Sefton Council warns services may be “stopped altogether” in £38m savings drive

A Merseyside council has warned that services could be “stopped altogether” as it pinpoints emergency savings totalling £38m.

Leisure centres, libraries, community and cultural centres are among frontline Sefton services said to be under direct threat of being axed.


While the council had already anticipated making cuts of between £53m-£58m by 2014, due to a cut in central government grants, it has emerged that £38m must now be delivered in the next financial year.

A list of proposed scale-backs is set to be presented to a crunch meeting of senior politicians on December 16, with council leader Tony Robertson warning: “There is not any part of the council that is going to be immune from savings.”

More than 1,000 jobs will in all likelihood be lost as a plethora of services are “reduced or stopped altogether”.

It is understood that all libraries and leisure centres – which will all operate under reduced hours – will be reviewed, as will community centres, parks and museums.

Road maintenance budgets will be vastly reduced, though councillors have vowed to maintain “bread and butter” services – such as street cleaning and refuse collection.

Cllr Robertson said: “It is the biggest challenge that we have faced in a generation.

“The bottom line is we’ve a very short period of time to address the problems in front of us.

“In reality, the vast majority of decisions are going to have to be taken before Christmas.

“It’s an absolutely enormous challenge, we’ve got a huge number of desperately hard decisions to make.

“Clearly, they will impact on people’s jobs, and people, sadly, will lose their jobs. Everyone is very subdued by the task in hand, but what other choice do we have but to deliver?”

A review of every single capital project Sefton has planned in the immediate future is already under way, with the possibility that projects already given principal approval could be postponed.

That includes the likes of the £5m Netherton Activity Centre and £3m Southport Market transformation, as well as maintenance and upgrades of schools across Sefton.

Cllr Paula Parry, leader of Sefton Conservatives, said: “We just have to remember what the council is there for.

“Perhaps councils have been rather over-indulgent in the last few years and we have to get back to basics. The luxuries of the recent past will stop.

“The simple truth is we can’t sit back and do nothing. We have to press ahead and minimise some of the shocks that will come.”

A memo sent to council staff this week warns that workers’ terms and conditions could be reviewed “to help reduce the number of potential job losses”.

“For many months now, Sefton has been planning for a reduction in spend of around £53m over the next three years,” it reads.

“The new estimate puts this figure at around £58m, which in overall terms, is broadly in line with the council’s planning.

“However, the need to find £38m of that in the next financial year will mean that difficult decisions will need to be taken sooner and have a more immediate effect than we had originally hoped.”

Labour group leader Peter Dowd warned that everyday services taken for granted by borough residents “may not be around much longer”.

He said: “I don’t think there’s any part of the council that’s going to be untouched. Highways, parks, libraries – it’s all going to be affected.”

source: Liverpool Daily Post (www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk)