Brighton: £9m spending cuts planned

Town hall bosses are looking at £9 million of cuts to services next year to keep council tax below the Government cap of 5% - reports The Argus.

Although the budget has yet to be released, The Argus understands there is a funding gap between what Brighton and Hove City Council needs to spend to maintain services and its Government grant.

It is about 5% of the total budget of £200 million.

In November, it emerged the council would have to find £20 million in savings in the next three years to keep council tax below 4.9%.

This is on top of £3 million of cuts to street cleaning and social services to balance the overspend so far this financial year.

It now appears the council needs to find £9 million in cuts to balance the books next year.

More than 111 posts are expected to be axed, including 24 positions in social services and others from management and administrative roles.

A maximum of 46 redundancies were planned but Unison said the number was falling due to a number of departures and people being moved to different departments.

Adult social services will see savings of £1.7 million, including cuts to agency staff. Schemes such as the Palmeira Project, which looked after disabled children, will now be moved to an alternative service at The Drove in Portslade.

Green councillor Simon Williams said: "We are now seeing the effects of the Government's poor grant settlement to Brighton and Hove City Council biting into services for some of the most vulnerable people in the community.

"While the council has tried to minimise the impact on service-users, it's an inescapable fact that, with job cuts totalling two per cent of the wage budget, services for some of the most vulnerable in our community will suffer."

Leader of the council Simon Burgess said "We are always having to run to keep still, that is why council tax goes up.

"Where we make savings other things start costing more.

"The costs of looking after the elderly, young people and the environment, for instance, is always increasing and we have to carry on caring for people even while Government isn't meeting the increasing costs."

Councillor Paul Elgood said: "We are now concerned cuts are going to be made to frontline services and we are going to lose some of our best staff."