Sandwell Council facing £16m shortfall

The full scale of Sandwell's funding crisis can be revealed today with the authority facing cuts of almost £16 million this year - £12 million more than originally thought.

Sandwell's finance boss Councillor Steve Eling told the Express & Star the authority was initially told around £4 million of cuts would need to be made in 2001/11, before a further £27 million next year.

However, cuts to housing budgets and road safety schemes have now been announced and Councillor Eling said the situation will get worse next year when "savage cuts" will have to be made.

The council is estimating around £65 million worth of cuts over the next four years and today announced it will freeze members' allowances for the next two years.

Councillor Eling, Cabinet member for Strategic Resources, said: "The Government has cut a lot of money from area-based grants, which is £4 million, but they forgot to tell people they were cutting grants for road safety at near enough another million pounds.

"The planning delivery grant and suchlike and various other funding streams, which make up another million, and the Urban Living housing renewal will have £10 million less to spend in Sandwell this financial year, so it is closer to £16 million than £4 million.

"This is before the cuts that you are going to get in the next financial year. We are expecting the detail in October, but they have said they are looking at an average of 25 per cent which is just going to be horrendous.

"We are looking at management costs and how they are going to be reduced.

"The bottom line is people across the country are going to see pretty savage cuts to public services."

The Express & Star revealed yesterday that Sandwell's councillors picked up £2.1 million in allowances last year. Leader of the Labour-controlled council Darren Cooper is following Birmingham City Council's lead in freezing payments to councillors.

Councillor Cooper said he also plans to slash the number of councillors sitting on committees, to reduce the amount of extra allowances paid out.