Fresh budget savings of £28m proposed at Oxfordshire County Council as pressure on services grows

The local authority said the situation was less gloomy than previous years but warned the growing number of looked-after children was alone expected to cost it an extra £6m between 2017 and 2020.

Another £3.45m is needed to pay for the transport of school pupils with special educational needs, with recycling costs also set to jump by £1.3m.

Councillor Lawrie Stratford, the council’s finance chief, said: “Things could certainly be better, but making difficult decisions in previous years has meant we are not in a bad place financially.

“I would like to think we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, we are on the right track.”

In total £16m of new ‘pressures’ on services are predicted, while another £12.3m of previously planned savings have been delayed or deemed unachievable.

But the council insisted it could find more than £21m of these through ‘corporate savings’, such as a higher-than-expected number of new homes boosting tax income.

They also include passing an £820,000 bill for the Government’s new apprenticeship levy to schools, which applies to employers with staffing bills of more than £3m.

The council is only passing this cost on to schools it maintains. But multi-academy trusts, independent from the local authority, will also have to pay the levy if they qualify.

One headteacher described the charge as ‘yet another cut by stealth on schools’.

Niall McWilliams, head of Oxford Academy, said: “There is a funding crisis in education and many schools already feel they are pushing everything to the wire.

“We are a school that uses apprenticeships and paying the government’s levy will be a fresh blow."

The county council said the remaining £7m needed in savings had been found through renegotiating contracts, a crackdown on agency staff spending and controversial changes planned to elderly day services.

This would involve saving at least £2.4m by replacing 22 ‘health and wellbeing centres’ with eight ‘hubs’ serving the elderly and people with disabilities or dementia. It would work alongside a smaller outreach service.

A vacancies freeze will also remain in place and more senior management positions are set to be axed, the council said.

Meanwhile, so-called ‘transformation’ savings of £15.3m – not yet spelled out in detail – have also been put off for a year after finance bosses dipped into reserves.

The budget proposals will be examined by the scrutiny committee on December 15 and will be considered by the cabinet on December 20. It will be voted on by the full council in February.

The changes bring the local authority’s total savings between 2010 and 2020 up from £361m to £377m, due to cuts to its funding by the Government.