Sefton council must find £10m efficiency savings by April

Jun 24 2009 by John Siddle, Formby Times

“From my point of view this is about making sure we don’t end up in a crisis.

“Once we get into debating what cuts to make I am sure there will be protests and press coverage. I fully expect a reaction from people.”

The Strategic Budget Review will see Mrs Carney’s officers look at every aspect of the authority in a bid to make savings, even “politically-sensitive” areas, such as social care.

Elected councillors will then decide the final savings options to take. If no action is taken, the council will be roughly £14m in the red within three years.

Mrs Carney said: “At the start of this process we are looking at all options – and I mean all options. We are not testing them on how politically-sensitive they are.

“We have to make significant reductions and that we need to be clear what the options available to us are. That is what we are looking at over the next two months.

“That leads us on to the next stage of processing and understanding the implications of taking one option over another.”

Staff have been warned of the budget review and union officials have pledged to fight any compulsory redundancies.

But Mrs Carney said such action would not be taken lightly.

“We want to do everything we can to ensure we deal with any staff cuts as sensitively as possible. We are looking at redeployment or offering voluntary redundancy for people who feel it is time to move on, regardless of age.

“Only as a last resort will we look at anything more severe than that.”

Priority will be given to making savings among ‘back office’ services, with common functions centralised. The council will also aim to streamline the services it buys in from private and public sector partners.

But the scale of the cuts is such that some services provided with no legal obligation may be affected.

Mrs Carney said: “I don’t want people being unduly anxious. I am not saying that come the autumn we will talking about options that have no impact but I do want to minimise the impact on front-line services.

“But the position we are in is not dissimilar to most other public sector organisations in the country.”