Huge financial crisis for Birmingham City Council unveiled

Dec 2 2010 by Paul Dale, Birmingham Post

Council will have to cut £300k a day from budget

Birmingham City Council will have to cut £300,000 from its budget every day of the week for the next four years in order to deliver the Government’s emergency public sector spending clampdown.

The scale of the savings required became clear when the city’s ruling Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition published a consultation paper setting out ideas for slashing £308 million from budgets by 2014.

The document envisages taking about 10,000 people off the local authority payroll – the biggest jobs cull in the council’s history.

Almost 40 per cent of the non-schools workforce will disappear over the next four years, either through redundancies or by being transferred to new arms-length companies where they will be expected to compete with the private sector for business.

It is clear that the council’s political leadership sees Birmingham as a template for the Government’s Big Society vision, with the local authority off-loading responsibility for delivering a wide range of services to the voluntary sector.

As the council slims dramatically, friends, family and neighbours of those in need of help will have to do their bit to provide help.

One of the most radical proposals would see the council ceasing to fund care for all but the most severely disabled adults, saving £69 million. Thousands of people requiring help will be “signposted” to private and voluntary service providers instead.

At a press briefing explaining the proposed changes, council leaders made it clear they backed the Big Society notion.

City chief executive Stephen Hughes said: “In Birmingham we are committed to developing an enabling and empowering council which helps individuals and communities to become increasingly self sufficient and take more responsibility for their communities.”

Mr Hughes denied that the council was “washing its hands” of the most vulnerable people. He said anyone objecting to the proposals would have to identify where they would find more acceptable alternative cuts to meet the Government’s public spending clamp down.