Council budget cut by £12m in last six months (From Worcester News)
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Council budget cut by £12m in last six months
10:40am Saturday 6th October 2012 in News By Tom Edwards
Council budget cut by £12m in last six months
MORE than £12 million has been slashed from spending at Worcestershire County Council in the last six months under the authority’s biggest-ever budget cull.
Bosses say the Better Outcomes Leaner Delivery programme – known as BOLD – is performing ahead of expectations.
The controversial project, which lasts until the 2015/16 financial year, is aimed at saving up to £90 million from spending.
It includes 857 job losses, of which more than 300 have gone already, and cuts in everything from IT to libraries, street lighting, back office functions and almost every council department.
In the 2011/12 year, the first period of BOLD, £31 million was cut from spending and so far in 2012/13, bosses have saved another £12.5 million, taking it to £43.5 million.
The authority hopes to have saved about £50 million in total from the BOLD programme by next April.
A report detailing some of the savings so far under BOLD includes the scrapping of 794 PCs, with staff told to ‘hot desk’ instead.
The move will save about £350,000 by 2016 in electricity costs, maintenance and bills for replacing bits of equipment.
Another key saving has been in adult care, with £1.6 million clawed back by contracting out 160,000 hours of home care services to an external provider.
There are also hopes millions of pounds could be saved from getting residents to volunteer to do jobs on behalf of the authority, such as trimming hedges and staffing libraries.
The only area of concern which has been flagged up is children’s social care placements, which is forecast to be £2.6 million over budget this year.
But the loss is being offset by underspends in other departments.
Councillor Adrian Hardman, the leader of the county council, said: “BOLD is still very much on track and we are pleased with the direction it is going in.
“We were one of the first councils in the country to get our statutory financial statement signed off, which is very pleasing.
“Having the adverse variance in children’s care placements spending is not a surprise, and it is placing pressure on the budget, but we are doing sterling work on it.”
The Audit Commission has given County Hall’s finances a clean bill of health, as your Worcester News first reported last week.
Comments(19)
jovialcommonsense
says...
11:27am Sat 6 Oct 12
TheIndependentPolitiYou're not real are you?
cian wrote:
AND THE GOOD NEWS - the savings made on the cuts are going to be shared equally amomgst Council Tax payers in the form of monthly reductions of £50 a month. Blimey I've just seen a pig flying over my house!!!
They're cuts and there are no "savings" to share.
Stop trying to wind up the easily led.
The Doosra
says...
12:17pm Sat 6 Oct 12
WilkoJ wrote:"Clearly overstaffed" You have evidence for this I assume
Yet still over 10,000 staff are employed, while salaries remain very high. Go to this website for information on council pay: http://www.worcester
shire.gov.uk/cms/pdf
/Pay%20Policy%20Stat
ement%20WCC%20300112
%20Vn%208%20(3)updat
e.pdf
More redundancies are needed as the council is still clearly overstaffed, and salaries need to be slashed and brought in line with the private sector. A reduction in staff numbers may mean those left will actually have to work for a living.
yamoto
says...
1:41pm Sat 6 Oct 12
bobnohope
says...
1:52pm Sat 6 Oct 12
jb
says...
3:38pm Sat 6 Oct 12
jovialcommonsense
says...
4:31pm Sat 6 Oct 12
n.
For your information, even though it is irrelevant, I have never been unfortunate enough to need to claim any type of benefit.
drbeat
says...
6:49pm Sat 6 Oct 12
WCC gets most of it's cash from a grant via central government. That grant is funded via income tax, debt, VAT and any other tax you can think of APART from Council Tax!
WCC's issue, as with all other Socialist organisations, is that the cuts need to start at the top! Firstly, the CEO's salary needs to be well below 40k, her 'board of idiots' need their salaries below 30k!
But then again, they've all got their BTL portfolios to support?
Remember the fact that all this mess was brought to you by New Labour!
saucerer
says...
8:01pm Sat 6 Oct 12
TheIndependentPoliti3 or 4 years ago many private sector companies said they wouldn't consider employing people who had previously worked for councils because they didn't have the work ethic, capability or competence.
cian wrote:
Most council workers are unemployable in the private sector, years of boredom writing detailed reports, at great expense, that never get acted on whilst individual councillors massage their huge egos pursuing their pet projects. All this could be swept away. When I was growing up in the Worcestershire countryside in the 1960's we didn't have bin collections, we burnt everything on an open fire, buried tin cans at the top of the garden and didn't impose on the state for anything. Now local government is a self interested business that's unaffordable. I'd love to go back to those says of self suffiency. We still have to pay £110 a month but then we could sell the wheelie bins at a car boot at shut ourselves away from the suburban nightmare of bureaucratic control and invasion.
