The leader of Birmingham City Council, Sir Albert Bore, has warned cuts to funding from 2015 will create a financial crisis for many councils, making it difficult to deliver statutory services.
In publishing its business plan and budget, Sir Bore said Birmingham City Council must find savings of more than £285m over the next two years, leading to the loss of 1,000 jobs. The council has already reduced its workface by 33% since 2010, making it ‘extremely difficult’ to maintain services.
Sir Bore said: ‘It is inevitable that next year we will have to make hard decisions about which optional services to stop providing altogether, and we may even find it difficult to maintain statutory services to the standard expected. The cuts from 2015 onwards will create a financial crisis in many councils across the country.
‘The scale of the cuts means we need to completely rethink the role and structure of the City Council and how we achieve the outcomes we seek – what I have called “the end of local government as we know it”. We cannot simply carry on doing things as we have always done them or delivering the services we have become used to for decades.’
The business plan sets out the council’s budget for 2014-15 and takes forward the proposals set out in the White Paper, published in December 2013.
