Jobs cuts on the cards for council workers
THOUSANDS of council workers face losing their jobs over the next 18 months as the recession hits the public sector.
A survey by accountants KMPG, which included representatives from the 41 local authorities in the North West, found that almost half of council leaders believe major jobs cuts are likely which will have an impact on front line services.
KPMG said the survey also reveals that around half council leaders and chief executives said they will have to drastically cut their spending plans as a result of the economic downturn and that they were unsure about how to maintain service levels.
When asked if budgets and frontline services will be hit over the next couple of years, Councillor Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council, said the council would be prepared for the worst case scenario.
He said: “Our real expectation is that the recession won’t hit our council’s budget big time until the year after next. To a certain extent at the moment it’s a bit “spend now and pay later” but we are already planning a budget strategy assuming that finance is going to be significantly tighter.
“We can start making assumptions and building scenarios like what would cash minus five per cent look like the year after next. We can do serious planning, effectively to not quite assume the worst and be fairly conservative in our assumptions so that if the worst does happen we are prepared for it.”
He added that the biggest challenged facing Manchester City Council was skills, followed by education, jobs and climate change.
Councillor Warren Bradley, leader of Liverpool City Council, said he was concerned that a cut in funding would affect frontline services.
He said: “Much of our support comes through as grant funding from the national government. It has made no announcements on that at all but we are concerned that it will have a detrimental effect on frontline services.”
Iain Hasdell, UK head of local government at KPMG, said: “Local government in the UK accounts in one way or another for 10% of GDP. Over the three years of the 2010 spending review period, reductions in Whitehall funding to local government in England and Wales could be in the order of 15% in real terms, the toughest squeeze on council finances in the post-war era.
“However this need not automatically lead to cuts in priority services. The best councils will use these circumstances as an opportunity to become radically more efficient and as a consequence improve service provision. We may look back on this period of austerity and see it as the start of a new positive wave of local government reform.”
