Councils face fresh austerity cuts
Local councils will see their budgets reduced even further in the latest round of austerity cuts.
Eric Pickles, Local Government secretary announced that most local authorities could see their spending power reduced by nearly 3%.
The reduction in spending power- calculated to include council tax and Westminster grants- is estimated to total more than £1.7bn across all UK local authorities.
Exeter City Council will lose 3.5% of its spending power next year and a further 4.1% the following year.
Responding to the announcement Council Leader Pete Edwards, said: "We are fortunate to be in a very strong position. Financially we are a very robust council and set the fourth lowest council tax in the country.
"We have been preparing for this, and further budget cuts, and have found several ways to be more efficient without touching frontline services; like reducing the costs of running our offices, restructuring to cut management costs and generating internal service efficiencies. This has enabled the Council to introduce a number of new initiatives such as the Living Wage to its lowest paid employees and to continue to support economic growth across the region.
"Despite these difficult times, we are still growing as a city, building new homes for families and supporting the local economy. However, we need to be realistic. We must find more ways of saving money and will be working with community groups to find new ways of running local services. This will involve some difficult decisions, but standing still is not an option."
In the local area the latest cuts will hit North Devon Council hardest reducing its spending power by 5.9% this year and a further 6.9% the year afterwards.
East Devon Council will see its spending power reduced by 0.6% this year and 0.8% the year afterwards while West Devon council will see a drop of 2% then 3%.
Teignbridge council is also expected to see its budget reduced by 1.4% and 1.8% while mid Devon District Council will see no reduction this year and actually see an increase to their funding the following year.
The latest cuts also mean that Devon County Council will have its spending power reduced by £9 million this year but will see an increase in spending power of £3 million the year afterwards.
Local Government Association (LGA) Chairman Sir Merrick Cockell said: “It is unacceptable that for a second consecutive year, councils have had to wait until the week before Christmas to find out how much money we will have to budget with next year.
“This prevents local authorities from being able to properly consult with residents and deprives local areas of the long-term certainty needed to run important local services to a high standard. No business would be run in this way. We look forward to the Chancellor delivering on his commitment to provide a longer-term funding settlement for local authorities."
