By County Councillor John Clare
This has been an important week for the County Council and the main news concerned the budget.
July is the time of year when the Council calculates the end-of-year outturn, and begins to formulate its ‘medium term financial plan’ for the future. Durham County Council’s Cabinet were told, last week, that £93m of savings have been made since 2010, with excellent progress being made in achieving the £21m savings target for the current financial year (so that total savings are expected to be £114m by the end of 2013/14).
However, further government measures ‘in the pipeline’, along with extra cuts announced in the Chancellor’s June Spending Review, have meant that the County Council expects to have to find a further £88m of savings by 2017. The total cuts – £202m over the period 2010-17 – amount to almost a quarter of the County Council’s current annual gross expenditure, so the Council will have to make some very painful decisions.
This is particularly so because the Council has already made large savings to the ‘back-office’ functions – we are, now, reaching the point where the Council may have to look at cuts that will bite into valued, front-line services.
Because of the scale and range of the savings which will have to be made, the Cabinet has pledged to hold an extensive consultation exercise, to ask the public where they wish the emphases to be placed. The choices offered are likely to be horrific, with people being asked to choose between things like youth services, winter maintenance, litter, funding for voluntary organisations, tourism, highways repairs, business support and a host of other essential services.
In other news:
• The County Council’s street lighting proposals were publicised in last week’s Newton News; now you can have your say in the consultation online at http://bit.ly/DCCstreetlight.
• Community buildings: 100 of the 120 community buildings identified to be transferred into community ownership are on track to be transferred by 2014.
• Hitherto, planning guidance has set a maximum number of parking spaces per new house – a policy which has led to estates overcrowded with cars parked on the roads and pavements; now DCC is to require instead minimum allocations (ranging from 1.3 for one-bed, to 2.2 for 5-bed, houses).
• The Council has merged the (wildly different) policies of the seven former District Councils for making past members ‘Honorary Aldermen’, and has proposed the criteria of 16 years service, with titles being conferred just before Christmas . . . a nice present for those who have given ‘eminent service’ to the Council!
