THE swingeing cuts proposed by Worcester City Council are bad news for the people of the city.

The council’s £4.3 million savings will see 10 per cent of the council’s workforce lose their jobs, leave CCTV monitors in the city unmonitored and have a detrimental effect on a range of services.

Parks, street cleaning, tourism, transport for the elderly and disabled, museums and art galleries are all on the Guildhall hit list.

More than £3 million of the savings comes from next year’s budget. The council’s Conservative administration is quick to blame the Labour government for its financial woes.

They say the city’s settlement from Whitehall is too low, that Worcester gets a raw deal out of concessionary bus fares and that it is expected to offer too many services.

All are valid points but the council has to accept some of the blame for the predicament it finds itself in.

Keeping council tax at an artificially low level for a number of years has, in our view, come back to haunt the council.

Now Worcester residents will be paying more for fewer council services next year. It is a point that has not been lost on a number of our readers who have left comments on our website.

We fear there are some tough times ahead for the council as it attempts to justify its proposals to those who will lose their jobs and those who will end up paying more for a potentially inferior level of service.