County facing £69m budget cuts gives service pledge to residents

The newly-published Council Plan 2011-14, sets out the authority’s priorities for the next three years and shows how it will address them.

In their introduction to the plan, council leader John Weighell and chief executive Richard Flinton acknowledge that the Government’s measures to tackle the national debt crisis are having a severe impact on North Yorkshire County Council’s budget.

“This situation may not be of the council’s making, but we must live with the consequences and ensure we make the right decisions, even where these are difficult,” they say.

“Whilst the need to deliver financial savings is of the utmost importance, the county council will continue to deliver key services that look after local people and help people to go about their daily business.

“We have consistently been regarded as a high-performing council and we must continue to deliver our services in the most effective way possible.

“Whilst we may have fewer priorities, those areas of priority will be delivered to the best possible standard.”

The council has identified four priorities for the next three years: protecting and supporting vulnerable people; supporting economic growth and employment; improving accessibility for all communities and supporting active communities; and managing the environment and promoting environmental sustainability.

The Council Plan acknowledges that delivering and co-ordinating services requires certain support systems to be in place.

But, it says, “we realise that every pound spent on running the council is a pound that is not spent on front-line services”.

Head of policy and partnerships Neil Irving said: “We face cuts of £69m over the next four years with an immediate £37m needed to be found over the first year, the current financial year.

“We have a total annual budget of £880m but a fair amount of that is to do with school grants which takes care of at least £400m to start with so the amount we are actually cutting in percentage terms is nine per cent.

“We have made staff cuts of £2m, imposed pay freezes, councillors have agreed to pay freezes in their allowances and mileage rates – down from 47p per mile to 40p and services such as libraries have been hit.”

Mr Irving explained that the authority had started a “one-council approach” and were attempting to bring together activities across the council to make them more consistent and cost-effective.

He said: “We have been recognised as a high-performing council and we intend to continue to be recognised as such albeit in a different financial environment.

“Most of the cuts are going to be carried out over the first couple of years and although much of the cuts, about half, involve back office functions, I think some people will notice though it all depends on the services they require.”

Mr Irving admitted that the process would be difficult for staff and hundreds of jobs would have to go, but was adamant there could be positive outcomes for taxpayers.

“It is painful, we are having to reduce services and make staff redundant – 330 fewer posts than we have last year,” he said.

“Seventy-six compulsory redundancies have been made, though we have a large number of people who work a very small number of hours.

“It’s been a very difficult exercise but it’s not all gloom and doom.

“We are in the middle of a £15m procurement exercise to enable people who live in market towns and rural areas to get Broadband where the private sector was not interested in supplying it for commercial reasons and we are also involved in the Local Enterprise Partnership designed to achieve economic growth.”