Warning on services as cuts deepen

North Yorkshire County Council was expecting to slash budgets by £66m between 2015 and 2019.

But after examining the details of Chancellor George Osborne’s spending review, they now expect cuts to total £77m over the four years.

By 2019, the scale of cuts faced by the authority will mean it will have around a third less in its overall revenue budget than eight years previously.

Yesterday its finance chief, Gary Fielding, said a fundamental review of what the council did would be carried out in the next 18 months – warning it was bound to mean cuts to services.

“I cannot stress how fundamental this review is going to be,” he said. “We now need to look at everything again – what we are going to do and what we are not going to do.

“You cannot take £77m out without fundamentally challenging what we are doing and some of that will include service reductions.”

He said the deepest cuts of £28m would be needed in 2015-16 so it was vital to start examining services now.

One contentious plan already being put to the public is designed to cut social care support for more than 1,000 vulnerable people with moderate needs.