Madam,

In your article ‘Council budget cuts £2m less than projected’ (21 January editions) you quote both SOS Gwynedd and Gwynedd Council’s chief executive.

One seems to suspect it is being led astray and the other to be leading us astray in the figures they use.I refer you to Her Gwynedd, page seven, where we find that the ‘Grant reduction’ for 2014-15, 2015-16, 2016-2017 and 2017-18 is announced as £21m in total.This figure drove the ‘need’ for £7 million of cuts (after much-needed efficiency im-provements) and so the ‘need’ to consult on £5m of cuts proposals.Hence Her Gwynedd and SOS Gwynedd’s heroic response to it.

But the real cuts are £2.6m for 2016-17 and £1.284m for 2015-16.

So why did Gwynedd consult about cuts consistent with cuts in grants of £21m over four years, an average rate of cuts claimed of £5.25m per year?

Llais y Blaid is clearly a confused one. On their own figures (and I have not included the unexpectedly low rate of cost inflation Gwynedd is enjoying) they are insisting on cuts at over twice the rate of grant cuts.Is the Plaid council indeed confused or is it politicking, trying to blame the Welsh Labour Government for cuts in services that are wholly unnecessary?

Plaid has been running the council so inefficiently that the efficiency savings alone, given the current rate of council tax, obviate the need for cuts at all, given the level of grants we are actually receiving here in Gwynedd. Yet the Plaid Council still seeks to cut services so that markets, and hence profits, can take the place of public provision. Thus poorly-supported workers, deprived of those services, are softened up to accept worse work conditions and wages.

Poor SOS Gwynedd have felt they had to go through every unnecessary hoop that Gwynedd challenged them with. The people of Gwynedd are the subject of a political attack by Plaid, in cahoots with the Tories in London. SOS’s self-declared non-political status makes direct criticism of Plaid difficult for them. However, Plaid’s attack can only be resisted by political action.

So, from Plaid Gwynedd Council we get cuts in years when it is unnecessary to make them, and a refusal to use the reserves that would thus build up, to plug the gap.

Yours etc

Ian MacIntyre

AM Candidate

Dwyfor Meirionnydd Labour Party

Arthog Terrace

Arthog.