Nottingham highlights ‘tipping point’ for council budget

Nottingham City Council is aiming to save another £27 million its budget next year, but has warned that rising costs and funding cuts have left it at tipping point.

The council, which has seen its grant funding cut by half in the last three years alone, has managed to identify £21 million of savings to date, meaning an extra £6 million of savings needs to be found to balance the budget.

Highlighting the rising costs of adult social care as the key challenge in its finances, the council estimates that social care services now make up 70 per cent of the council’s entire budget – meaning the funding for other services like leisure, highways and parks is being drastically squeezed.

Proposed cuts include integrating parks and street scene services, a reductions in youth services, reviewing transport services for adults, reviewing fees and charges for leisure centres, reducing funding for weight management, smoking cessation and drug/alcohol services, and supporting more older people in their own homes rather than in residential care.

Graham Chapman, deputy leader of the council, said: “The government has reduced the amount of grant funding it provides the council by half in the last three years alone and by a staggering 80 per cent since austerity started in 2010, meaning it is dumping the financial burden for providing local services such as care for the elderly and disabled on local taxpayers. We have tried to manage but have reached a tipping point, where we have to make the really difficult decisions we have been warning about. Austerity has costs.

“Not only that but the government has continued to treat Nottingham unfairly, with local households losing more than affluent areas, and missed Nottingham out in favour of richer places down south when handing out special funds to soften the blow of cuts. Unless the government comes up with funding to plug the gap it has created in caring for the elderly and disabled, we will be forced to find ways to make further savings in the New Year, which inevitably will mean that other services will unfortunately suffer.”