The Doosra
says...
8:27pm Sat 6 Oct 12
TheIndependentPolitiThis is drivel of the highest order. If working for the County Council, or any other public sector organisation for that matter is such a high paid cushy number, why is there not a queue from County Hall to Timbuktu of disgruntled private sector workers looking for work there?
cian wrote:
Most council workers are unemployable in the private sector, years of boredom writing detailed reports, at great expense, that never get acted on whilst individual councillors massage their huge egos pursuing their pet projects. All this could be swept away. When I was growing up in the Worcestershire countryside in the 1960's we didn't have bin collections, we burnt everything on an open fire, buried tin cans at the top of the garden and didn't impose on the state for anything. Now local government is a self interested business that's unaffordable. I'd love to go back to those says of self suffiency. We still have to pay £110 a month but then we could sell the wheelie bins at a car boot at shut ourselves away from the suburban nightmare of bureaucratic control and invasion.
Your views on waste disposal are too laughable to be taken seriously.
denon
says...
9:50pm Sat 6 Oct 12
Top team paid £40,000 so what is going to happen to all those head teachers and deputy headteachers on between £70,000 and £100,000 and all the teachers earning more than£40,000. After all thats where most of the county council's spending goes.
mayall8808
says...
8:47am Sun 7 Oct 12
Totally agree with this, i have worked in Public and Private sector, most of whats been put on here in comments is complete tosh,,(WilcoJ) If the Private lot get hold, be careful what you wish for,, Its the top end of the councils that need sorting, the £50,000 plus merchants that are the problem, over paid under worked incompetant's, many in charge of departments but have no background knowledge of its functions,yet they get rid of the lower paid worker who is absolutely excellent at the job, there is too much backscratching going on with these people, too many chiefs and the indians who actually do keep the place working are in line again for more redundancies.
Just look at the top bods and the mess they made of Whittington roundabout and many other examples.
green49
says...
9:00am Sun 7 Oct 12
Yet still over 10,000 staff are employed, while salaries remain very high.
I agree with TheDoorsa; why isnt there a stampede to get a job there then? there are some going,,
there are no underspends its all been done by putting services at risk and making people redundant therefore putting them on the dole queue.
people have got to get it into there heads the Private sector is profit only and then up will go the local taxes as it say's above BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR and get the facts right as most of whats been printed is Tosh.
green49
says...
9:02am Sun 7 Oct 12
DAVID1875
says...
6:38am Mon 8 Oct 12
green49
says...
9:22am Mon 8 Oct 12
Spetchley Dave
says...
12:27pm Mon 8 Oct 12
drbeat wrote:Get your facts straight drbeat.
Err...County Councils don't really get a slice of the Council Tax, but District Councils do! The County Council don't empty bins nor do they employ traffic wardens etc.
WCC gets most of it's cash from a grant via central government. That grant is funded via income tax, debt, VAT and any other tax you can think of APART from Council Tax!
WCC's issue, as with all other Socialist organisations, is that the cuts need to start at the top! Firstly, the CEO's salary needs to be well below 40k, her 'board of idiots' need their salaries below 30k!
But then again, they've all got their BTL portfolios to support?
Remember the fact that all this mess was brought to you by New Labour!
72p of every pound the people of Worcester pay in Council tax goes to Worcestershire County Council.
11p goes to the City Council, 12p to the West Mercia Police Authority and 5p to the Herefordshire and Worcestershire Fire and Rescue Authority.
So the County Council in fact get the vast majority of the money paid in Council tax.
DEMRICS
says...
6:40pm Tue 9 Oct 12
Mrfade
says...
10:40pm Wed 10 Oct 12
WilkoJ says...
11:05am Sat 6 Oct 12
shire.gov.uk/cms/pdf
/Pay%20Policy%20Stat
ement%20WCC%20300112
%20Vn%208%20(3)updat
e.pdf
More redundancies are needed as the council is still clearly overstaffed, and salaries need to be slashed and brought in line with the private sector. A reduction in staff numbers may mean those left will actually have to work for a living.