The Bury Conservative response to their embarrassing climbdown over the proposed reconfiguration of the popular Longfield Suite is as predictable as night following day.

Bearing in mind that they planned a re-configuration that involved potentially demolishing and rebuilding the Longfield Suite, my Conservative opponent now accuses the Lib Dems and others of “scaremongering”.

She goes onto say that she gave her assurances at public meetings that it would not close. In fact what she rather vaguely assured residents at the meetings I organised was that we would have a community facility in Prestwich, which is hardly the same as a multi purpose entertainment and conference venue with a sprung dance floor! At that meeting it was pointed out that we already had a community facility – it’s called the public toilet.

You can be assured that in the coming weeks it will be made clear from the Conservatives that somehow wasting four or months of officer time on a Task and Finish group to explore options over our civic venues was a good use of officer time. That somehow the experience has been beneficial to all.

Well I can assure the leader of the Council and his colleagues that the worried civic hall staff don’t feel the same, the businesses on the precinct that thrive off the many visitors from out of town that visit the Longfield Centre, don’t feel the same and the users and business users that rely on the centre certainly don’t feel the same. Not to mention those that planned to make bookings and have since gone elsewhere as a result of the uncertainty

The whole sorry episode was a wasteful, shameful exercise in mismanagement and manipulation that thankfully backfired – at least for now.

We should not forget that the new council financial year will start soon with a £100,000 Tory cut to the Civic venues budgets and the report to executive into this whole issue may yet provide some interesting reading between the lines.