‘Tough but fair’ City Hall plans to reduce pensioners’ home service as part of £50m savings - child and elderly care hit in budget

Published: 25 June 2010
by JAMIE WELHAM

HOME care for the elderly, childcare places and leisure facilities are the high-profile casualties after Westminster Council delivered plans to slash more than £50million from its budget.

Melvyn Caplan, the council’s head of finance, said the package of cuts was “tough but fair”, and that the vast majority of savings would not hit the most vulnerable, but would come from back-room operations.

Under plans to make savings of £54m over three years to plug the £20m black hole in City Hall’s coffers, senior councillors will consider proposals to dramatically reduce the number of elderly residents receiving free home care – cutting the number by a third, around 3,000 people.

Job losses are also looming, with 70 posts, around half from the finance department, set to go and the bulk of the remainder coming from controversial proposals to merge City Hall’s education department with Hammersmith and Fulham Council (H&F).

Other major cuts include reducing the numbers of youth workers, renting out the remaining council-controlled car parks to private contractors, and scrapping the garden waste recycling service. 

There will also be increased charges for public toilets and for residents wanting to discuss planning applications.

It follows £5.7m of cuts unveiled by central government earlier this month and housing benefit reforms that MP Karen Buck has warned will push around 8,000 of the poorest families out of the borough. Opposition leaders say every resident in the borough will feel the effect of what they are labelling a “financial fiasco”.

Cllr Caplan said: “We are now filling in the detail. The financial year that has just gone we spent just over £250m. The affordability is somewhere between £230 and £235, leaving a structural deficit. We’re one of only three boroughs in London that provide some of these daycare services to people with moderate needs, something where we are out of line. The growth in the adult services budget has grown dramatically, but the funding hasn’t, it’s as simple as that.

“It is likely there will be job losses but we don’t envisage a large number of compulsory redundancies. We want to protect front-line people.

“We’re looking to reorganisation the education department with H&F. Basic scenario is we are a very small education authority, so we duplicate everything we do in terms of back office, from director of education to all functions. 

“We’ve got lots of academies and lots of church schools, so the actual number of schools is quite small. We don’t have direct responsibility for day-to-day running. We are genuinely talking about the back office side. We think it would be a better service.

“Some people will find these decisions difficult to stomach. We have looked long and hard to protect the most vulnerable. There are people who will say, ‘well you should be doing this, this and this’, but ultimately it comes down to a choice.”

Paul Dimoldenberg, leader of the Labour group, said: “Every street will be swept less, every person who visits a library will have less choice, elderly people will get fewer services and many will pay more, and there will be less opportunity for young people to play sport. 

“Using public toilets will cost more, there will be fewer day nurseries and less recycling. On top of this, the Conservative/Liberal Democrat government has already cut a further £5.7m from Westminster and there will be more cuts and job losses to come over the next five years.”

Westminster Council’s cabinet is set to vote on the planned spending cuts on June 28.