Leader admits mistakes over Leeds council cuts consultation

The leader of Leeds council has accepted that a public consultation over spending priorities has failed to generate much interest or response. As reported in November , the council launched a consultation asking every resident what services they would like to see continue as the council faced up to government funding cuts of about £150 million over four years. But only 1,521 responses were received from across the city. The consultation was widely criticised by Guardian Leeds readers at the time , who said the questions failed to make sense, hid 'deeper intentions', were irrelevant and that the outcomes had already been decided. But today council leader Keith Wakefield admitted that the consultation survey - which was available on the council website and was circulated to every household in Leeds via the council's newspaper About Leeds - had proved too long-winded and complicated. He today told members of the city and corporate scrutiny board watchdog: "I am not devastated by the the lack of response, but we need to learn from it. I certainly don't think it's a fantastic response from a city the size of Leeds. "The consultation was very long, probably too long and people were probably fatigued by the end of it. I wonder how many ward members understand what a billion pound budget is, let alone members of the public. It was too complicated. "Most people want a consultation in 30 seconds - the people of Leeds are faced with a number of consulations, not just from the council." Farnley and Wortley Labour councillor John Hardy said: "Isn't this down to an abject failure of the press office to get a response to the survey? Do we really have enough responses to be able draw any solid conclusions from it?" But Wakefield said the responses would still play a part in shaping the council's spending plans and that you could still draw trends from the answers given by different age groups but it would be necessary to 'tease out' more information from the survey. He added that an even split of men and women had taken the survey and added: "There's a lot more work to be done to tease out the information, but what's come out so far seems to have been pretty much what was on our minds. People are very concerned about the future of council services as a result of these cuts, that much is clear even at this early stage." What do you think? Have your say in the comments section below.