Cuts at Cornwall Council

On Tuesday, the leadership of Cornwall announced plans to deal with projected 30% cuts in Government funding. The Chief Executive has made the following statement within Cornwall Council:

“The headlines are that we are taking decisive action now to ensure we protect essential services for the people of Cornwall. We will be setting our own emergency budget for 2011 in November, soon after the Government's comprehensive spending review.

“We are anticipating cuts of around 30% in Government funding over the next four years which means we need to find £110 million savings from 2011 onwards. Our message is clear - we need to act speedily to protect services and jobs. If we don't, it will lead to more difficult decisions having to be made in the future. We want to make decisions ourselves now so that we are not in the position of being told where to make cuts further down the line.

“As I have already said in previous messages, jobs are undoubtedly going to be affected. Pay and wages make up around half of the Council's budget and current estimates suggest that around 2,000 jobs will go over the next few years.”