The leader of Caerphilly County Borough Council has warned of “tough times ahead” with funding cuts to services in the pipeline.
Labour’s Councillor Dave Poole has said savings in the region of £9 million will have to be made for the council’s 2018/19 budget – which officers are currently drawing up.
Cllr Dave Poole made the warning ahead of the October announcement of the local government budget settlement from the Welsh Government, which is expected to be a further reduction in funding for local authorities.
He said: “We’ve worked hard to protect frontline services over the past few years and thankfully Caerphilly has not seen the type of deep cuts and service disruption that some other councils have experienced.”
“We have achieved significant savings with minimal impact on the public thanks to our prudent approach and sound financial management.
“However, it is becoming apparent that there are even tougher times ahead and we will be unable to protect the community in the way we have done to date.
“Over the past few years only a very small proportion of our agreed savings have had a direct impact on the public, with the rest being achieved in internal vacancy management and other ‘back office’ cuts. Unfortunately it seems inevitable that as much as 50% of the savings proposals for 2018/19 will have a direct impact on the public and this could increase in future, so our community is definitely going to feel some effect from these difficult financial decisions.
“It is likely that we will need to make savings of up to £9m next year, depending on the exact details of the local government settlement in October.
“We will be consulting widely once our draft 2018/19 budget proposals have been presented to cabinet in November and it is important that as many people as possible get involved in this process. Feedback from the community is critical in helping us make the right decisions when delivering challenging savings targets.”
While the £9m of savings have previously been mooted by the council, it is the first time the leadership has said it could have an impact on frontline services.
Councillor Colin Mann, leader of the Plaid Cymru opposition group on Caerphilly Council, said: “Plaid Cymru accepts that local authorities face significant financial pressures but the devil will be in the detail.
“Even in tough times we believe that frontline services should be protected and we will be scrutinising very closely the proposals put forward by Labour.
“Before considering reduction to services, the Labour group need to be looking at saving money in areas like cutting the use of agency staff which has increased by one-third, adding millions of pounds to costs, since 2012.
“In addition, the bill for the senior officers’ pay debacle has cost £5m and rising and that issue needs to be resolved quickly, which will save council taxpayers’ considerable sums of money.”
The Labour led Caerphilly council have wasted money over the years, and now the public are seeing the full effect of their sambolic leadership. From the pay scandal to wasting money on services that are no longer workng or needed. Hopfully the council will make cuts from the top down and remove overpaid workers who do little or no work. Sadly i feel that contractual workers will bear the brunt of job losses. While the over paid leaders remain in place, they will do anything to save themselves while they cut front line services. I read an article last week in the argus saying that transition of parking legisliation to Newport will cost £1.2 million to impose, how is caerphilly going to afford this with these massive cut? Will they get a private firm? The only front line staff in my opinion that need cutting is the these council wardens overpaid and under worked.
Yes the sad truth is that after years of wasting tax payers money, paying three officers handsomely to sit at home whilst they haven’t got the backbone to make a decision fools still vote them back into power, it beggars belief, the only message this sends to an under-performing bloated local council is – carry on and do your worst, because how every poorly they perform, however much money is frittered away the hereditary Labour voters will return them to power.
Sadly this generation cant make a decision because they are offending people and would rather put it off or pass the buck.I cant understand how labour got in everyone wanted change and said they would, but when it come down to it no one had the corouge to vote diffrently. If you put a donkey up as a Labour candidate it would get elected. Sad times.
There are many services that councils have no legal obligation to provide ( ie: nice to have rather than need to have ) it is these services that need to bear the brunt of the cuts.
Quite simply – if we are paying for services that the council have no legal obligation to provide,then there can be no legal argument for funding these services and wasting taxpayers money.
It would be handy to see this list and the public decide rather than the council. I
Appears my comment was deleted as I dared to suggest that private business and local communities could run none essential services more efficiently and effectively than a local council.
Time for the fat cats of caerphilly council to tack a long and over dew pay cut
Sadly this will never happen
We all know tha its hard enough to get them to fill a pot hol never mind take a pay cut god help if a sink hol happend anywhere her like in japan a few years ago it took them two weeks to do it would take ccbc life time to do there a shambles and we deserve beta as we pay council tax and there wages at the end of the day