Wolverhampton City Council has unveiled £64.4m saving proposals, on what it is calling a ‘dark day’ for the local authority.
Warning some services ‘would have to go’ for the council to produce a balanced budget, Wolverhampton announced that it expects to increase council tax by 2%, raise £1.1 million by amending the way it runs its youth services, and reduce costs in every department across the town hall.
Cabinet member for resources, Cllr Johnson said the council had ‘no choice’ but to plan for cuts to services while the Government ‘continued to slash’ its funding allocation.
Wolverhampton needs to identify £33.1m of additional savings on top of the £64.4m outlined in proposals.Johnson said he was ‘extremely angry’ that government cuts had forced the local authority to announce job losses – with 1,000 jobs needing to be cut over the next five years on top of the 889 already shed.
While the 165 individual savings proposals could raise £64.4m for Wolverhampton, the authority would still need to identify another £33.1m of savings to meet its target by 2018/19.
Cllr Johnson said: "This is a dark day for Wolverhampton. We have done everything we possibly can to protect essential services from cuts, but the Government continues to slash the funding it gives to Wolverhampton and we have no choice.
‘Places like Wolverhampton are being hit much harder by these Government cuts than wealthier areas of the country and there is just no way we can make these levels of savings without dramatically reducing our spending in terms of the services we provide.’
Consultation on the proposals will begin in November, with final budget recommendations being discussed in March 2014.
