Cambs Council Cuts - Where & When

20 January 2011, 09:21 | Updated: 20 January 2011, 09:40

Cambridgeshire County Council has outlined exactly where and how £160 million worth of savings will be made over the next five years.

It's because the authority is getting a 14% reduction in government funding.

The cuts aim to save £50.4 million in 2011/2012 and £160.6 million over the next five years.

The proposals, which include 450 job cuts across a range of departments, will be considered by the County Council's cabinet next week.

They include a freeze on council tax for the next financial year, and probably for the next four years.

The proposals include the following cuts:

Children's Services

  • £1 million from youth services
  • £716,000 from home to school transport
  • £600,000 from children's centres
  • £1 million from children's disability services
  • £527,000 from specialist teaching
  • £315,000 from budgets for educating looked after children
  • £301,000 from the Cambridgeshire Racial Equality & Diversity Service
  • £950,000 from children's social care
  • £240,000 from the early years service
  • £3 million from mainstream and special educational needs and transport

Libraries

  • £282,000 from libraries through operational efficiencies, income generation and new ways of working
  • £108,000 from redesigning the mobile library service
  • £100,000 by introducing more self service and using volunteers in libraries
  • £294,000 by working with other councils to provide support services and creating a trust to run libraries

Social Care

  • £2.9 million by promoting prevention and localism
  • £4.75 million by adopting re-ablement approach
  • £1.3 million by decreasing the cost of high cost and complex placements

Environment Services

  • £641,000 by restructuring Trading Standards
  • £492,000 by reducing spending on environment and climate change
  • £159,000 by restructuring waste services
  • £100,000 by reducing senior management

Highways & Transport

  • £2.4 million by efficiencies from the highways services contract
  • £1.1 million by restructuring Highways & Access
  • £2.7 million by phasing out subsidised bus services
  • £1.4 million from highways maintenance

Corporate Savings

  • £1 million + by reducing properties and maximizing office space in retained buildings
  • £426,000 by reducing the contact centre opening hours and more services being accessed online
  • £989,000 by reducing IT functions
  • £550,000 by reducing communications and marketing activity

Councillor Jill Tuck, Leader of Cambridgeshire County Council, said: "These are unprecedented times.

We know that rises in VAT, fuel prices and living costs in general are impacting on family budgets.

So the first thing to get right is to make sure we don’t add to that, and so we propose not to increase our portion of council tax in the next year.

To deliver our proposed plan, The Council will have to work in a completely different way.

We will be a genuinely local council. 

We’ll hand decisions about spending and service provision to people at the most local level wherever possible.

We know that a lot of people are already actively involved in their local areas, and we want to free up communities to do even more and support themselves.

We will focus on prevention - helping people early on, increasing their independence and choice, and helping them to help themselves.

We will make sure that every penny in every pound counts. 

We will protect the frontline and will be as efficient behind-the-scenes as possible. 

We will only provide services directly when this makes most sense. And we will work even more closely with other public services, the private sector, voluntary organisations, and communities to make sure we’re joined up and providing the best value possible."