Sheffield Council: City avoids closures – but £84m cut to cost 800 jobs

The Liberal Democrat-led council has agreed £84m-worth of savings for the coming year – though more massive cut-backs are still to be announced as the total reduction in spending hits £215m by 2015.

The council is predicting 800 job losses and has ditched previously-agreed incremental pay rises for existing staff, to the fury of union leaders.

But council leader Paul Scriven said the £10m saved has helped avoid any closures of libraries, swimming pools, galleries or children’s centres in the city.

“If you take a Sure Start centre or another public facility out of an area it is devastating for that community,” Coun Scriven said. “You don’t need to get the axe out in that way.”

Funding for the children’s centres has been reduced by 15 per cent, however, leading to protests from young mothers across the city. Parents say that while centres may not close altogether, many services such as baby rooms and nursery classes will disappear along with staff numbers.

One care home for the elderly will close altogether – Kirkhill – with residents told to find places in the private sector.

And three of the city’s four mobile library services will also be shut down, with spending on new books scaled back drastically and opening hours cut at building-based libraries across the city.

The rest of the library service remains under review, but Coun Scriven said it was “nonsense” to suggest the announcement of widespread library closures is merely being delayed until after the May local elections.

“What is needed is an innovative approach – and that’s what we’ve tried to apply here,” he said. “People want to have access to books and information in their communities. But there are different ways you can provide that service without reducing the quality of it,”

One option being considered for future savings is the increasing grouping of various council services such as libraries, children’s centres and payment points into single buildings in the heart of local communities.

The authority is also working with police chiefs and local NHS managers to discuss sharing public sector buildings city-wide, saving millions more in overheads.

Many service areas will still be hit hard by the council’s savings plans, however.

The authority will cease funding 25 of the 140 PCSOs who work supporting police officers across the city, saving half a million pounds a year in salary costs.

The number of ‘city centre ambassadors’ – red-coated street wardens who offer information to visitors and help keep the city clean and safe – will also be cut.

Sheffield’s parks will be hit hard, with the number of park rangers cut from 22 to 16. Six more rangers funded by outside bodies will also see their posts cut, now that the external funding has dried up. Car parking charges will be introduced for the first time at Hillsborough, Endcliffe, Graves and Millhouses Parks.

On-street parking charges outside the city centre will be doubled to 40p per hour in suburbs such as Hillsborough.

Museums and galleries will have to make big cuts to their spending, though the council insists Graves Art Gallery is not under threat,

Social care will also suffer, though to nothing like the same extent as in some other parts of Yorkshire. More than £3m is being cut from Sheffield’s budget for teams of ‘multi-agency’ youth and social workers who offer support to at-risk groups of children and their families. The teams focus on early intervention to avoid children being taken into care at a later date.

The cost of home alarms for elderly residents will rise by 50p per week.

A further £1.75m is being cut from the council’s childcare service, with staffing levels cut across all seven authority-run nursery centres and new charges introduced for parents.

Local schools will also be hit with new and increased charges for various services the council provides to them, potentially having a knock-on effect inside city schools themselves.

And residents will see garden waste collection services scaled back to eight monthly collections per year, with new charges for collecting bulky waste, fridges and freezers.