Bombshell: £45m cuts at county council (From Worcester News)

Bombshell: £45m cuts at county council

7:10am Monday 12th October 2009

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By Richard Vernalls »

MASSIVE cuts of £45 million are to be made by Worcestershire County Council in the next four years.

And County Hall bosses say no service – apart from schools – will be safe from the savage savings.

The county council, which looks after roads, schools, libraries and museums, said it would need to shave the equivalent of 15 per cent off its annual budget between 2011 and 2014.

Council leaders are hoping the first of the “inevitable” cuts can be made next year but warned the figure of £45 million was only “an estimate”.

The council’s 8,000 employees have been told of the plan and department managers were briefed on Friday.

Trish Haines, council chief executive, said that by the end of this week the teaching unions, Unison and the GMB will have discussed the cuts with the council.

But talk about how many jobs could go and where cuts might fall is premature, according to Mrs Haines.

George Lord, council leader, said jobs will go through natural wastage but “compulsory redundancies” will look to be avoided.

A board headed by Coun Adrian Hardman, in charge of County Hall’s finances, and including heads of department, directors of services and Mrs Haines, will spend the next months looking at where savings can be made.

The board will review council services like arts, music and drama provision, look at greater sharing of services with other districts and the city council, under the umbrella of Better Outcomes, Lean Delivery (BOLD) programme.

The parlous state of the nation’s finances is being blamed for the cuts, with officers and councillors expecting a lower revenue grant between 2011 and 2014.

“We want to be ahead of the game,” said council leader George Lord.

“We know the public sector must bear the brunt and act to bring the [national] debt problem down.

“It is relatively easy to hit local government rather than the NHS for example, so we expect that to be the case.”

Council tax will increase in 2010/11 by less than three per cent and then be frozen for the following two years, according to coun Hardman.

That is in line with a national Conservative Party pledge with the Conservative-led council assuming the Tories will win power next year.

Coun Lord said with council tax rises capped at five per cent, savings were the only way to manage a reduced budget.

Coun Hardman added cuts could come sooner than 2011 saying: “We’re sure we’ll have to reduce costs and the sooner we start planning and taking action the more we will preserve services.”

The council believes it has a good track record of savings through “efficiencies” but Mrs Haines admitted finding fresh savings from that route would be “tough”.

Schools, which are funded by Government through the county council, will escape cuts but nothing else has been ruled out.

Savings could however be made through private contract tender for services currently run by the council, including residential care homes for the elderly.

Elsewhere the council will press ahead with shared service programmes although capital spending will suffer, but existing projects like the Worcester Library and History Centre look safe.

Coun Hardman said it “was the last resort to cancel existing [capital] programmes.”

The council has identified “big spend areas” in the budget including adult and community, children’s and environmental services for targeted savings.

The panel, meeting monthly, will focus attention on these areas but “if there’s an opportunity to save then we’ll take it - we’re ruling nothing out,” added Ms Haines.

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