New rules prevent councillors from spending money allocated to them by the council on street lighting, grit bins and highways, despite concerns raised by opposition members.
Surrey County Council also voted to blacklist allocation spending on a number of schemes, including supporting award ceremonies and core costs of schools, at a meeting on Tuesday, May 23.
Councillors’ member’s allocation budget can be spent on projects in their ward which might not be prioritised by the county council.
But council leader David Hodge said there were other mechanisms for funding such schemes.
Earlier in the meeting, Cllr Hodge said an expected increase in county’s elderly population of 20,000 over the next three years, a need to find extra school places for 11,000 children, and government cuts to Surrey’s annual grant by £170million since 2010, necessitated further cuts.
Accordingly, the cabinet also reduced members’ allocations from £9,000 to £6,000 per year, after a request from the council’s Sustainability Review Board in March.
From December: Surrey County Council forced to dip into 'largest ever use of reserves' to address £15 million overspend
But Liberal Democrat Councillor David Goodwin, who proposed a motion to delete the changes at Tuesday’s meeting, argued the rule changes were unnecessary.
His motion was ultimately rejected by 51 councillors to 19 approving and five abstaining.
Cllr Goodwin said: "Members from all sides have used this funding to improve their community, and fund projects and schemes that would have been ignored by the county council. Items like grit bins and road safety schemes are highly appreciated by residents.
“This is why Liberal Democrat county councillors opposed these changes."
Councillor Eber Kington (pictured above), leader of Epsom and Ewell’s Local Committee described the new rules as a “mistake".
He also pointed out that the conservative cabinet had slashed the Local Committee’s funding – which it would use to repair roads, fix footways and protect pavements – by nearly 80 per cent.
“We have to accept that times are hard, but this is money with which we are responding to residents’ concerns with,” Cllr Kington said.
“We should be ableto use it as our residents wish.
“I think it’s a mistake.”
Council leader David Hodge (pictured above) told the cabinet the council must make £105million worth of savings this year, and there would be more “really tough choices” for the council to make.
“It’s wonderful to stand up and say, ‘I want this, I want that’,” he said. “But the reality is there is only so much money, and we don’t have the money to pander and do everything everybody wants.
He added: “There are ways to actually allocate money for these things but in the local committee.”
Got a story? Get in touch at craig.richard@london.newsquest.co.uk
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