Poorest could be hit the hardest by ‘£8m’ savings plan

Published: 27 May 2010
by RICHARD OSLEY

FINANCE chiefs at the Town Hall fear they will have to carve around £8million of cuts from the council’s budgets to fall in line with the government’s hardline economic savings plan.

The precise figure for the amount of cuts will not be known until the new Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government reveals its full emergency budget. 

But there are already worries that money for housing and government cash normally reserved for local authorities in charge of areas with significant deprivation will be hacked back. Officials and councillors have spent the aftermath of speeches by Chancellor George Osborne and his Lib Dem colleague David Laws on Monday taking briefings about the level of cuts. 

The new Labour administration was always expecting to have to find at least one or two million pounds of savings but have been left wincing at the prospect of deeper cuts. 

Labour finance chief Councillor Theo Blackwell said: “To us, they  [the government] are going down the wrong route by taking money out of the economy in the first year. If they make the cuts to new housing projects, to projects to build new schools then the knock-on effect is that you are effectively taking money away from the people who are working on that project. You are taking away their incomes.

“The figures we have seen show that in the first year, Camden is ­facing cuts of between £5m and £8m. If you put that into context, raising council tax by 1 percent would save one million.

“When we took over this month, we were told that – based on assumptions made by the Conservatives on the premise they would get into government – there is already a £60m gap between what the council wanted to spend going forward and the money available over the next few years. 

“Now that gap will be £70m.”