Shropshire Council plans £60m cuts over three years

Budgets are to be slashed by almost £60 million by Shropshire Council over the next three years, it was announced today.

Shirehall chiefs said it would lead to a radical change in the way services would be delivered with a strong possibility some could be offloaded to the voluntary and community sectors, as well as businesses.

Bosses say job losses are inevitable as the council grapples with a severe squeeze on spending from Government, coupled with a freeze on council tax rises.

But with a recruitment freeze in place, they said that they hoped to manage losses through "natural wastage" rather than redundancies.

The unprecedented scale of the financial challenges facing the authority will be highlighted in three reports to its cabinet next week.

Savings

The most immediate task for the cabinet will be to consider how to tackle initial cuts of almost £10 million which need to be made quickly as a result of losing Government grants.

In addition to the £10 million loss of grant funding, the council needs to make savings over the next three years of at least £47 million.

Kim Ryley, Shropshire Council chief executive, said today: "The council has no wish to add to Shropshire's unemployment figures in the recession by making staff redundant, but we will need to reduce the size of our workforce.

"Shropshire Council has already made large savings through the change to an unitary authority and through careful management of our finances.

"We believe that we can achieve the further savings that are required of us but we will need to make some difficult choices about which services we provide.

"With the help of local residents, partner organisations and businesses, we can determine the most appropriate way to run these services in future, whether that is by the council directly, or through our partner organisations in the voluntary or private sectors, or by local people doing more themselves."

The council cabinet will be meeting every month until Christmas to review all council spending in depth to enable it to take early decisions on where cuts should be made from next April.

By Dave Morris