County hall set to make £45m cuts
CHARLOTTE GREEN
COUNTY hall is proposing further huge cuts to services as it seeks to tackle the council’s ‘extremely challenging’ financial situation.
Lancashire County Council’s (LCC) cabinet was due to meet on Thursday, September 14, to discuss proposals to shave £45m off the budgets of more than 30 services over the next five years.
Savings will be made from children’s social care, the music service, outdoor education, household waste recycling centres and the learning disability service.
And £500,000 will also be slashed from the sexual health budget which provides contraception and advice, as well as sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment and young people’s sexual health services.
The savings seek to plug a predicted £167m funding gap in 2021/22, created as a result of inflationary pressures and ris- ing demand.
County hall say the savings have been identified during a detailed review of service budgets and are not expected to have a negative impact on frontline service delivery, as they would come mainly from ‘efficiencies, recurrent underspends, income generation and service changes’.
LCC leader Coun Geoff Driver said: “The county council’s financial situation is clearly extremely challenging and one of our key priorities is to create a more financially stable council that will enable us to future-proof our improvements to critical services for the most vulnerable in our communities.
“This detailed line-byline review of all service budgets has identified significant savings and is a very helpful first step to putting the council’s finances on an even keel. Clearly we will need to make more savings in the future and we are working very hard to look at how we can do that in a way that allows us to protect front-line services.
“Every council in the country has to make decisions about how it uses its resources and we are absolutely committed to funding those services that we know people value by reopening libraries, investing in good quality roads and local environments and supporting bus services.”