More jobs facing axe as £25m budget cuts loom over Sandwell Council
Up to 400 more jobs could go at Sandwell Council which faces a further £25 million of budget cuts over the next four years, the Express & Star can reveal today.
It was faced with making cuts of £75m by 2015 and about 600 jobs have gone.
However, finance boss Councillor Steve Eling today revealed that, after the Chancellor's Autumn Statement last month, they now need cuts of £100m by 2017 with up to 400 staff at risk.
Services such as allotments and community centres may charge more.
Councillor Eling, cabinet member for strategic resources and deputy council leader, said the amount to save by 2015 had also increased by £10m to £85m.
"The cuts that we have got to find have gone up from £75m to £100m on the back of the Autumn Statement in December.
"They have increased the level of cuts by 2015 and it has now been upped to £85m, by 2015."
He added: "We are already at about 600 jobs lost.
"We didn't have to make 600 redundancies, but there could still be potentially another 400 jobs go on top of where we already are."
Residents now face increased costs for services, or they face being scrapped completely, he added.
"Things have really got to go or pay their own way.
"It means that while services get wiped out, if we have to keep some things going, things will have to be paid for and we will not have the money to pay for them. Either people pay for them or they do not happen."
He vowed to safeguard as many services as possible.
"I would rather see facilities mothballed that closed so we can revive them when better times come," he said.