'No end in sight to austerity', says Telford finance chief as council has to find £38,000 of cuts a DAY

Councillor Lee Carter says the borough will end 2018-19 within budget, and praised the “tireless and creative” staff who helped find the cuts to prevent a crisis.

Speaking at a meeting of the cabinet, he said that since Labour took control of the council in 2011, the budget has been cut by £117million and up to £30m more may be needed.

In response, the Conservative opposition leader Andrew Eade said, despite the cuts, “we’re still here, we’re still ongoing – so the message is: What were we doing with £117m?”

Councillor Carter said balancing the budget was “an outstanding performance” from the authority.

“It’s the fruits of a strategy that was set in place in 2011 when Labour took back the administration,” he said.

“We’ve had to have courage to see that strategy through against opposition over almost every move we’ve had to make to offset the cuts from government, which total £117m to date, with a further £25-£30m to find.

“In context, that means the government effectively cuts £38,000 a day from this authority and continues to do so despite promises of austerity being over.

Pressures

“We’ve still got cost pressures, the biggest one currently is the cost of children’s safeguarding. Adult social care continues to be a cost pressure. There are also cost pressures within the special educational needs budget.”

Councillor Carter said his administration’s budget strategy had prevented strains like those currently being seen at Shropshire Council, whose leader announced a spending freeze last week and asked employees to work from home on Fridays once a month.

“We would have been talking about four-day weeks,” Councillor Carter said.

“We would have been talking about fire-and-rehire of vast numbers of staff. We would have been talking about day-to-day spending freezes.”

Liberal Democrat leader Bill Tomlinson agreed that the current budget, while balanced, was “precarious”, and relied on a temporarily low interest rate.

He said: “So the benefits we’ve been getting in the past – lower interest rates – will go. That means we can’t always come up with the rabbit out of the hat.

“It’s going to get tighter and tighter, tougher and tougher.”

Conservative leader Andrew Eade, who led Telford and Wrekin Council until the 2011 election, said: “You do have to ask yourselves, as someone who has been here for a long time: What on earth were we doing with £117m that we’re not spending now? We could have been building Utopia here in the borough, and it would have been very nice to have done it.

“However, I for one hope that what they’ve said about austerity coming to an end is right. But you can’t magic money out of nowhere.”

By Alex Moore, local democracy reporter