Save Our Services in Surrey will be holding our Annual General Meeting 

on Weds 5th June
From 7pm till 9pm
at Laleham Village Hall, the Broadway, Laleham TW18 1RZ
(nearest station Staines - about 2 miles)

If you need help getting to the meeting please let us know.

If you would like to nominate someone (or volunteer yourself) for any of the following roles please let us know by return. We would love people to come forward for all the roles:

• Secretary (arranges regular meetings, books venues and maintains our email database)
• Chair (facilitates our meetings)
• Communications Officer (liaises with the press and keeps our website and social media updated)
• Steering Committee Members - come to our regular meetings and help make decisions and organise events.

If you are in a trade union, please can you ask for trade union branch to re-affiliate to SOSiS for 2019 (via a donation).

If you have not contributed to Surrey County Council's consultation on Fire Safety Cover please do so here: https://www.surreycc.gov.uk/people-and-community/fire-and-rescue/about/our-vision-mission-and-aims/priorities-plans-and-governance/plans-strategies-and-legislation/public-safety. 

You can sign our petition against cuts to night time fire cover here (we have over 11,000 signatures already): https://petitions.surreycc.gov.uk/Fire-Cuts/. 

The Truth About Zane campaign are still trying to sell enough advance orders of their forthcoming book to make sure it is published and that their full story gets out as widely as possible. If you haven't ordered yours yet please do so here: http://www.truthaboutzane.com/book.html.

Please see the attachment above for notes of our last meeting, which mainly discussed the proposed cuts to night-time fire cover in Surrey and how we will be responding. A petition has been launched and the link is here: STOP FIRE CUTS

Representatives from UNISON, the FBU and GMB were joined by Labour Party, Socialist Party and a Lib Dem councillor for our protest against Childrens Centre closures on 22nd January. See here for Surrey Live's report of the event.

Campaigners will be delivering petitions to the full Cabinet meeting at County Hall, Kingston at 2pm on Tuesday 29th January. Support would be welcomed. 

SCC have been running a public consultation regarding the potential closure of up to half of their existing Sure Start Childrens Centres. Save Our Services in Surrey opposes any austerity-driven cuts and we are supporting the Children's Centre users and staff in their campaign to keep them all open. As part of this campaign, some of the centres are delivering petitions and protesting outside County Hall in Kingston on Tuesday 22nd January at 2pm. If you can come along and support them that would be great. SOSiS will be there. Download and print the attached poster and stick it on your notice boards.

SOSiS Secretary, Paul Couchman and FBU Secretary Lee Belsten address marchers in Jubilee Square, Woking.

See the BBC Surrey live video link coverage of the demo on Facebook here:
https://www.facebook.com/BBCSurrey/videos/577143036077955/?t=2
Get Surrey's blog on the day - with photos and videos can be found here:
https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/live-updates-woking-march-austerity-15555159

On the 5th Day of Christmas… the Tories gave to us… AUSTERITY!
Just one of the verses of the carol, 12 days of Christmas, sung by protestors to the shoppers of Woking during a massive protest last Saturday 15th December. Other verses included ‘Surrey Fire Service Cuts’, ‘Less Buses Running’, ‘Special Needs Neglected' and more.

Firefighters, Nurses, Social Workers and Carers, Teachers and Teaching Assistants, Librarians and Railway Workers all stood united as public sector workers to say a resounding NO to austerity and to demand a general election.
Labour Party, Socialist Party, Greens and independents joined the 300 strong protest march around Woking Town Centre to raise the profile of Save Our Services in Surrey (SOSIS) and the fight to defend public services. Even a small group of Lib Demo councillors attended.

Kye and Nicole, parents of little Zane Gbangbola who died in the floods of 2014 were also there supporting the protest with their ’Truth About Zane’ campaign and their banner which read ‘Zane Died - Authorities Lied’.

The only party not represented on the demonstration was the Conservative Party. Not surprising as they are widely seen as the architects of austerity and responsible for the slashing of vital public services.

Paul Couchman, Secretary of SOSIS, Surrey UNISON and local Socialist Party organiser, said:

‘Someone is going to die because of these cuts. 'Austerity Kills' is the title of this protest because cuts kill. Whether it is cuts in the fire service, police or ambulance services meaning slower response times to emergencies, or cuts in the number of mental health hospital beds, or cuts in social care for vulnerable elderly or disabled people. Political decisions have consequences and austerity is a political choice'.
‘This has been a magnificent show of strength and solidarity by the Surrey trade union and labour movement. People may think Surrey is just stockbrokers and rich bankers but there are hundreds of thousands of ordinary working class people who live and work in this county - many of whom work hard to provide our essential public services with less and less resources’.
‘The next steps for SOSIS will be to encourage people to participate in the council consultations over the cuts, making sure SCC know the strength of public feeling. We will then be ready to respond to any threatened cuts to libraries, children’s centres, special educational needs services (SEND), social care or any other cuts or closures. We will also be pulling together a people’s assembly against the cuts in the new year - involving all of the local trade unions, all the opposition parties and residents and community groups - to develop a people’s manifesto and budget for Surrey, based on what is needed, not what the government allows us to spend. We will then go into the next council elections demanding all candidates adopt this budget and make a stand against the cuts’.

Another Christmas Carol which was ringing in the air on Saturday was ‘Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle All the Way- What do we Want for Christmas? The Back of Teresa May!'

Please see attached the latest flyer for the demo (which includes the logo for the Truth About Zane (TAZ) who are supporting the event.
Also attached here is the initial press release, provisional route for the march and the notes from our last Steering Committee meeting on 26th November.

In these notes it gives the date of the next meeting but this has changed. The next meeting to plan our March and Rally on 15th December will be on MONDAY 26TH NOVEMBER - see events page.

This is Paul Couchman's letter of the week in the Surrey Advertiser a couple of weeks ago. The file is the notes from the highly successful meeting we held on 26th September with the FBU, RMT, UNISON, Labour, Socialists and the Greens. It was agreed to organise a major public event, led by the FBU, in Woking on Saturday 15th December - SAVE THE DATE.
A planning meeting has been organised for Thursday 8th November - see events page for details.

Chertsey, Painshill and Banstead fire stations closed on Saturday July ...

'Freedom of speech removed' as Surrey fire stations BANNED from ...

Surrey fire service 'on its knees' as figures show scale of station ...

These recent articles in the local press, along with the flurry of posts on social media, show the dire state of Surrey's fire and rescue service. This is from the mouths of the firefighters and their representatives. Surrey County Council are trying to gag our firefighters and stop them from telling us the truth.

SOSIS is proud to have been part of the fight to defend fire services in Surrey since our inception in 2009 - particularly our role in the campaign to defend fire services in Spelthorne and Staines Fire Station (see previous posts). We will be discussing the most recent developments and what can be done about them at our meeting on 26th September in Woking. Why not come along? 

We have also been support the RMT (Railworkers union) in their battle to keep the Guard on South West Railways (SWR). We hope to have RMT and FBU Reps at the meeting on 26th to see if a joint campaign can be developed on the issue of public safety and austerity.