By Coun Nick Worth, deputy leader of South Holland District Council
Public services are likely to be severely tested as a result of the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement this week.
This stems from his incessant drive to tackle the national debt and balance the books by 2020.
District councils are proportionately likely to take a larger hit – our main funding department, The Department of Communities and Local Government has been asked to model reductions of between 25 and 40 per cent over the life of this parliament.
These reductions will be on top of the 40 per cent cuts to our grant in the last parliament.
So you can see that if we are to continue to support and grow our local community, businesses and volunteers in the future, some tough decisions will have to be taken in the New Year.
However, I am confident that due to their smaller size and history of sharing services and senior management with other authorities, district councils will, on the whole, be able to ride the storm at least in the short term.
What we will have to do is think hard about the non-statutory services that we provide and the high cost of some of our community facilities.
There will be many options, but which budget lines to put a red line through and which not will be the real challenge.
If you had to choose, which council services are the most important to you and which would you cut? Let me know.
