Wirral Council facing £60m budget ‘black hole’ and massive cuts

Oct 16 2007 by Liam Murphy, Liverpool Daily Post

WIRRAL Council faces a £60m hole in its budget over the next three years – with cuts to services and job losses now expected throughout the authority.

Massive cuts in budgets across the council are being planned totalling some £45m up to 2011 to help fill the gap between the authority’s income and spending.

The council has also controversially agreed to increase the budget of its Human Resources department by almost £200,000 a year – extra staff which the authority says will be used to help redeploy its existing workers and help reduce the total number of employees.

Minutes now published from a closed meeting of the ruling Cabinet said every effort would be made to redeploy staff but “the council had to be brave enough to use the option of redundancy when necessary”.

Last night, Tory opposition said the hole in the budget was the result of “financial mismanagement”.

But leader of the council, Cllr Steve Foulkes, who admitted they had “a lot of efficiencies to find”, said so far proposals had already come forward to save £7m this year.

He said the council’s position was similar to previous years except they had this time been given a three-year spending plan by the Government, and said many other councils also face significant shortfalls. He said: “We have to cut our cloth accordingly.”

Cllr Foulkes said: “There are limited savings you can make within any organisation, and the main one is attempting to do a similar amount of work with less people. We have not got a figure but we know at the end of the three years we will have to be a slimmer organisation.

“We will give everyone as much opportunity as possible for redeployment and reskilling, but I’m not going to make any prediction on numbers.

“In terms of funding, this Government has said its priority is education, and that has had a massive increase in funding, but that is ring-fenced.

“The problem is there is less money for the many other services provided by local author-ities and that is where the brunt of the efficiencies will come.”

Wirral Council has continued to move down the national league table for council tax under Cllr Foulkes’ stewardship and he said that showed they provide better value for money.

A council finance report detailed shortfalls in the authority’s budget of £25.5m in 2008/9, £17.5, in 2009/10 and £18.8m the following year.

For example, in 2008/9 the authority expects it will cost £278.6m to provide the services people now receive, but its income will only be £253.1m.

All departments are currently reviewing their own spending and the authority aims to save £20.7m next year, £12.5m in 2009/10 and £13.6m in 2010/11.

Conservative leader Cllr Jeff Green said: “This is very serious news for the people of Wirral.

“It’s a desperate shame that the council workforce and our residents are going to have to pay for the Government’s lack of support and the Labour group’s financial mismanagement.”

liammurphy