THE county council is having to frontload its cuts, we learn today.
It plans to cut significantly more than the originally planned £50m in 2011-2012, but overall it may have to chop £48m less than expected by 2015.
In September, county council leader Keith Mitchell warned 1,000 jobs could go as £203m of cuts are required by 2015.
Now finance managers have revised their estimate on the total amount of cuts necessary by 2015 down to £155m. Good news, in part.
There is, however, no sign yet of where the axe will fall.
Accountants at County Hall have been poring over the figures since Chancellor George Osborne’s spending review on October 20.
But let’s hope pushing through cuts early is not just a political ruse to get the bad news out the way quickly. It is unlikely people would forget in a hurry a bloodbath.
And, with news on the Local Government Settlement due in early December, it seems things could get worse before they get better.
As Unison points out today, senior management are losing out now, but cuts will cascade lower and we could end up with lots of redundancies.
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