Staff cuts council spent £10m under budget

Doncaster Council said last week that the heavy job cuts were required on top of 700 redundancies it had already made to help meet Government-required savings of £71m by 2014.

Unions reacted angrily to the announcement, and a strike ballot which had already been started by public sector union Unison’s Doncaster branch is due to close today, a result being expected tomorrow.

Yesterday the authority’s director of finance, Simon Wiles, said the “significant underspend” would not affect redundancy plans or unpopular proposals to change staff terms and conditions.

He said: “This is a considerable achievement by all budget holders and represents a real saving that has had no direct affect on service delivery.

“With a background of £71m to find over four years it is an important milestone to reduce spend in this way.

“However, people should be aware that as this underspend is a one-off it does not affect our target of £71m and does not change our plans for the coming year.”

Doncaster Council has an annual gross budget of £558m but faces reductions of £30m this year, £20m in 2012-13, £8m in 2013-14 and £13m in 2014-15.

It has reserves of just £5m and was instructed by Government watchdog the Audit Commission to increase the figure.

Mayor of Doncaster Peter Davies said: “My priority has always been to reduce spending without affecting frontline services and this underspend will give the council much needed additional capacity to help fund the substantial changes we are now faced with.

“This includes one-off redundancy costs, investments in vital IT allowing our customers to access more services online and providing greater reserves.”

Nobody from Unison was available to comment on the underspend yesterday.