Hopes of no further cuts over multi-million funding shortfall

NORTH Yorkshire County Council chiefs have moved to reassure residents that they have managed to meet a near £15m shortfall in funding without making any more cuts to front-line services through an unprecedented re-organisation of the local authority.

The county council has already pushed ahead with a wave of other cuts totalling some £37m this year – the majority of which have yet to be felt by taxpayers – rising to £69m by 2015.

But despite slashing services, it still needed to find a further £14.5m to meet its savings targets.

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Now following the announcement of its second budget last week, assistant chief executive Gary Fielding told the Yorkshire Post the shortfall could be met through a major re-organisation of funding within the local authority.

While Mr Fielding said he hoped this would mean the end for further council cuts in North Yorkshire, he admitted the future was still deeply uncertain.

“We are in a more secure situation now than we were before”, he said.

“When we did the last budget report we had ideas over how to meet the £14.5m but they were not sufficiently worked out at that point to deliver them.

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“We have not done anything that has any impact on the public – it doesn’t involve service cuts.

“There are now no more plans coming forward for further cuts but some of them haven’t been implemented yet so members of the public will not have yet seen them.

“No more cuts are going to be announced based on what we know at the moment.

“What I cannot say is what happens in the financial settlement next time around.”

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Among the cuts announced in its first budget earlier this year, the county council indicated small libraries, rural bus services, road repairs, care for the elderly, outdoor education centres and support for national parks are all on the devastating hit-list.

Earlier this month, the local authority launched a public consultation on proposals to end free bus travel for pensioners and the disabled on two bus routes in Scarborough.

The move is aimed at saving at least £240,000 in the current financial year as the council battles a multi-million pound funding crisis after taking on the running of North Yorkshire’s bus passes.

Another deeply unpopular cut yet to be felt by the public is the planned withdrawal of all public funding from more than half the libraries in the county.

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The £2m cuts, which could result in up to 23 of the region’s 42 libraries closing in small, rural communities, have provoked widespread condemnation and a wave of protests across the county.

Council leaders have since agreed to delay the proposal for one year, but there has been no commitment to continue public funding beyond 2012.

Leader John Weighell said recently he hoped “a considerable number” of the threatened libraries would remain open as local communities organised themselves to take over the running of them.

The latest £14.5m saving includes £6.9m over the next two years, and a further £7.6m by 2015.

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It includes the abandonment of a possible pay award settlement for county council staff, confirmation of new grants and funding, savings made in adult social care by the improvement of its reablement service and the conversion of £1m annual on-street parking income into a regular payment rather than the one-off contribution it is at the moment.

Coun Carl Les, deputy leader of the county council, said: “This is an unprecedented restructure of the council.

“This is the first time that we have ever done our budget in two stages.

“There are some assumptions in the new budget but we will be meeting regularly to ensure these assumptions are holding true.”