Norfolk plans £125m more budget cuts

Norfolk County Council is planning to make savings of £125 after 2014, in order to meet the grant funding deficit.

The council will have made budget cuts of £135m, and lost 1,600 full-time jobs, in March 2014 over a three-year period. The council will now begin a review of all its functions to facilitate the second round of savings.

Council Leader, Derrick Murphy, said: ‘Our priority is clear. We want to see essential services protected and, wherever possible, enhanced, whoever delivers them in the future. To do this, we need to re-balance our income so that in future we generate much more for ourselves.

‘The economic messages are stark - we can’t rely on Government grants to close the gaps in future, and in any event, I don’t think we should.

‘In essence, we are reviewing all our operations now to put Norfolk County Council ever more firmly in the driving seat of change. That way it will have more control of its own destiny and be far less reliant on Government in the future.’

Last month council leaders in the north of England warned that further cuts from 2013 were 'absolutely certain'.