Sudden cuts paint bleak picture for council finances

Adam Hewitt • Published 16 Jun 2010 11:00 Comments 1 Comment

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MILLIONS of pounds have been slashed from council budgets in a shock mid-year move - and this is just the start of the belt-tightening.

The Government announced on Friday that Reading would lose £1.6m, Wokingham £848,000 and West Berkshire, which called the mid-year cuts "unprecedented", would drop £1.05m.

All three councils will see millions more go down the drain because performance-related 'bonuses' for councils will not be paid, planning delivery grants have been cut and highways budgets are also being hit.

It is the fall-out from the coalition Government's "in-year savings" of £6bn announced last month.

West Berkshire promptly announced a recruitment freeze and council leader Graham Jones said: "We are already planning for government cuts for next financial year, but these immediate cuts have come on top of that. However, they are a reality, and the main point is we are dealing with them. It's not an easy task."

The bulk of Reading cuts are education-related, including school improvement, careers advice, teen street projects and teenage pregnancy services, but also crime prevention, disabled people's housing and road safety.

Finance spokesman Cllr David Stevens said there would be spending cuts rather than a raid of the council's rainy-day reserves to make up the shortfall, adding: "Whilst not welcome, we should be able to absorb the reduction, but we fully recognise that it will have a significant impact on some Directorate of Education and Children's Services projects.

"I have also said that we are not prepared to reduce planned balances or reserves to make good the reduced grant income."

Opposition Labour leader Cllr Jo Lovelock warned of coming job losses and said: "The revenue cuts are frontline services in anybody's language. While Mr Cameron kept on talking about tackling waste, we warned what he meant was real cuts, and now the truth is out."

Wokingham Borough Council leader David Lee said: "We certainly weren't prepared for cuts in the middle of this year, but we have been making plans to deal with lower funding through our Transformation project."

He said the council would not cut vital services but might have to charge more for things that are now free or cheap, as it has already done with respite care.

He said with the national deficit so crippling and interest charges higher than some departmental budgets, it was obvious that local authority funding would be hit hard.

But he said he was frustrated at "snide" comments from the opposition Lib Dems about individual items of council expenditure that they had no choice but to cut or make a lower priority, and made the example of the changes to the travel token system, which he said had saved lots of council money but not been the end of the world.

His breakdown of the money now lost to the council:

- £850,000 in revenue funding

- £400,000 for highways

- £360,000 from the planning delivery grant

- £2m in lost performance-related incentives

He asked Chronicle readers to send him suggestions on saving money, and services people may be prepared to pay more for.

He added: "We're all in this together." Email david.lee@wokingham.gov.uk

Have your say. Post a comment on this article.

Cochise
Unregistered User
Jun 17, 18:54
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So what were Labour going to if they got back in?

Did they have the odd million lying around?

Everybody knows there were cuts coming whoever

won the election.

Labour had years in power and now seem to be hoping we all forget that.

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