Southwark propose £50m cuts over two years
Southwark has to make more than £50m of savings over two years after funding cuts made it London’s worst hit council in cash terms. Its cabinet is due to meet next week (25 Jan) to consider its budget savings proposals.
Southwark estimates that around 400 council jobs will be lost in the next 18 months with more possible losses in future years.
The proposed cuts in brief:
- Department of the Chief Executive – Saving £7.5m. Includes cutting Southwark Life magazine to save £724,000. Renegotiating call centre contract – £1.5m savings
- Finance and Resources – Saving £2.6m. Includes saving £923,000 on IT contracts.
- Children’s Services – Saving £3.7m. Includes stopping support for After School Clubs. Cutting Youth Services by £1m.
- Health & Community – Saving £3.8m. Includes cutting Supporting People Service (job training etc) by £2m and cutting support for mental health problem by £650,000. Home Help charges to rise sharply.
- Environment, Safety and Culture – Saving £1.8m. Includes raising cemetery and crematorium charges and the cost of parking permits for polluting or families with more than one car per household.
- Communities, Law and Governance – Saving £992,000. Includes cutting admin support for councillors and money spent of lawyers.
- Other Services. Includes halving the number of Community wardens, Street Cleaning reduced from daily to every other day, Charities to take over running of Borough’s Day Centres. Review of library services.