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by Lib Dem team on 19 August, 2015
The ruling Lib Dem group on Stockport Council have announced our proposals for the council’s 2016/17 budget.
Stockport has had to make big savings every year since 2010 as the Government seeks to get spending under control (in reality, while local council spending has fallen sharply, central government spending has actually increased).
2016/17 sees the biggest savings requirement yet, with Stockport having to reduce day-to-day spending by more than £21 million. That comes on top of previous reductions.
Next year’s savings will not be the last either. We estimate that the council will need to reduce spending by a further £54 million between 2017 and 2021. That will leave the council with less than half the money it had in 2010.
There will now be several months of consultation before the budget proposals are finalised in December. The budget will be set in February 2016.
We’ll be writing up summaries of the proposals in the next few weeks so you can see what’s being proposed without wading through lots of long documents. Should you want to, of course, the long documents are there for you to read.
Take a look here. Item 10 – the Medium Term Financial Plan – sets the scene for the economic challenges of next five years. Item 11 – Investing in Stockport 2016/17 Executive Proposals – lays out the plans for how we propose to reduce our spending.
The full list of spending reduction proposals are here.
3 Comments
Public safety and protection savings. Would like to see why the higher group of employees have the least cuts and would like to know what their job titles are and what they actually do as would hate to see a reduction in the people on the ground doing the job as opposed to higher paid office managers and staff. Always say you need more people doing the actual work than the people telling them to do the job.
If the Council is short of money, why is the Chief Exec on c £170,000 pa, which is more than the Prime Minister?
Stockport is hardly a massive Council!
The pay for senior staff is based on what other similar councils pay, but Stockport has massively reduced the numbers of senior staff right across the council. For example, when I became a councillor in 2009 there were 5 senior staff in the Place Directorate – now there’s just one person at the same level. The savings we’ve made in senior management are in line or greater than those elsewhere in the council.
We need to be careful though. The council is going through a transformation that any private company would shy away from, because we have to if we want to keep on offering the services. It would be a false economy to lose good managers who will carry that through.