This is a post about the efforts two Northwest Tory councils have made to stop me reporting on public sector cuts:

My visit to the soon-to-be-closed Grange daycentre in Shropshire hit the skids before it started.

The Grange daycentre is an adapted community facility used by people with severe physical disabilities. Their conditions include multiple sclerosis, severe epilepsy and cerebral palsy. Many have had debilitating strokes.

Last week, they asked me to visit Shropshire to record their views about Shropshire council’s sudden decision to close their daycentre. So off we went, my photographer and I: skidding and crawling (in a car) across the snow and treacherous ice between Manchester and Shropshire, only occasionally breaking the silence to scream as lorries greased past on black ice, etc.

Turned out the drive was a minor inconvenience compared to the rest. The real obstacle was the Shropshire Tories. It emerged that the council had banned journalists from entering the daycentre. We were allowed no further than the foyer. Furious centre-users – some in wheelchairs, some needing physical support – turned up to say that nobody was allowed to talk about the centre, or its impending closure, because the council had ruled that talking might upset people (upset the service users, that was – not the press or the frigging council. I’ve talked to a council spokesperson since. He agreed that was the council’s line).

The centre users didn’t feel the council had the right to tell them who they could and couldn’t talk to. Who over the age of five would? Physical disability hardly disqualifies adults from conversation. Centre users Chris Alvison, Andrew Millarkie, Donald Gibson, Anne Lee, Victor Baylor, Eddie Davies, Terence Jones and Trevor Brian Steadman (all in their 40s) said they were prepared to move outside into the snow to talk if I wasn’t allowed through the doors.

The council backed off in the end, although needed a good slapping first. Local disability rights campaigner Nicky Clark (who has two disabled daughters herself) intervened on everyone’s behalf and shouted the council down. She was a while on the job: she spent the better part of half an hour on the phone to council management (council managers are due to talk to me in the next day or two about their decision to ‘protect’ people with disabilities). In the end, we were able to set up the cameras and recorders inside the Grange.

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Once in, we got talking about the council’s sudden decision (consultation was supposed to go on until January) to close the daycentre.

As you might expect, people had strong views about the council’s throwing of their centre to government austerity wolves – you’ll see this in the video below. You’ll also see how vital places like the Grange are to the people who use them, and why Osborne’s cuts are nothing short of diabolical because of that.

Without the Grange, people with disabilities in Shropshire will have nothing much to do and nowhere much to go. The Grange has computers for people to use, community projects they can take part in (a group of centre regulars worked recently with young offenders on a gardening project at the centre), plenty of social events and experienced staff on hand to help if need be. “I’ll be at home staring at the four walls,” [when the centre goes] Chris Alvison said. So did Eddie Davies and Anne Lee.

There’ll be more on this, and Shropshire’s consultation record and spending priorities in the next post. This one is about Tory councils in the Northwest and the strong censorship theme I’m finding here.

This was, after all, the second time in two days that a Northwest Tory council tried to stop me reporting a contentious local spending decision. The other incident (I tweeted it at the time) took place at a public West Lancashire borough council meeting last Wednesday. Councillors and senior staff halted the meeting to tell me to stop tweeting and recording during an item about council plans to refurbish the Town Hall – a costly refurbishment that will take place just as borough residents brace themselves for an era of supposed austerity. Anyway – I ignored that instruction and the councillor who was bleating it, and carried on recording (I’ll upload this recording as soon as I can – am away from main centres at the moment and having an interim issue with bandwidth).

So. Let’s just say for now that I’ll record and tweet whatever public meetings I like, and talk to anyone I like, regardless of councillor instructions. If that means civil disobedience and/or a short spell in the slammer, so be it. The hell with this mad crap about keeping public meetings and public issues private – especially now, when people who need services are being forced to make enormous sacrifices to pay for someone else’s banking crisis.

The public owns council. It ain’t the other way around.

Grange daycentre users: