Nottingham City Council is set to cut the equivalent of 63 full-time posts in an effort to close a £28m budget gap.
The city council formally approved its 2022/23 budget this week in what they described as the council’s ‘toughest year yet’.
The council found an estimated £46m of additional funding for care services and will invest £230m in council housing.
However, the local authority warned that some children’s centres will have to be closed down, and that there will be administration charges for second and third resident parking permits, and bulky-waste collections.
The agreed budget will also involve a workforce reduction of the equivalent of 63 full-time posts – 27 of which are currently vacant. These will be in play and youth services.
‘We’ve had to make over £300m of budget savings since 2010, but this was the toughest year yet requiring incredibly difficult decisions about services that we know are valued by local people,’ said the portfolio holder for finance and resources, Cllr Sam Webster.
‘We made some changes to the proposals after listening to feedback through the public consultation and have done all we can to soften the impact on service users.
‘Unfortunately, like many councils across the country, we have faced extremely challenging circumstances due to a decade of unprecedented reductions in Government funding and the growing demand for some key council services, especially care services for older people.’
The budget also included a 1.99% basic council tax increase plus a further 1% for the Government’s social care precept.
‘The amount of funding from Government for public services in Nottingham is a fraction of what it was a decade ago, so unfortunately, like the vast majority of councils, we have no alternative but to increase council tax once again,’ Cllr Webster continued.
‘The unfairness of Government policy on Nottingham is what’s most shocking. While they have taken away £320 of funding per dwelling in Nottingham, the average across the country was a £47 cut.
‘If the Government is serious about ‘Levelling Up’ it cannot continue to under-invest in local public services and hammer households with never-ending council tax increases.’
