is to ensure the smooth & effective running of the local council at a democratic level don’t seem to want to raise the issue with the councils senior management, despite the fact that its now apparent that Hartlepool Borough Council is failing a local authority & is simply no longer effective in delivering upon the statutory services the council is dutybound by law to undertake….

If you agree, then the people of Hartlepool demand the right for a public vote of no confidence in Hartlepool Borough Council, with the move that should such a vote go forward, the local council must make itself available to investigation into the services commissioned by the local authority & the value for money onto which those services are being delivered on…

The Secretary of state for Communities & local government must step in to either head that investigation to establish just why the local council is effectively running on a skeleton service, which is now seriously impacting on the councils ability to perform its legal statutory functions, or failing that, the local authority must be immediately placed into special measures….

People are slowly waking up to the fact that Council Tax cannot continue to go up the way it currently is for the exceptionally poor levels of statutory services delivered by the local council which are currently on offer without there being some consequences on the local authority when it fails to undertake those statutory obligations...

If the local council cannot or will not undertake those duties because of the cuts they’ve implemented, then the local authority then cannot complain when people en-masse then choose to defund the local authority for its failure to undertake those statutory duties….

The council tax payer therefore demands that you, the Managing Director Denise McGuckin start to take active responsibility of the Local Authority you're paid to manage & begin to provide a significantly better service than whats currently been delivered upon, as a failure to get your house in order soon will mean you face the very real possibility of the pubic de-funding the local authority until such time you can demonstrate your organisation is undertaking its statutory obligations...