Survey calls for councillors to be cut down

Lichfield District Council needs to slash £2.4million from its budget by 2016 and residents have had their say after bosses asked for their views.

Top of the list from the questionnaire was reducing the number of district councillors in Lichfield and merging more services to save money.

The majority of people also said they were happy to see opening hours reduced at the council's customer services desk and the amount of support given to Lichfield Garrick Theatre reduced.

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However, fewer people supported the idea of cleaning streets less often and not monitoring people who allow their dogs to foul in public places. More than 1,400 people gave their views as part of the Your View questionnaire.

Council leader Mike Wilcox said: "People of all ages and from every ward across the district filled it in meaning we now have a statistically robust sample of local views to help us shape our future services.

"We know our services are valued, so changing or stopping any of them will be hard. However, due to further cuts in our funding from government, we need to save £2.4 million by 2016, so it's really important that we continue this process."

Armitage with Handsacre Councillor Martyn Tittley added: "The questionnaire was not a referendum. It was designed to help councillors understand local people's views better and to help them make sound decisions on the future of council services in the coming months and years.

"The results of the questionnaire will now be fed into business cases that explore how the ideas could be delivered and what impact they might have locally. The business cases will then be used to help shape the decisions councillors make about future budgets next year and beyond."

More than half of those who took part in the survey also supported the idea of raising the district council's proportion of council tax by a small amount each year.