Jobs to go as council must find £7 million savings
5th July 2010
Source: Your Canterbury
Canterbury council will have to “think the unthinkable” to cope with massive budget cuts according to its leader John Gilbey.
Council bosses have said jobs will go, costs for services will have to rise and external groups may have to step in to run entities such as the Marlowe Theatre and even essential services to keep the council from incurring costs.
Announcements by the coalition government in its budget last week mean the council has to cut another £6 million to £7 million from its annual £25 million budget over the next four years, and almost nothing is safe.
Some services, for example IT and building control, will be shared among local councils so the economy of scale means 10 per cent less cost per service. But this alone will mean 200 fewer people will be directly employed by the council.
Canterbury council now has 750 employees, down from 850 before the council began making people redundant and holding posts in 2008.
Council leader John Gilbey said: “We have got to think the unthinkable and sit down with everything, and go through the total range of options and try and make some sense out of this.”
The council’s chief executive, Colin Carmichael, said: “In the context of what we are talking about I don’t see any way out of staffing cuts. £6 million in reductions has to involve staffing. There is no way out of that.”
Peter Lee, the executive councillor for finance, said: “We don’t want to close anything and we don’t want to reduce any service. So what we have got to do if we have got less money is to find some more efficient way.
“We are determined, if we can, to provide the people of Canterbury with the level of service they have had in the past.
“We realise that is going to be very much more difficult with the level of finances that we’ve got, so we have to look at every possible avenue in order to try and achieve that.”
The organisation’s finance gurus said money for all the council’s big projects – such as the Marlowe, Beaney and Herne Bay sports centre developments – is already in the council’s possession and is therefore safe.
Yet even the iconic Marlowe Theatre project very nearly fell prey to the recession as grant money from the now defunct South East England Development Agency only got to the council one working day before the organisation stopped giving out grants.
Until the coalition government announces the outcome of its spending review in October the council is left in the unenviable position of having to draft a budget with little knowledge of the true depth of the cuts, which at the moment it is having to guess from government announcements.
But according to the council last year was a very good one financially speaking as it managed to accrue an £877,000 budget surplus, which will help cushion the blow of the cuts to come.
And the chief executive, council leader and executive member for finance all guaranteed that at least two things are safe from being sold off: the new Marlowe Theatre and the Beaney are to remain in public hands.
