Kirklees Council opposition criticises speed of budget cuts

Councillors passed a financial strategy to address its deficit on Wednesday

Opposition councillors have said they are not confident a Labour-run authority in West Yorkshire will act swiftly enough to make budget cuts.

Kirklees Council needs to slash £47.8m from next year's budget and passed a strategy on Wednesday to make savings.

Conservative group leader David Hall said it gave no details on cuts and that the council was moving too slowly.

Labour leader Cathy Scott said the plan would be "coming forward" and there would be "tough decisions to make".

Mr Hall said the authority had known it was running a large deficit since last September, when it had a £35m shortfall, and the Labour cabinet had not tackled it.

"By the end of the financial year they hadn't made much of a dint in it, so we had to write a lot of it off," he said.

"Since then, we've learned there's £47m and because of the slow speed they move at I haven't the confidence they are going to tackle it at the speed they should."

Kirklees Council has warned it will have to follow Birmingham City Council in issuing a Section 114 notice, effectively declaring itself bankrupt, if it does not find the savings.

It has already frozen all non-essential spending and recruitment.

Mr Hall said there were no details of what cuts would be made in the strategy.

"I don't know whether there will some kind of mini budget or whether they are going to announce efficiencies and cuts piecemeal over the next few weeks."

They say a council can't go bust - well it can. What else do you call it when they run out of money?

For more than a decade I have sat in council meetings, briefings and interviews with chief executives warning the money will run out. And, now, for some it has.

But it's not happened overnight, it's been a long time coming.

In 2015 I conducted an investigation for the BBC which found more than 18,000 council jobs had been lost in Yorkshire in five years.

Now it looks like jobs will be going again at Kirklees and so will services. They are not ruling anything out.

Yes, councils are legally required to provide social care, education and waste collections - but that doesn't mean there won't be changes here either.

Extra charges for your bins? Reduced hours for care? Kirklees hasn't decided yet.

They've also not filed the crucial Section 114 notice, which tells the government that their expected income will not match their expected expenditure.

Which is a fancy way of saying they have got no money without using the word bankrupt.

So yes, technically a council cannot go bust, but try telling that to the people who could lose care homes, swimming pools and bin collections.

Council leader Cathy Scott said reduced government funding over many years was the source of the deficit

Green group leader Andrew Cooper said he was worried about the impact of cuts on adult social care and children's services.

"They might be delivered differently or more cheaply, although they are statutory they might be done more cheaply and that means not necessarily as effectively," he said.

Responding to concerns about the lack of details, Ms Scott said: "The plan will be coming forward, then we will release things as we go.

"We will consult communities, we will consult with our staff, but there will be tough decisions to make."

She said the authority had to be "prudent" and look at all areas of spending and talk to those affected.

Ms Scott also said the situation was due to the loss of hundreds of millions of pounds in funding from central government.

"I want to be perfectly clear there's going to be some pain, but the fingers need to be pointed in the right direction."

The government has said it is up to locally elected councils to manage their own budgets.