A FURTHER £20m of cuts to services have been agreed by Oxfordshire County Council.

The measures came just a year after the authority had already announced £64m of savings in its last budget.

Senior councillors said the extra pressure was due to rising demand for social care and warned future cuts to Government funding after the General Election could make the situation worse.

The biggest savings to be made will be in adult social care and opposition councillors warned a £9.87m budget reduction would do “social harm”.

But during the six-hour debate, members of the ConservativeIndependent alliance rejected amendments put forward by Labour and the Green Party and approved the budget, 33 votes for and 28 against.

After the vote, council leader Ian Hudspeth said: “There are going to be further reductions in the future as there are more pressures, but we have got to face up to that.”

During the meeting, Mr Hudspeth said there was “broad support” for the Conservative-Independent budget, although there were long debates over councillor allowances and proposals to raise council tax.

The budget agreed will see council tax rise by 1.99 per cent, just 0.01 percentage point shy of the amount that would have prompted a referendum.

A council spokesman said the rate hike had prevented the authority from making a further £3.2m in savings.

But the Green Party said it should go up by 5 per cent, raising more than £9m instead.

Party leader David Williams said the public would vote in favour of the measure, but leader Mr Hudspeth said a referendum costing £700,000 would be a waste of money.

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Both Labour and the Greens proposed to stop £160,000 of funding for a controversial 19 per cent rise in councillor allowances agreed in December. But both had the measure rejected.

Adult social care

ADULT social care will be cut by £9.8m under plans which will see £6.1m of cuts to learning disability services.

It means the total cut to adult social care by 2017/18 will be about £11m.

Oxfordshire County Council has 16 support centres in Oxfordshire which offer support to people with learning disabilities and funds teams which work with people to help them live independently.

Abingdon Mencap chairman John Hutchison, whose son Darryl suffers from severe learning difficulties, said he was outraged by the cuts.

Darryl, 46, is looked after by his parents at their home in Abingdon.

Mr Hutchison, 77, said: “The council said that it only affects two per cent of people in Oxfordshire so it thinks it can cut the budget and it won’t matter.

“I am outraged by it.

“It is elderly carers who will suffer. The day centre will struggle to continue and the respite care will be reduced, if there’s any offered at all.

“People who are elderly, like me, who are still caring for sons and daughters with learning difficulties will have no quality of life left.

“Elderly carers lives won’t be worth living if they do this.”

The county council has asked people for their views on its Big Plan, a proposed future strategy for people with learning disabilities.

The Big Plan would see everyone with a learning disability reassessed and given an individual allowance based on their needs.

A further £3.7m will be cut from other parts of the adult social care budget, with £2m worth of savings still to be decided on by council bosses.

The county council also aims to save £666,000 by reducing the use of agency staff.

County council spokesman Paul Smith said: “We are having to make savings across all of our services, as are all other councils. Oxfordshire is not somehow unique.”

Environment and economy

MORE than £7m is being cut from the council’s environment and economy department.

It includes almost £3m from the road maintenance budget.

Last night Hugh Jaeger, chairman of the Bus Users Oxford group, said it was the wrong moment to reduce money being spent on the county’s roads.

He said: “In December it was announced the county council had been given £87m to repair potholes over the next six years.

Motorist Paul Elliott, of Deer Park, Witney, has complained about potholes appearing in Corn Street, Witney, just months after he said it had been resurfaced.

The 49-year-old welder said: “I was driving down there the other day and the state of the road is absolutely horrendous with potholes coming up all over the place and I thought I must contact someone about it because it was only resurfaced six months ago.

“The state of the roads all around the county are atrocious. I drive to work every day and have to swerve to avoid the potholes in the road and if they are going to spend less money it’s going to be even worse.”

The county council said the contractor had used “substandard materials” and would carry out work in the spring at no extra cost.

Other savings identified by the council and approved yesterday include about £350,000 over three years by increasing the cost of residents’ parking permits from £50-£60 and changes to the passenger information service for bus times.

Children, Education and Families

CHILDREN’S centres across Oxfordshire could be merged after an extra £3.658m of cuts were announced.

In 2015/16 and 2016/17, £3m will be saved by creating an integrated children’s social care and early intervention service.

The biggest reduction will be seen in 2016/17 when £2m is set to be slashed.

Oxfordshire County Council cabinet member for children, education and families Melinda Tilley has said she did not expect children’s centres to close but some could be merged or reduced.

Children’s centres offer activities for youngsters and information and support for parents.

Another £639,000 will be cut in 2015/16 by reducing the number of agency staff and a £19,000 saving will be made on supplies and services.

Mrs Tilley also confirmed two of the county council’s funds for youth projects are to be axed completely.

