Blackburn with Darwen council in Lancashire has announced today that it must find cuts of 36% over the next four years – more than a third of its entire budget, and millions of pounds more than it was expecting. Not only must it find more savings (it was anticipating cuts in line with the headline 25% funding cut for local authorities in the comprehensive spending review), it must find them quickly. Astonishingly, more than half of its total £48m savings target will have to be delivered next year, in 2011-12, meaning jobs and services will disappear almost overnight.
This is called "frontloading" the cuts – and it will have precisely the sort of juddering, violent impact on jobs and services that makes ministers quake. They have been pleading with councils not to start cutting jobs straight away. As deputy prime minister Nick Clegg said:
"Local authorities … shouldn't immediately start issuing redundancy notices for savings that they can phase in over four years and where, through voluntary redundancies, natural wastage and so on, maybe the pressure isn't quite as great as they initially think it to be."
Unfortunately Blackburn, in common with other councils in deprived areas, does not appear to have any choice. This is because its overall spending has been highly reliant on areas based grants – packets of money issued by central government departments which recognize and are meant to address specific deprivation needs, from family breakdown to crime.
The spending review confirmed that the bulk of these central grants will be cut. As a result Blackburn with Darwen estimates it will lose an estimated £12m worth of funding on top of £36m cuts to its main revenue funding stream. Blackburn with Darwen's chief executive Graham Burgess said today:
"The £12m 'additional cut' is to grants we receive because we are one of the most deprived areas of the country. This will hit local communities across the borough hard and we need to prepare for difficult decisions to come. Whilst we are looking at a number of opportunities for staff such as voluntary redundancies and early retirements as well as deleting vacant posts it is unlikely we are going to be able to avoid compulsory redundancies given these are very difficult times we face."
The grants cut has also affected Blackburn's neighbour, Lancashire County Council. It has also had to revise its savings estimates upwards, by £67m. As the Lancashire Telegraph reported yesterday:
"This is £40m more than the 'worst case scenario' the council was planning for a year ago, and £30m more than finance chief Phil Halsall first predicted in the aftermath of the spending review, now the effect of additional grant cuts have been taken into account.
The net result, as these two examples show, is more misery piled on for some of Britain's poorest communities.
Blackburn with Darwen has a reputation for being one of the UK's best run and most innovative councils, having pioneered savings schemes which have cut management overhead costs by millions. That may help it manage the spending crisis better, but will not save its residents from devastating cuts.
Patrick Butler, the Guardian
