WARRINGTON Borough Council is expecting a £12 million budget
shortfall for the coming year, on top of the £32 million cut backs since
2010.
Officers predict challenging times ahead amd many services are expected to be cut or drastically reduced.
The exact details of the borough’s financial settlement for 2013/14 have been delayed and an announcement is expected next week.
The estimate is based on information available to the council’s finance team.
Meanwhile local people are being consulted on how best to prioritise resources available for the wide range of council services.
Cllr Russ Bowden, (pictured) executive board member for corporate resources and assignments, said: “In making these budget decisions, the views of the public are an important consideration. This council is committed to listening and responding to the views of residents and wants to provide the opportunity for local people to have their say via a public consultation.
“We are committed to protecting frontline services as far as possible, supporting the most vulnerable in our communities and growing our local economy. However the grim reality is that we now have to reduce, change or even stop some of the services that we know people in Warrington rely on because of these devastating funding cuts from the national government.”
Residents, businesses, groups and organisations are being invited to let the council know which services are most important to them and how they think others could be reduced, changed or stopped in the future.
Copies of the 2013/14 budget consultation document can be picked from main council buildings such as the Town Hall, Sankey Street, New Town House, Buttermarket Street and Contact Warrington, Horsemarket Street/ Time Square, at the end of the week.
It is also available via www.warrington.gov.uk/budget and comments can be submitted via [email protected]
The closing date for responses is Friday January 11.
19 Comments
Time for Labour to scrap the slush fund and forget about buying votes.
Reducing the number of councillors would be a start.
We’ll be back in the dark ages soon.
These cuts have been taking place at other councils for some time with associated job cuts. Look at Manchester and other northwest councils Mike Hannon told the work force that he did’nt come into politics to make people redundant. So don’t blame councillors for whats happening elsewhere due to central government cutbacks
Amongst many other things This council has somehoe found 500K to invest in a mortgage scheme aimed at teachers (the public sector comes first) and who knows how much installing solar panels for their natural voters in Golden Gates Housing Association property
But the money problem was there before the cutbacks. £17 million (was it?) when they were last in power.
Seems to be the north west suffers more cuts than the south east , didn’t help with the wishy washy lib /dem council we had in the past few years that let top officers including that waste of time chief exec at the council get away with year on year pay increases for her self and her mates on the council. At least she’s gone . Let’s see the rest of her cronies go with her
That is capital spending – the council borrows based on the potential savings. That is completely different to the revenue budget which is getting savaged by the Government!
The two examples I gave may well have been capital spending but is indicative of the financial responsibilty or otherwise of the council and the sectors they like to focus on, in the Golden Gates case their natural electorate . Some may feel such decisions may well be influenced by the wish to increase their votes rather than serving the whole of Warrington.
What a load of tosh – you obviously forget that the solar panels started off as a small scheme under the Fib Dems administration
Clearly you have forgotten that the scheme proposed by the Lib-Dems would have benefited everyone in the Borough , not just tenants of Golden Gates properties, a group of people more likely to vote Labour. Such a move could motivate those tenants to get off their backsides and turn out to vote Labour next time while the rest of us get no help with our power bills.
I just checked out the solar panel scheme – actually it is a loan to GGHT and brings money in. I suspect that you knew this already but didn’t tell us that as it didn’t fit your biased view.
I also found out that the Council is bringing in a collective switching scheme for household energy, so you are wrong again!
No mention of considering cutting out the grandiose, ego feeding, regeneration projects then?
Cuts to the most vulnerable and Consultation over the Christmas period! what a surprise! It
Once again, that is capital spending and not revenue spending – you can’t confuse the two
The point remains that it is set up in a way that the major benefit is to their natural voters who will save on power bills, so the point still stands. Yes the household energy switching scheme is a good idea as I acknowledged when it was announced and suggested that they speak to South Lakeland district council to see what their experiences were of running such a scheme.
In that case cut capital funding and move the funding across to revenue spending.
You can’t use capital finance for revenue spending – it’s a minor inconvenience called the law
These funds do not drop like manna from heaven and set by some unseen deity. i fully admit to not being an expert on local government finance but clearly the funding for revenue and capital is set by some entity so it would seem that steps should be taken to rebalance the budgets next time for capital and revenue – even if that entity is part of central government.
Nick, Reflex is just being misleading, when he informs us “You can’t use capital finance for revenue spending – it’s a minor inconvenience called the law” He omits to add ‘…but you can use revenue funds for capital spending’ and that is the core of the problem in warrington. Revenue funding certainly does not drop like manna from heaven it comes from council taxes and public land /asset sales etc. and funds our local services etc. As I said it can also be used as a contribution towards regeneration projects. Many towns are actually scrapping their regeneration projects because they don’t want to contibute revenue funds – as that would result in their having to cut public services to balance the books.