1,500 jobs face axe in city’s drive for £90m cuts

And as local authorities across the region continue to grapple with cuts as they fix the next financial year’s budgets, Sheffield Council’s Cabinet also agreed a raft of measures aimed at saving up to £80m.

Leeds Council’s Labour leader Keith Wakefield warned a meeting of the council that the cuts were only just beginning and said the authority would have to make further savings in future years. Over the next four years around 3,000 posts will be axed and Coun Wakefield warned it will become more and more difficult to avoid compulsory redundancies.

Members voted in favour of axing the Leeds Crisis Centre, which provides counselling and support for adults with mental health issues.

The authority has already revealed 13 council-run buildings involved in adult social care are likely to go during the next year. These are mostly care homes and day centres and also include two centres for those with specialist learning disabilities.

The council’s element of the council tax has been frozen but this is before the precepts for the fire service and police are added.

The cuts mean the East Leeds leisure centre will be closed and community groups will be offered the chance to take it over.

The opening hours at Garforth leisure centre will be reduced initially before facilities are also offered up for transfer to community groups.

Bramley Baths opening hours will be reduced and the Middleton leisure centre pool will close later this year. There will also be a new charge for attending the Opera in the Park event, tickets expected to be around £15.

Grants to arts organisations will be cut by up to 15 per cent, the council will stop its contribution to the Leeds city centre free bus and the number of libraries the authority runs is being reviewed.

Garden waste collections will be suspended for three months of the year, though general waste collections will continue as before.

Senior councillors agreed to reduce their allowances by three per cent and chief executive Tom Riordan will take a five per cent pay cut, while the number of senior managers will be reduced by 25 per cent.

Communications spending will be cut by £600,000, marketing and advertising budgets slashed by 40 per cent and there will be a £25m reduction in procurement spending.

The cost of office accommodation will be cut by £6m.

In Sheffield, the Liberal Democrat Cabinet’s budget proposal includes slashing the number of Police Community Support Officers and park rangers, cutting the number of mobile libraries from four to one, increasing parking charges by an average of 10 per cent and freezing the pay of 8,000 council staff.

Management of the remaining council-run leisure centres, such as Heeley swimming pool and Stocksbridge leisure centre, is being passed to Sheffield International Venues, which already runs facilities including Ponds Forge and the English Institute of Sport.

Cuts of 15 per cent in the funding of Museums Sheffield, however, could leave the city’s Graves Art Gallery under threat of closure, just two years after it celebrated its 75th anniversary. Shutting the gallery, on the top floor of the Central Library in Surrey Street, is just one of the measures being considered by the trust which also runs the Millennium Gallery, Weston Park Museum and Bishops’ House.

The budget is set to go before the full meeting of Sheffield Council next Wednesday.

However it still may not be adopted as the Liberal Democrats could well lose their tentative grip on the Town Hall in May’s local elections.

Last night Kirklees councillors agreed a three-year budget with overall cuts in spending totalling around £80m.

After all three main parties agreed the deal, the council’s Labour leader Mehboob Khan said: “Public funding has never been under so much pressure. So it was vital that the three major parties put politics aside and worked together responsibly to set a legal and effective budget which is in the best interests of Kirklees residents and businesses.

“None of us stands for election on the basis that we want to make cuts that could undermine our priorities or reduce services but we have a collective responsibility to set a budget that combines things we want to do with things that we believe are the least worst cuts for individual communities and Kirklees as a whole.

“For that reason we have worked together and reached agreement on a responsible budget.”