UNISON march through Ipswich to protest at £65m planned cuts

Members of UNISON gathered on the Cornhill, Ipswich, on Saturday calling for planned £65m cuts to local funding to be overturned.

They say that £11m of the proposed cuts would directly impact front line services at Suffolk County Council and could put 350 jobs at risk across the county.

Members held boards that said: “Stop the Cuts in Suffolk” and chanted: “No ifs, no buts, no more cuts.”

UNISON members marched through the town centre (Image: Shikhar Talwar) Suffolk County Council say that these cuts have been seen nationwide (Image: Shikhar Talwar)

Cllr Richard Smith, Suffolk County Council’s cabinet member for finance, economic development and skills, has previously said that  local government funding was seeing a dip across the country.

He said: “Wherever possible, staff savings will be achieved through robust vacancy management to minimise the number of redundancies and associated costs. This will reduce the impact on the delivery of frontline services which is our number one priority.”

UNISON Suffolk branch secretary Neil Bland said that this would cause redundancies (Image: Shikhar Talwar)

UNISON Suffolk branch secretary Neil Bland said: "The problem with the cuts is that central government is not giving local authorities enough funding to meet their statutory duties."

He said Suffolk County Council was being put in the position of having to cut services which would lead to redundancies. 

NHS worker Peter Coates said that cuts would impact on workers efficiency (Image: Shikhar Talwar)

At the demonstration, he was joined by Peter Coates, an NHS worker, who said that he had noticed a lot of stress on services in the health trust where he worked. 

He feared the cuts would lead to the loss of jobs in administrative and support services which would impact service efficiency. 

Green candidate for Ipswich Adria Pittock was also present at the protest (Image: Shikhar Talwar)

Adria Pittock, the Green candidate for Ipswich, was also at the protest. 

She said: "I am supporting the UNISON march today because it is absolutely time that we had fairer funding and better funding for local services in our town.

"We have to be calling on the government to make sure that it is going to be doing that."

Former Ipswich MP Sandy Martin gave a speech at the demo (Image: Shikhar Talwar)

The demonstration was also attended by former Ipswich MP Sandy Martin and UNISON Eastern regional secretary Tim Roberts who both gave speeches saying the forthcoming election would give people the chance to vote for change.

However, others at the protest feared a change in government would not stop the cuts and workers would continue to have to fight for their jobs.