Colchester Council blames the cuts to services on the Government and Essex County Council.

Yet it is Colchester Council which lost £4million in an Icelandic bank collapse.

It is Colchester Council which wasted over £25million of public money on the Visual Arts Facility.

Colchester Council ignored the recent public consultation that put waste collection as most important and the arts as least important.

The heaviest budget cut is to waste collection at £627,000 and there is only a nominal arts cut of £100,000 “to be confirmed”.

Yet there are no cuts to the white elephant blocking up half the bus station.

Even worse, this uncaring council is deliberately targeting the elderly and disabled.

Refusal to permit a charitable mobility scooter service in the bus station has been followed by withdrawal of travel tokens.

Those unable to use the over-sixties free bus service will find their taxi charges quadruple.

Colchester Council states it cannot afford the £45,000 per year, but it has estimated the Vaf public subsidies, when it opens, at £1million per year.

On March 4, the token Colchester Council consultation on its Shopmobility grant ends.

This is the second attempt to destroy this service by removing funding.

Shame on this uncaring council that puts its lust for status symbols ahead of the most needy in society.

Andy Hamilton
Acland Avenue
Colchester

...I was shocked at the full meeting of Colchester Council on Wednesday to hear a Liberal Democrat cabinet member heckle a member of the public.

Any member of the public can have up to three minutes at the beginning of a council meeting to raise any issue or ask a question, and following their three minutes, the relevant cabinet member has a right of reply.

The cabinet member ignored this convention on Wednesday, choosing to barrack and heckle the member of the public during his three-minute submission.

If the cabinet member didn’t agree with the member of the public, he had a right of reply afterwards and his interruption was quite inappropriate. The member of the public had a right to be heard.

The leader of the council regularly states how keen she is to have members of the public use their right to speak at council meetings, so, given this, why did one of her cabinet members, heckle a member of the public who chose to speak?

I assure you, as an observer on Wednesday, any member of the public present would be put off speaking in future in fear of being heckled.

If the leader of the council shares my view that members of the public have a right to speak at council meetings and a right to be heard, then the member of the public in question deserves an apology.

Will Quince
Magazine Farm Way
Colchester