Talks bid to hand Madeley market and library a lifeline from cuts
Talks will be held in a bid to protect key services including a library and a market in the wake of £30 million cuts.
Children's services and provision for the elderly were among the issues named as priorities that needed protecting at all costs at a meeting of Madeley Town Council last night.
Councillors agreed to set up a working group to launch in-depth talks with Telford & Wrekin Council. The idea is for the two authority's to find a way to work together to safeguard frontline services.
The council-run market in Madeley, which operates every Tuesday and Saturday, and the library in Russell Square are both facing the axe.
An urgent review of the management of five council-run community centres – including Sutton Hill Community Centre – has begun and youth clubs and children's centres will also be hit.
A council taskforce has now been set up, with a team going out to try to find people or groups prepared to take on the cost and time of running under-threat services.
Councillor Derek White said services for children and the elderly needed to be protected at all costs and stressed that by working with the community valuable services could be saved.
He said: "We have the opportunity to find ways of saving them if we all get together as a community. If they are valuable enough to us, people will be in there to volunteer.
"We need to work as a community in doing them in alternative ways, utilising what buildings we have.
"I would like a small working group which can talk to the council and find out how we can work together. We have limited finance and we have got to do that within capability and affordability."
Councillor Arnold England, who backed the working group, said: "I totally agree with getting a working group talking with the borough council. Get that work done, come back and then we can debate it."
