Leeds City Council is to cut 200 jobs next year - on top of the 1,800 posts already lost in the past three years – as it tries to save £50m from its budget.
The council also revealed plans to raise council house rents by 5.9% as a result of changes to the rent-setting formula, and increase council tax by 1.99%.
The council has outlined efficiency savings of £5.4m in procurement, £5.5m in back-office functions and savings of £0.8m in insurance charges by bringing the handling of claims back in-house. It also expects to generate £6.6m through fee increases and by trading its services to other bodies.
Councillor Keith Wakefield, leader of Leeds City Council, said: ‘The past three years of sustained cuts to our budgets have been incredibly hard and it becomes more and more challenging to make increasingly-painful decisions. Yet we have managed, through enormous effort, responsible financial management and great determination to continue to deliver high-quality, good value-for-money public services as efficiently as possible.
‘While developing a leaner, more efficient council, it becomes increasingly difficult to find further savings. We have to face the hard facts to keep the city financially healthy and reluctantly raise council tax and rents.
’Vulnerable people continue to be our most important priority- as supported by our public consultation- and we are prioritising what limited resources we do have into adults’ and children’s social services.’
With government grant reductions of £94m over the past three years, and with funding being cut a further 10% over the next year, the council said it was taking a harder hit than councils in other regions. It said the new budget will provide a spending power of £1,851 per household, while Wokingham has £1,837 despite being the third richest district in the UK.
The recommendations will be considered at a full council meeting on 26 February.
