“Painful” cuts are on the way for Kirklees, says newly-appointed council leader, Cllr Cathy Scott, as she addresses the council’s financial challenges.
At the Full Council meeting on 13 September, Cllr Scott highlighted the measures already in place to try and save the council £47.8m and avoid having to declare effective bankruptcy. However, she explained that due to the scale of the challenge, “we [the council] need to go further.”
Though it is anticipated that more drastic cuts and efficiencies are on the way, the areas that will be impacted are yet to be announced.
The leader spoke of a lack of fair funding in Kirklees and told the meeting that Kirklees residents and council staff shouldn’t be paying the price for the “government’s economic incompetence” and “more than a decade of failure to tackle the country’s most pressing issues”.
Image: LDRS
She continued: “Those failures mean some of the savings we need to make will be painful, and that’s being honest, but the consequences for vital services would be far worse if we don’t balance this budget.”
The discussion was opened up to all councillors, with much of this revolving around who was responsible for the council’s financial woes. However, Lib Dem Group Leader, Cllr John Lawson, said that while charges, cuts and closures would “never be popular,” he felt more details of the council’s plans should be made public.
He said: “Cabinet have said they have high confidence that the plans they have to make further savings will produce a balanced budget at the year end and we have no real choice but to take them at their word. But I think it’s probably overdue that the details of some of these plans came into public view. I’d hope that they’ve had ample time to be properly cooked by now.”
Deputy Leader of the Conservative Group, Cllr John Taylor, echoed some of Cllr Lawson’s sentiments and said that councillors were “in the dark” when it came to the measures the administration was proposing.
Green Group Leader, Cllr Andrew Cooper, called for a change of culture within the council with “more debate and votes on things that can actually make a difference”. He highlighted that the Greens and Lib Dems had proposed motions for debate at the meeting that addressed the council’s financial position but that they wouldn’t be debated due to time constraints.
As part of its plans to save some cash, the council is making 250 members of its workforce redundant between October and May, which lead to Unison lobbying outside Huddersfield Town Hall last night. Unison are calling for the council to reconsider and say this is just ‘phase one’ of the redundancies, with the total to be up to 750, as was originally announced by Chief Executive, Jacqui Gedman.
Among the other money-saving measures already in place are freezing non-essential spending and recruitment, speeding up the sale of assets the council was already looking to dispose of and upping discretionary fees and charges.
