Shirehall bosses were today facing up to making an extra £5 million of savings after George Osborne turned the screw on town halls across the country.

And Shropshire Council chief executive Kim Ryley admitted the authority will have to start bringing in radical changes to the way it operates far more quickly than had been planned.

Mr Ryley said yesterday’s Comprehensive Spending Review had left the council facing savings of £20 million next year,- between four and five million pounds more than it had anticipated,

Mr Ryley said that meant major changes to the way the council was run would have to be accelerated.

At the heart of the transformation programme, aimed at “getting more from less” from staff, are plans to create a more flexible, multi-tasking organisation.

Senior management posts are already being cut to save £3 million a year.

But Mr Ryley warned today that the council, which is the county’s biggest employer with a budget of more than half a billion pounds, faces even greater challenges in 2012.

It is looking to make savings of £60 million over three years but by 2012/13 it will still have about £35 million to go on current projections.

“By then we will have stripped out all bureaucracy, reduced our overheads and cut spending on buildings,” said Mr Ryley. He said the council would have to look at what services it provided and who provided them.

Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles has also warned that public service delivery needed redesigning.

He said the Government had played its part and had protected the most vulnerable – schoolchildren and adults in social care.

Now it was up to local authorities to manage the cuts and make savings wherever possible, he said.

“If local authorities can’t take just over seven per cent out of their costs a year in the way in which the private sector has been taking out much larger sums per year from the centre, then I can’t take that seriously,” added Mr Pickles.

By Dave Morris