September 2010 Archives

Wirral Council's biggest ever consultation got underway yesterday. Not exactly the weather you would want for stopping people and asking them to complete a questionnaire, but the press office insisted they had received a good response to both the website questionnaire and from people out and about...

However, if this ambitious consultation is successful - and it is quite a big "if" - it will be a serious step forward for local government in Wirral. It is a major programme with very tight timescales for budget setting. But it is also a significant step in discovering what people want, without the compromises they would make at the ballot box.

The key question, it seems is whether people will accept the "hard" choices such as increased prices for services, even losing some services.