Local authorities will be forced to axe billions of pounds’ worth of frontline services in 2011/12, after evidence obtained by The MJ suggested ministers’ favoured methods of protecting localities would cover just £2.1bn from an estimated cash shortfall of £6.5bn.

Anger over the impact of the coalition’s decision to slash council grants by 28% over four years spread to town halls this week, when protestors disrupted council budget-setting meetings from London to Leeds. Birmingham City Council signed off the biggest cuts in local government history – £212m next year.

Residents fear key frontline services will shortly be axed as town halls struggle to balance their books following heavily front-loaded Whitehall grant cuts. The Local Government Association (LGA) recently estimated councils faced a funding shortfall of £6.5bn in 2011/12.

But The MJ can reveal there is a lack of empirical evidence to support ministers’ oft-quoted claim that a four-pronged savings plan would help councils avoid frontline cuts – by slashing senior staff pay, improving procurement, sharing back-office services and axing supposed ‘non-jobs’.

Responses to Freedom of Information requests sent to the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), asking for empirical evidence supporting ministers’ faith in these four savings strands, show Eland House can account for just £700m in potential savings – from cutting all senior officers’ pay by 10% (an estimated annual saving of £57.7m) and improved procurement (£641m annually).

Despite signing off a huge local spending cuts programme with the Treasury last autumn, communities secretary Eric Pickles’ department has made no estimate whatsoever of potential savings through shared services or axing ‘non-jobs’.

A New Local Government Network report published on 1 March indicates ‘realistic’ shared services savings would equate to just 20% – around £1.4bn – of the estimated £6.8bn spent on council back offices.

As DCLG sources suggested, councils have also been urged to use other methods of saving cash – such as asset sales or using cash reserves. But local government experts were surprised to learn ministers’ preferred attacks on council spending were supported by little Whitehall data.

Simon Parker, NLGN director, urged ministers to focus their demands for sector reform on hard evidence.

‘It is really important this debate is evidence-based. Local government faces very challenging cuts next year and the evidence seems to suggest it will be difficult to cover spending cuts merely by cutting senior pay and back office services, for example,’ he said.

‘This debate needs to move on to the bigger challenge of transforming services.’ Mr Pickles this week continued his preferred focus on the four possible savings strands first identified in a letter he sent to all councils following last autumn’s Spending Review.

He told Parliament on 28 February: ‘If councils share back-office services, join forces to get better value from their buying power, cut out excessive chief executive pay, and root out overspending and waste, they can protect key frontline services.’

Following the FOI revelations, Robert Gordon, chairman of the County Councils Network, said: ‘Our members include many of the largest councils and have long secured the economies of scale which are now being sought by collaborative working among smaller authorities.

‘We will be doing all we can, individually and as a network, to ensure maximum efficiency is squeezed from… sharing services and maintaining financial discipline.

‘However, given the need to restrain public spending as whole, there will,nonetheless, be hard decisions to face, and The MJ’s figures demonstrate this. We are working with local communities, businesses, and other partners to get those decisions right.’

Baroness Margaret Eaton, LGA chair, added: ‘The LGA has been clear from the outset that the scale of the cuts to council budgets goes way beyond what can be saved through efficiency measures. The sheer scale of the reduction in funding means some councils will have to cut frontline services.’

A DCLG spokesman said: ‘Ministers have been clear throughout that shared services were just one of a range of options councils should consider to protect frontline services. The Government has also given councils new powers and funding freedoms and is moving ahead with community budgets, which will open up the scope for the innovative integration of cross-cutting frontline services between different types of local public authority.’