Fears for 1000 jobs as city council prepares new cuts

Senior reporter

Thursday 27 September 2012

SCOTLAND'S largest council will have to make cuts and savings worth almost £50 million to balance its books in the next two years, amid growing fears of a new round of redundancies.

Care services in Glasgow may be affected by the new round of cuts.

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GERRY BRAIDEN

Staff and politicians will be briefed today on the need for the authority to save £48.8m between 2013 and 2015, with senior sources claiming they would now have to begin looking to cut "the previously unmentionables".

Although the package has yet to be revealed, The Herald understands the council will begin looking for about another 1000 volunteers to take a severance deal in the coming months. A total of almost 3000 have already left since 2010.Unions warned more reductions will stretch the workforce to breaking point, impacting on the authority's ability to deliver key services. Social work and education budgets, which combined account for 70% of the council's spend, and joint ventures with the private sector on services like roads and lighting are expected to be targeted.Glasgow's forecast comes a week after North Lanarkshire Council said it would have to save £74m over the next three years. Other councils are expected to follow their announcements.Comparatively, Glasgow's cuts are not as severe as its fellow-Labour-run authority, largely due to making annual savings of around £45m in the past five years. But there are warnings that years of swingeing cuts have left little politically palatable left to cut, while the reduction in public spending post-2015 will dwarf the current reductions.A source said: "Yes, we've been at the forefront of saving money for a good few years now but where do you go now? What is there left to cut? You start getting into the realms of the previously unmentionable. Stuff like sick pay perhaps. Closing the pension fund off to new entrants."Another source said: "I wouldn't totally agree there's no more fat to cut but certainly the low-lying fruit has long gone. "This is a huge sum of money over two years even if some of our decisions to protect ourselves, like the Aleo (arm's length organisation) structures and early settlement of equal pay, has paid off. And we need to look at this in the context of a four-year financial plan."Brian Smith of the Unison union said: "What does targeted mean? That it's social workers or nursery workers? "With another four-figure number of staff going out the door this will seriously affect frontline services."The council cuts amount to £28.4m across 2013-14 and £20m in 2014-15, based on, among other factors, a reduction in how much the authority gets from the Scottish Government of £8m. But Glasgow has forecast that by 2015 this could rise to a real terms reduction of £49m, or 6.3%.In addition, the Centre for Public Policy for the Regions recently claimed that if there was a continuation of the policy of protecting NHS budgets then council grants from Holyrood could go down by 9.9%, which in terms of Glasgow would mean a cut of more than £70m.A council spokesman said: "This forecast sets out the financial challenge facing all Scottish local authorities now and in the foreseeable future. "We have taken some difficult decisions in the last few years and over the autumn we will be putting together a package which will continue to take the city forward."The council insisted its share of the financing of the 2014 Commonwealth Games would be unaffected.

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Fears for 1000 jobs as city council prepares new cuts

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