February 8, 2001 16:58: THE staffing crisis in the Chilterns should get a helping hand from April with the injection of an extra £500,000 by the county council to use to attract young teachers and social workers to work here.

Students could get bursaries in return for a promise that they will come and work for the county council for a specified length of time.

The spending was proposed by county council leader David Shakespeare at a cabinet meeting on Monday.

Cllr Shakespeare who as leader is responsible for the overall annual budget, found he could spend some extra cash and still set a council tax increase of 5.4 per cent which would not break Government guidelines.

The budget should be agreed by the full council on February 22.

The money for staff is part of £1.3 million extra he is proposing to spend on projects next year in his first budget under the modernised cabinet structure.

Four more people will be taken on in the youth service at a cost of £100,000

Libraries will get an extra £200,000 for books

There is another £100,000 to support business development

And £300,000 to pump prime as yet undefined schemes

Most of the extra money will come from revenue, but some is coming from the reserves, as is a further £1 million being set on one side to spend on capital building projects in 2002/3, when the council expects to be £3 million short of what it needs.

Cllr Shakespeare said: "For the first time we have an opportunity of addressing some of the priorities which year in and year out we said if we had the extra money we should help out with.

He added: "Top of the list is to do something for our youth service."

His second priority was the voluntary sector.

Cllr Shakespeare's third priority was an economic development fund. Bucks gets £118 million a year in business rates and Cllr Shakespeare wanted to make sure the county's economy prospered.

He said: "It would be a fund, possibly a challenge fund, so we can help business to help our residents."

Cllr Pam Crawford (Chesham west) the Lib Dem group leader on the county council, said that councillors didn't have enough detailed information about the budget to know exactly what was going on.

She said the 5.4 per cent overall rise in council tax was part of an election budget aimed at the middle classes.

She also thought some of the extra cash found by council leader Cllr Shakespeare could have been better spent.

For example there was £100,000 extra for voluntary organisations, but earlier in the year there had been about £50,000 cuts in this area. She said there was no way of knowing whether the extra £100,000 was going to reinstate cuts or to make new grants.

As for £100,000 for economic development, she said the county was doing well and had very low unemployment, and the money would have been better spent on children's services.