Public services in Manchester face ‘devastation’
Article published: Wednesday, February 9th 2011
Public services across the board from nurseries and youth centres to libraries and leisure centres are to be savagely cut as Manchester City Council deals with a 25 per cent reduction to its budget. The move will see a massive shift of service provision to the voluntary sector, in whose absence it seems services will be privatised or dissolved. Unions have reacted with consternation.
Manchester City Council yesterday released details of which services will be hit following January’s announcement that 2,000 jobs would be shed to deal with the £109m cuts required in the coming financial year. The budget proposal reveals how areas of the highest source of expenditure, adult care and children’s services, will feel the blunt blow of the axe most severely.
While some services and centres are to be abolished outright, others will be privatised or put open to outsourcing. Meanwhile the Council will ask voluntary and community organisations to provide former core services.
The full extent of the cuts were revealed at a summit meeting held by the council on Wednesday morning. They include:
- The full closure of five libraries, with the remaining 21 to no longer open on Fridays or Sundays
- Bin collection going from every week to fortnightly
- The closure of four leisure centres
- Overnight street cleaning to end
- Highways work scaled back to a bare minimum
- The closure of all but one public toilet, with the remaining one in the city centre to charge users
- Effective privatisation of SureStart centres
- Over 40 per cent of job losses at the Council to be ‘managerial’ posts
Brunt of the blow
The areas which look set to carry the weight include Adult Services, which is to lose more than a fifth of its total budget. In the council’s budget briefing it is noted that the department “will have to stop providing some things, charge more for others or ask partners or community groups to provide instead”. This will be achieved by stricter eligibility criteria for access to services and a greater “reliance on partner agencies and voluntary groups.”
Children’s Services, another area of relatively large expenditure in the council’s budget, is also set to lose out. The Council insists that “safeguarding of vulnerable Manchester children remains paramount” and to this end there will be no frontline staff reductions in social workers.
Sure Start centre in Crumpsall
However in order to reach a budget reduction of £45m, or 26 per cent of the department’s total budget, the Council is to withdraw as the provider of youth centres with a mere £1.5m allocated for ‘youth activity’. Low-income families will be affected as the the council relinquishes control of all 36 SureStart nurseries, which provide childcare and parental advice in deprived areas, and is now looking for voluntary and private organisations as well as schools to take over their running. Should they not be found then nurseries and youth centres will close.
And the withdrawal of subsidies for childcare mean that costs will rise by 25 per cent, from £126 to £160 per week, adding to woes of those with low incomes struggling to provide for families.
Savings of the £31m are to be found in the Neighbourhood and Communities Directorate through the closure of all but one public toilet and the closure of Levenshulme and Miles Platting swimming pools. In the same vein highway maintenance is to be run at a minimum, despite the poor state of road surfaces, in particular across the city centre.
Council Leader Sir Richard Leese
Defensive reaction
The council couched the announcement in defensive tones, with Leader Sir Richard Leese commenting in his blog that “[l]ike me, people will be shocked and angered by what we are having to do to balance the budget but we have been put in a dreadful position where the only choices are as to what cuts we make.”
Unions reacted with dismay to the announcement.
In a statement to the press, Branch Secretary of UNISON, the largest trade union at the Council, Pat McDonagh said: “The cuts are a direct result of the ConDem [government] attack on our City, and they will impact massively on our members and the communities we serve. The scale and spread of the reductions is shocking.”
UNITE trade union spokesperson Keith Hutson told MULE: “It is totally devastating. The effect will be very heavy on Manchester residents. This isn’t about efficiency savings; it is pure cuts. There will be an awful lot less in terms of services from Manchester City Council – maybe up to half as little next year.
“While we agree that it is not of the Council’s making – it has been inflicted on them by the government – we will always endeavour to put our members and public services first.”
He went on to question the number of 2,000 redundancies given by the Council. “We query [that] figure as many people [in the Council] are employed part-time on low salaries. [The Council] bases the figure on the assumption of full-time workers at the higher end of the earnings scale we believe it could possibly be a lot higher, around three to four thousand.”
The Council is now asking the public for their views through a two week consultation period before definitive budget decisions are made on March 9.
Michael Pooler
If you work in one of the sectors or use the services hit by these cuts, let us know how you, your organisation or its users are going to be affected. Email editor[at]manchestermule.com.
More: Manchester, News
Comments
-
“Consternation” is hardly an adequate description. Think about it, ffs.
TWENTY FIVE PER CENT.
TWENTY FIVE PER CENT.
TWENTY FIVE PER CENT.People need to wake up to the enormity of that figure.
Comment by Pam on February 9, 2011 at 10:29 pm -
Sir Richard Leese says ‘we have been put in a dreadful position where the only choices are as to what cuts we make’. In other words the Labour Council’s excuse for the carnage they will cause is they are ‘only following orders’. The Labour Party in Manchester is forcing through the cuts and are class traitors there can be no compromise with them in the anti-cuts movement.
Comment by Bob on February 10, 2011 at 1:17 am -
They Will Not Wake….
Comment by kev on February 12, 2011 at 5:32 pm -
Bob, I am no particular fan of Richard Leese. Nonetheless, what would you have him do? What would you see cut instead of what they are cutting? Where do you see them raising revenue instead? (Please note, I am not saying the Tory cuts are anything other than typical class war, just that I am curious what YOU would do if you woke up tomorrow in charge of MCC.)
Comment by Dwight Towers on February 13, 2011 at 8:43 am -
Why don’t the public sector unions act with consternation when their members take huge amounts of sick leave and provide very poor services for the giagantic increase in council funding we have seen in recent years?
The unions and their members don’t give a toss about public services. It’s their own jobs they are concerned about. I’s laughable to dress up self-interest as altrusitic care and concern in such an obvious way.
Comment by simon on February 18, 2011 at 7:23 pm -
[…] closure of the pool is part of the council’s proposed budget following the 21 per cent cut to its funding from central government. The council claims it will […]
Pingback by Fight to defend Levenshume Baths gathers momentum — MULE on February 22, 2011 at 1:15 pm -
[…] Services Directorate of the Council was one of the worst-affected departments in the recent budget, suffering cuts of 26% that total £46m. The Council stated that it would withdraw financial […]
Pingback by MULE to appear on radio alongside Manchester City Council Leader Sir Richard Leese this afternoon — MULE on February 24, 2011 at 11:55 am -
[…] Manchester City Council will hold a full meeting next Wednesday 9 March where all of the city’s councillors will vote on the Executive’s proposal for the budget for 2011/2012. […]
Pingback by March against local government cuts this Saturday 5 March — MULE on March 3, 2011 at 4:04 pm -
[…] savings of £110m over the next year, entailing at least 2,000 job losses and diminished access to crucial public services. The Labour council leader, Richard Leese, claimed Manchester would be among the five worst […]
Pingback by SOCIALIST UNITY » LABOUR STILL HAS AN UNEASY RELATIONSHIP WITH THE ANTI-CUTS MOVEMENT on March 6, 2011 at 10:02 pm
The comments are closed.
