Today, Salford Council's Corporate Issues Scrutiny Committee will be meeting in secret to discuss Budget Proposals for the coming financial year.
On top of £6million cuts that have already been identified and announced for 2013/14, a Salford Council financial report has stated that "at least £38m new savings will be required for the next two financial years…"
It's against this background that the ConDem Government's Local Government Secretary, Eric Pickles, announced a further 1% cut, or around £2.5million, as part of his "fair funding deal" yesterday that will see Salford given £2,406 spending per `dwelling' for next year. The avearge cut in Greater Manchester is around 2%.
Meanwhile, after today, Salford Council is expected to cut funding for day care centres, the youth service, Council pay for those earning over £21,000 and possibly services for disabled people.
Eric Pickles has also issued a list of `50 Ways To Save' for local councils which includes `reducing senior pay and posts', `hire out the town hall', `cut spending on consultants' and `using transparency to cut waste'.
"Councils must keep doing their bit to tackle the inherited budget deficit because they account for a quarter of all public spending and still get through over £114 billion of taxpayers money each year" says Pickles
"Today's announcement is a fair funding deal that will reward councils ready to strive for their communities and gives them another year to get their house in order" he adds "Councils that put their thinking caps on now can save precious taxpayer pennies next year by cutting out waste and transforming frontline services that vulnerable people rely on."
`Transforming frontline services that vulnerable people rely on'? For `transforming' read `cut'. Will Salford Council go along with this? Watch this space…
* As part of Eric Pickles' `fair funding deal' GreaterManchester Fire Service also received a whopping cut of 4.8%
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