Next Gen News

Today's focus: How one council plans to reduce its spending by £40m

This is the first of our regular Cutswatch blogs, which will gather up information on public sector cuts from around the country. Input is already starting to come from readers, and we are following up on your accounts of cuts in your area. We're drawing on twitter and other internet sites, as well as more traditional sources, to paint a comprehensive picture of the extent of the cutbacks, and providing links for those who need more detail.

Tell us about public sector cuts in your area - post online at Guardian Cutswatch and contribute to our Twitter page.

Latest Guardian stories on the reduction of public sector

Dorrell warned ringfencing NHS budget

School building programme scrapped in latest round of cuts

Ministers to impose lower redundancy payouts

Q&A: public sector redundancy

Hundreds of infrastructure projects to be scrapped

All Guardian public sector cuts stories

Education cuts and closures

Latest Guardian public sector cuts comment

Tony Travers: Council cuts will have to be so big that closures or charges are inevitable

Julian Glover: the government must rise above the left 's howl against budget cuts

Nicholas Watt: Is the 40% savings warning the oldest trick in the political book?

Jackie Ashley: These cuts won't only hit the scroungers. We'll all suffer

How one council plans to cut £40m

Blackburn with Darwen Council has the reputation of being one of England's best performing local authorities. But as local residents are about to find out, competence and efficiency doesn't shield you from hefty cuts.

On Thursday, the council's ruling executive board (a coalition of Conservative and Liberal Democrats, with a sprinkling of independents) will consider the first batch of 42 reports covering all aspects of the council's services as part of a "major rethink" of what it can afford to provide.

The trimming however has already begun, with £4m of cuts effectively imposed by the chancellor George Osborne in June when he decided to make in-year adjustments to Area Based Grants (ABGs). This is cash provided directly from Whitehall departments to the council to fund specific services.

You can see how it affects Blackburn with Darwen here: a whole range of services â€" from youth services (which lose over £700k) to road maintenance and Preventing Violent Extremism projects â€" have had between 25% and 100% of their ABG funding chopped overnight. More grant cuts are expected in the next few months.

The council's even more dramatic next step is to attempt to carve £40m from its annual budget over the next four years in anticipation of a 25% fall in income.

The council leader, Michael Lee, explains:

"The 25% reductions we face in our budgets are just the start; the future is uncertain. We are an ambitious council and have a good reputation for innovation and financial management. This will certainly help us, but we also need to make tough decisions. Where it is no longer possible to provide a service, we have looked at alternatives. But some of the things we are proposing will inevitably be unpopular, aspeople will see things they have come to expect either changing or stopping altogether."

The first wave of official checks has looked at community and leisure services. They have proposed the following:

• The closure of council-owned buildings. These include a leisure centre and 16 community centres, which will close unless local community groups can take them over.
• Introducing charging for bulky waste and replacing lost household waste bins, closing council-run "pay points" and telling residents to pay council tax at newsagents.
• A formal review of the borough's library services.

On top of that the council declared:

• The "decommissioning" of up to 23 children's services to save nearly £900,000, including parenting support projects and anti-bullying programmes, many of which are provided by charities and community groups (see appendix three of this report).
• A merger of the management structures of the council and the local NHS primary care trust (which itself faces 36% cuts, including the loss of a third of its workforce over the next three years). This proposal, thought to be the first of its kind in the country, will save around £2m. The council has also set in train plans to outsource its entire adult social care service to a social enterprise.

Public protests are expected at the board meeting on Thursday ', while the local MP and former Labour Minister Jack Straw called the reduction of "is absurd." A live web chat with Blackburn with Darwen chief executive Graham Burgesstook place yesterday Lancashire Telegraph gives the taste of new public nuisance. More time will come when the scale of job cuts - no ratings - becomes apparent.

But obviously, it will be only the beginning. Annex 4 of the Council, the document shows the breadth of the review of the planned services from child protection and housing to crematoria and staff parking. As Lee says:

"We are determined to be in the best shape possible to make more of less. To do this we need to make significant changes and implement them as quickly as possible or we are just storing up even more pain for later."

Other links

SocietyGuardian.co.uk

EducationGuardian.co.uk

Guardian politics

Follow EducationGuardian on Twitter

Follow SocietyGuardian on Twitter