15/7/2010 - Council leader says let's face our challenges together : Cumbria County Council

Cumbria County Council's leader has launched a rallying cry for organisations in the region to work together and adopt a more collective approach to face the challenges ahead.Speaking at the Cumbria Strategic Partnership (CSP) forum yesterday (July 14th), Cllr Eddie Martin, Leader of Cumbria County Council, said there "was no time to lose" and that in order to "achieve more for less" the public, private and voluntary sectors will all have to work together more effectively so they can align activity and funding to maximise the impact in our communities.

"Fuelled by the banking crisis, an extended and deep recession, and the sheer scale of public debt, there is now a new reality from which none of us can escape," he said.

"If we do not come to collective agreements about the outcomes we want to achieve, if we do not help each other, if we do not develop and capitalise on those latent synergies and possibilities that exist between us, then we will be engulfed by the might of Manchester, Merseyside and other city regions. And that is why every community, every voluntary organisation, every parish council, every neighbourhood forum, the Chamber of Commerce, the regional CBI... the list goes on and on... must be heard loud and clear.

"The challenge to us all is multi-faceted. Continued pressure for efficiencies over the past 25 years have tended to reduce the 'low hanging fruit' and there are likely to be few quick wins that have not already been delivered.

"The individual recipient of public services, while agreeing that something must be done, is less enthusiastic about personally accepting a reduction of service or standards. Short-term cost cutting is recognised as simply building up a bigger, future problem. Many public assets such as buildings and highways are already below the standard we'd like. Some services are so sensitive politically that radical change is seen as unacceptable.

"But we have the authority to make changes. With authority comes responsibility. Our responsibility as leaders, from many different walks of life, is to ensure there are no second-class Cumbrians in terms of the scope, standard, quality of life and support we can engender. It's a responsibility that alone we cannot meet. Only together can we succeed and we will succeed if we set our minds to it," said Cllr Martin.

He praised the commitment and dedication of the people working behind the scenes and said there is truly a desire in Cumbria to make a difference and genuinely develop partnerships. But emphasised that "none of us can do it alone" as "Cumbria is too big, and it is certainly too diverse".

"Think about being a child in the school gym tied at the ankle to the rest of your class. If all the legs don't work and move together in the right direction, there is really nowhere to go but down.

"Individually, our various solutions solve problems in our own organisations; collectively, however, they can transform our county for the benefit of all," he said.

He described as "obscene" that in parts the county 34% of the population rely on welfare benefits, or that people die 20 years earlier in some areas of the county compared with others

"Financial poverty in this day and age is simply unacceptable but so too is the poverty of ambition and the poverty of opportunity which exists in some of our communities. I believe we should market our county nationally and internationally. I believe we need to commit to working together to establish benchmarks for Cumbrian outcomes; to coordinate our efforts to reduce risk factors like unemployment, poverty, obesity and alcoholism and teenage pregnancy; and to pool our resources to support public participation, education and awareness.

"Now is the time to take action and encourage innovation and reform by taking direct aim at the problems within our communities. We all have roles to play in achieving progress. Much of the strength of our collaboration lies in its flexibility within a common purpose."