Leeds City Council plans £101m of savings

Leeds City Council needs to make over £100m worth of savings next year

Leeds City Council needs to make savings of £101.5m within the next financial year, a meeting has been told.

A report presented to senior councillors said the funding gap was driven by "increasing and volatile demand pressures in social care and temporary accommodation".

A further £98.3m of savings will need to be found during the following two financial years, the report added.

Council leader James Lewis said councils were waiting for a final decision on the financial settlements they would receive from government and added: "We are trying to reduce costs and work on things we know people want us to do well."

The authority has faced significant financial challenges over the past decade.

A council spokesperson said that since the start of 2010 the authority had seen reductions equating to a real terms decrease in funding of £465.9m - or 70% of its overall budget.

In addition they said they had already made savings of £730.2m, which included cutting the council's workforce by a fifth.

Lewis said in that period the authority had made changes including having fewer senior managers, with staff working from fewer offices and depots.

He added that the council had made savings while "looking after some of the city's most vulnerable residents as well".

'Plans in place'

The planned savings for the next year follow news of a projected overspend during this financial year of about £40m.

Much of that sum was down to the cost of children's services and looked after children, with the children and families budget increasing by £12.8m since August.

The cost of adult social care also contributed to the overspend.

Lewis said those services were "hard to predict," but the council had "plans in place" to try to better forecast how many people would need support.

He added that the overspend would be covered by the council's reserves and contingency funding.

Lewis said that, like many residents, the council had seen rising costs for "energy, fuel for vehicles, things like that" and members were "trying to understand those costs and think about areas where we can reduce the cost of running the council".

He said he had confidence that the government understood the challenges faced by councils and highlighted £20m the authority had received last year as a recovery grant to put back into services.

However, Alan Lamb, the leader of the Conservative group, the main opposition party on the council, said the authority seemed to have forgotten that it was there to "serve the people of Leeds".

He said he expected the situation would "only get worse and people will keep seeing their bills go up and their services go down".

"There is a better way to do it - we will set it out in our budget proposals. It doesn't have to be like this," he added.

The council is expected to publish its budget proposals, including how the savings will be made, in December.

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