ON 12 November 2014, Confidential published a bleak article detailing how 600 jobs could be lost as Manchester City Council faced up to a further £59m in budget cuts - read here.
"This is not a good news story – it’s almost £50m of cuts in 2015/16 rather than almost £60m."
The news followed £250m of previous budget cuts between 2011 and 2015 after deep reductions in central government funding, with the potential to rise to £91m by 2016/17.
Manchester City Council had good reason to grumble.
Manchester, despite having the fourth highest level of deprivation in the country, was to bare the brunt of the eighth biggest spending cut per resident of all councils in England.
Manchester has seen its funding per home cut by £253.76 – the highest figure in all of Greater Manchester – compared with only £62.57 in Trafford and as little as £14.81 per home in the South East.
To offset the £59m in cuts, the Council have announced their intention to use £9m of the £11m interim dividend gained from their 55% stake in Manchester Airport.
Manchester Airport Group (MAG) announced £421m of revenue and £117.6m operating profit between April and September 2014. The City Council received £11m of a £31m dividend paid to shareholders, while the other nine councils within the Greater Manchester Combined Authority received £1m each.
The Council owns a 55% stake in Manchester Airport
The Council now faces up to £50m in 2015/16 rather than £59m (well, it's a start). The remaining £2m from the interim dividend will go towards supporting the 2016/17 budget.
Airport dividend or not, it's still grim news for the Council's workforce, with up to 550 full time posts still expected to go (accounting for almost 20% of the required savings).
Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council, said: “Manchester has faced successive unfair financial settlements from this government which have made delivering services to the city’s people ever more challenging.
"This is not a good news story – it’s almost £50m of cuts in 2015/16 rather than almost £60m - but the extra money through our stake in the airport has at least allowed us to look again at the budget options we had announced in November.
“The picture has changed and we want to give people the most up-to-date information. We still need to hear their views which will inform some of the difficult decisions we still have to take around the forthcoming budget.”
In the updated provisional 2015/16 budget - which is still subject to consultation - it was announced that £3.5m could be made available to the Childrens and Families directorate and just over £1m to bolster the city's cleaning, waste and recycling programme.
The draft budget also included:
- A reduction in funding to advice services by £615,000 rather than £915,000.
- a redesigned community grants scheme to avoid ending CASH grants for community projects.
- A case-by-case review to avoid cutting 40 out of 95 school crossings.
- Maintaining free swimming for under-16s and over-60s.
- £440,000 to help attract investment in parks.
- £200,000 to tackle noise nuisance and anti-social behaviour.
Councillor John Flanagan, Executive Member for Finance, said: “We are determined to do the best we can for Manchester people with the limited resources available to us.
"The scale of cuts to our funding mean some very difficult decisions about service reductions will have to be made."
Those that want to give their views on the budget options have until 18 February to do so. For more information visit: www.manchester.gov.uk/budget
The draft budget will now be considered by the council’s various scrutiny committees. The final budget will then be decided by full council at the start of March.
