Some 6,000 more jobs will be cut at Birmingham City Council over the next four years, under efforts to save over £300m.
The local authority’s workforce is expected to fall to around a third of its size in 2010, with over half the staff at the city’s new £189m library due to be made redundant.
Council leader Sir Albert Bore said the ‘speed of the cuts in government funding’ were ‘seriously hampering’ council attempts to plan for the future.
While there are thought to be around 13,000 staff currently employed at the town hall – aside from school staff - the figure is expected to fall to 7,000 by 2018.
Despite having already saved £462m, Birmingham is required to find £117m of savings next year – rising to £338m in four years’ time.
The only council area protected from cuts will be children’s safeguarding, which remains a particularly high profile area following critical reports on local child sexual exploitation earlier this year.
Sir Albert added: ‘Whatever our longer term plans, we must by law “balance the books” in each year, so we have also found it necessary to propose some other reductions in services, and discontinuation of services, which we would not have considered if the cuts had been less steep.’
‘I believe we have begun to set out a clear direction of change and started to work together to make progress towards our goals. Over the year ahead we aim to intensify the process of change at every level, so that we can emerge from this period of austerity in better shape to provide the leadership and the services that our city deserves.’
The annual cost of paying off the development bill for Birmingham’s library – which opened in September 2013 – stands at £12m – equivalent to the town hall’s entire budget for economic development. Cllr Penny Holbrook, cabinet member for skills, learning and culture, admitted this bill was ‘clearly unsustainable’.
Responding to the plans, trade union Unison said it was ‘clear’ the job losses proposed by Birmingham came ‘as a direct result of this Tory-led Government’.
Ravi Subramanian, Unison West Midlands regional secretary accused the Coalition of ‘targeting councils in the North and the Midlands with massive cuts to government grants’ adding that ‘the people of Birmingham deserve better than these spiteful and politically motivated cuts’.
A government spokesman said: ‘Local government accounts for a quarter of all public spending and since 2010 government has delivered a fair settlement to every part of the country, including Birmingham. The majority of local authorities have continued to balance their budgets whilst reducing council tax in real terms and increased or maintained public satisfaction with services.
‘All councils should be making sensible savings and keeping council tax down by merging back office services or doing more joint working.’
