By Vivienne Russell
25 November 2010
Around 140,000 council jobs are set to be lost next year, the Local Government Association has warned today.
Analysis by the Local Government Group has revealed that the scale of job losses is likely to be 40% higher than the estimates that followed June’s emergency Budget.
In June, the LGA predicted that 100,000 local government jobs would go, but last month’s Comprehensive Spending Review and the decision to ‘frontload’ a large proportion of cuts in the first year have lead to a starker forecast.
The LGA predicts that councils will have to reduce their budgets by an average of 11% in the next financial year. The £200m capitalisation fund to help councils spread the costs of making redundancies was ‘helpful’, the LGA said. But the organisation called on the government to do more to help councils in next month’s finance settlement.
LGA chair Baroness Margaret Eaton said: ‘The unexpected severity of the cuts that will have to be made next year will put many councils in an unprecedented and difficult position.
‘Local government will have to make cuts next year of around £2bn more than we anticipated just a month ago. This stifles the opportunities for innovation and means town halls will be forced to cut further and deeper next year than they first thought.
‘In order to protect frontline services, the government must ensure that councils have the flexibility needed to manage changes to grant funding that are heavily loaded at the beginning of the four-year settlement period. Grants that have yet to be finalised must be set at levels that help councils, rather than making a difficult situation even worse.’
Eaton added that, while some jobs could be lost through natural wastage, recruitment freezes and voluntary redundancies, some losses would be of ‘dedicated professional posts that, given a choice, councils would not want to see go’.
Local government minister Grant Shapps said: 'As a lobby group, the LGA understandably wants more taxpayer funding. But it needs to be careful not to scare people unnecessarily and create a climate of uncertainty.
'Instead of trying to generate cheap headlines they should be looking at how they can lead from the front and help councils cut out waste and make crucial savings.
'If councils join back office services, join forces to procure better, cut out crazy non jobs and reduce chief exec pay they can protect frontline services.'
A spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local Government added: 'The local government finance settlement is due shortly and will be announced in a statement to Parliament.
'We are not going to pre-empt that statement and any commentary ahead of formal publication is pure speculation.'
