Barnsley: Leader warns of desolation ahead as jobs on the line

Barnsley Council boss Phil Coppard is faced with the unenviable task of cutting the authority's budget by 40m over the next four years – a move which he says will involve making a "substantial" number of redundancies at what is currently the town's largest employer.

"Our approach is to try and define a minimum council because, if we take 40m away over the next four years, all discretionary spending will stop", he said.

"We will only be able to do what we have the legal obligations and statutory obligations to do.

"One of the things we're trying to avoid, though, is cost-shifting. For example, if you cut funding to the youth service, you'll see costs rising in dealing with things like vandalism.

"We also don't want costs to be shifted elsewhere, for example on to the NHS. But, undoubtedly, quality of life in Barnsley will deteriorate and unemployment will rise."

Mr Coppard began his career at Barnsley Council 35 years ago, with a job as a planning assistant, and took the top job in 2000. He said that he feared the impact council budget cuts would have on the town, which was ravaged by the demise of the coal industry and has seen little private sector investment since.

"If the Government does what it says it is going to do we fear for Barnsley, because it will become a desolate place if these cuts do continues for four years", he said.

"This isn't just about reducing the deficit, it's also about the new Government's ideology of having a smaller state. The problem with a place like Barnsley is that reducing the state means cutting off lifelines to a lot of people.

"We share the Government's ambition in some ways – we want a strong local economy, we want a bigger private sector, we want self-sustaining communities and we want people with aspirations, who don't depend on public subsidies.

"The problem is the speed at which we can get there as we currently don't have the economic opportunities."

Barnsley Council is "far and away" the town's biggest employer, Mr Coppard said, followed closely by other public sector organisations. Swingeing public sector cuts, therefore, would have a far bigger impact on Barnsley than in many other towns of its size.

"Since the demise of the coal industry we have always had an undersized private sector", he said.

"Doing something about that is a key requirement . At the height of the boom people were looking for things to do with their money, so they looked beyond the obvious places such as London, Leeds and Sheffield.

"Now that's turned upside-down and Barnsley doesn't get a look in. That's the problem – we're bottom of the pile."

Mr Coppard said there was a "huge degree of uncertainty" about what form the council's budget cuts would take, but there would almost certainly be job losses running into the hundreds.

He said: "Managing the cuts will really be quite complex. In four years time we will have had to take out every bit of discretionary expenditure. The issue is, in what order do we do it.

"There will be some more specific stuff emerging in September, and budget-making at the turn of the year.

"We'll be saying to services, we're taking things down to the absolute bare bones, and seeing what that will look like. If we're going to make people redundant in April next year we really have to start the process in October."

The impact of those redundancies, the chief executive admitted, would be devastating.