Bosses at Manchester Council have denied they want to impose a ‘cuts budget’ they eye £18m of ‘efficiency savings’.
The authority is facing a tall order to pass a balanced budget, where spending matches income, which is required by law. This year, it ‘overspent’ on adult social care, children’s social care, and homelessness services to the tune of £20m.
Bosses say they need to make ‘savings of £18.232m’ for the upcoming financial year, despite receiving a ‘better’ funding package from the new Labour government compared to previous Conservative administrations for the upcoming year.
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Executive councillor for finance, Rabnawaz Akbar, insisted the new plan ‘is not a cuts budget’ in the town hall on Thursday (January 16).
“I must stress the majority of these savings are income generation and efficiency savings. We have protected frontline services,” he told the council’s resources and governance scrutiny committee.
But this prompted accusations from Liberal Democrat Richard Kilpatrick that the Labour council was not being honest.
“It’s still cuts,” he said. “You cannot turn to the people of Manchester and say ‘efficiency savings are not cuts’.”
That led Coun Akbar to counter the budget was ‘not a change’ of language’.
The Rusholme councillor went on: “It’s a fact, when you look at savings proposals put forward, 95 percent are efficiency savings and income generation.”
Manchester’s financial woes largely stem from inflation in two key areas where it has a ‘statutory obligation to the people of Manchester’, as Coun Sam Wheeler put it.
They are children’s services, where ‘external residential placement numbers and costs’ have soared, and adult social care, where ‘the number and cost of residents needing care has increased’, according to a briefing report.
Other issues contributing to the £20m overspend include more demand for ‘universal services such as waste collection, disposal, and street cleansing’. Increases in national insurance contributions and minimum wage are ‘also placing additional pressures on the council’s suppliers and the voluntary sectors’, further driving up the council’s outlay.