Wendy Thompson: Wolverhampton City Council failed to prepare for rainy days

It should never have come to this. Residents in Wolverhampton will rightly question why they are facing a nearly two per cent increase in their council tax bills, when the services they are paying for are shrinking.

The Labour party would have them believe this is down to the decisions of the Coalition Government, which has had to cut public spending to try to bring down the enormous deficit.

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And just as Labour ran out of money in Government, so too has it failed to keep an adequate grip on its finances in Wolverhampton. The problems we are facing today started many years ago, and it is a tragedy that so many hard-working staff are now going to pay the price for that failure.

In 2008, shortly before Labour lost an election in Wolverhampton and we were able to take control, the party signed off £33 million worth of compensation to settle equal pay claims from women who had not received the same deal as men. This is still a problem today. By the time this council has finished fighting and settling claims it will have cost the council and the taxpaying public £60m.

The council failed to do what many other authorities have done, which is to outsource its refuse collectors to the private sector, until it was much too late.

That meant the binmen got salaries and bonuses denied to caterers and cleaners, who tended to be women.

We also found a £5 million black hole in the finances because the council had banked on receiving a dividend from Birmingham Airport that never materialised.

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When Labour took control back in 2010 we left them with reserves of £44m. Those reserves are now almost exhausted. The Government has reduced the council's funding, but it is not right to use that as the whole reason for this mess.

The Labour party regularly says that this is one of the most deprived areas in the country, as if it is something to be proud of. But they have been in control for roughly 27 of the last 30 years and have not done enough to make this a city that is open for business or where people can get on in life.

We have the lowest number of good or outstanding primary schools anywhere in the country.

We have areas of the city centre that they failed to build a shopping centre on when the money was there to do something with it.

Yes, we have the welcome investment of Jaguar Land Rover creating 1,400 jobs at the i54 business park. But that is thanks as much to the council's neighbours in Staffordshire as it is to this authority. This is not a council that has put the economy first and has believed in borrowing money to pay for its mistakes, as it is now trying to do with the redundancy costs.

Wolverhampton City Council failed to prepare for the rainy days. And now they are here.