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£16m new cuts facing Sandwell Council

An extra £16 million of cuts will need to be made by cash-strapped Sandwell Council within three years, it was revealed today.

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A 'Facing the Future' programme was launched last year to find £22m of savings and this will now be extended to achieve cuts of £38m by 2018.

Officials had already been forced to make around £41m of savings between 2015 and 2017 after grants to the council from central Government were reduced.

Council chiefs have reiterated the priority is to protect front line services.

Finance chief at the council, Councillor Steve Eling, said: "There has been and will be some squeeze on front line services, I cannot deny that, but now we are looking ahead to 2017/18 and if we have to save £16m we are looking to do all of that through Facing the Future projects.

"We have got the next two years of savings clearly mapped out but it gets harder and harder and harder as more money is stripped out. The actions we are taking are critically important. If we can't make the savings coming through organisational changes the alternative is we will start to see front line services take a hit and things closing down."

The Facing the Future programme aims to transform the way the council works in order to find longer term ways to find cuts.

Projects include encouraging residents to do more business, including reporting fly-tipping and paying council tax, via the internet. The council claim each time it deals with someone face-to-face it costs £8.62 on average, whereas online it costs just 15p.

A 'corporate landlord' scheme explores how to make the best use of council-owned property and reduce its overall stock.

Efforts are also being made to increase tax revenue by working with developers to get more business rates and council tax from new companies and homes.

The initiative has recently been independently reviewed and was found to be making good progress.

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