Budget settlement expected to be toughest yet
Telford & Wrekin Council says it expects the Government’s local government finance settlement to be announced in December to be the toughest it has ever faced with yet more cuts expected.
It also says that the Government’s offer of a 1 per cent grant to freeze Council Tax for two years would only lead to an even bigger budget black hole when this grant is no longer there.
The settlement announcement is likely to add further cuts to Telford & Wrekin’s budget on top of the £40 million it has had to save over the last four years.
The Council is forecasting that the Government will announce further cuts as the Government’s budget position is not improving with tax revenues lower and higher spending on benefits due to the continued recession.
Local government has already had significantly higher cuts than other public services (27% cuts compared with an average for the public sector of 8.3% from 2011/12 to 2014/15) and since 2010, Telford & Wrekin the Council has had its government funding cut by £27 million.
Over the last three years, the Council has:
- Cut staff costs by a fifth, with more than 840 posts going from the Council
- Cut our back office costs by more than a third
- Cut our senior management costs by 55%.
Cllr Bill McClements, cabinet member for resources, said: “All the pointers are that this settlement will be even worse than we had previously thought.
“It will mean that we will have to cut deeper into services as any extra savings will be on top of annual savings of £40 million already made since 2009/10.
“While the savings made to date have been very challenging to find, we have so far limited the direct impact on front line services, but this cannot continue.
“The offer of a Council Tax freeze grant would cover less half the rate of inflation and after two years would leave a black hole in our budget - money that must be found by either increasing income or making even bigger cuts.
"We had an extensive consultation last year and local people understood the need to increase council tax to protect services.
“As part of our budget consultation in the New Year we will be asking people their views on next year’s Council budget and we will want as many people as possible to give us their views.”