She told councillors in a letter that neither the Positive Activities Fund for 11- to 19-year-olds, which cost £180,000, or the Chill Out Fund for children of eight and up, which cost £100,000, would be funded in future.

Alex Brooks, of My Life My Choice, an Oxford charity which helps young people with learning disabilities, said the cuts would make it harder for city charities to operate.

She said: “When these funds are axed there is a knock-on effect and lots of smaller charities are forced to close. It essentially forces others to do more with less and less funding.

“We should be investing in our young people.”

Cuts to services but councillor allowances rise

IT WAS a budget that saw savings agreed of £20m, but one of the most controversial decisions was to spend £160,000 more on councillors.

 

 

Yesterday measures to give councillors a basic allowance increase of 19 per cent were part of Oxfordshire County Council’s approved budget put forward by the Conservative-Independent Alliance.

Opposition parties Labour and the Greens warned their colleagues across the chamber it was the last chance to repeal the raise.

Both put forward alternative budget amendments that would have seen the money spent elsewhere, but they were refused.

Labour leader Liz Brighouse said the cash could be combined with £40,000 from axeing two cabinet positions to put £200,000 into the dial-a-ride scheme.

She said: “This is a clean and simple approach which respects the leader’s comments in relation to stability.”

And other Labour councillors said there was disbelief that while members of the public were “struggling” under higher costs of living, councillors would get more cash.

Other councillors at the meeting said the rise in allowances would mean more people could take part in politics.

Liberal Democrat councillor for Headington and Quarry Roz Smith said: “Those who don’t need this allowance rise should not take it.

“But there are those who do need it.”

Fire and Rescue Service

A DELAY to the expansion of Bicester fire station will save Oxfordshire County Council £650,000 over the next three years.

But the town’s mayor says she is disappointed the plans are being put back as more houses are built.

Savings of £908,000 are earmarked in the fire and rescue and community safety budget by 2017/18.

The bulk will come from putting back the changes to Bicester fire station, pictured, which had been due to happen in 2016/2017.

The station was due to change from an on-call station to being staffed by a day crew due to an anticipated increase in housing.

But the county council, which runs the fire service, said it can afford to delay the expansion to 2018/19.

Town mayor Lynn Pratt said: “I think it’s disappointing considering Bicester is growing so much.”

Other cuts

A NUMBER of other savings will be made across Oxfordshire County Council services including £7.2m in corporate funds.

This will be partly down to an extra £4.4m generated by an increase in the amount of money brought in by council tax payments.

The funds will not come from the increase in tax itself but from an increase in the tax base – the total number of homes eligible to pay council tax once reductions and exemptions are taken into account.

Another £1.1m will be cut from the chief executive’s office, including cultural services.

The scrapping of councillor grants will make up £315,000 of this total.

Agency staff who work in human resources will also be cut, expected to be worth £51,000.

Chief executive post to be scrapped

Oxford Mail: Joanna Simons

THE top unelected position at Oxfordshire County Council will be scrapped, it was confirmed last night.

After voting through the budget for the 2015/16 year, councillors backed a motion by Conservative leader Ian Hudspeth to remove the role of chief executive.

Opposition parties urged Mr Hudspeth to delay the decision, but it was pushed through by a vote of 33 for and 27 against, with one abstention.

It means Joanna Simons, pictured, who currently holds the role, will leave in June and get a redundancy package including a payout of £151,147 and a pension totalling £422,796.

Mr Hudspeth said the move would save the council about £250,000 a year.

But councillors from Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party denounced the move, which had not been publicly discussed by the cabinet or governance committee.

Labour leader of the opposition Liz Brighouse said it was not clear who would inherit Ms Simons’ responsibilities.

She said: “I feel saddened and ashamed to stand here in this council chamber, as we vote to get rid of a post without any knowledge of what we are voting on.”

Council leader Ian Hudspeth

Oxford Mail: Ian Hudspeth

LEADER of Oxfordshire County Council Ian Hudspeth on the budget: “I have been very open and transparent with the main opposition parties by providing information on the budget process prior to any announcements, sharing information with them since October.

“This budget will be a major challenge for us and there is no way we can disguise the cuts, if there were any areas we could work on, then I was content to see if we could deliver a united budget today.

“I know this is not the reason we came into local government, however, we have to be realistic and acknowledge that this is a cutting budget and it’s simply not possible to have no cuts whatsoever.

“The spending review announcement in the summer of 2013 meant we had to find another £64m of savings.

“By the end of this year we will have achieved £204m of savings.

“With the added pressure from adult and children’s services this takes the total savings from £265m to £292m.

“We have reduced directors by 50 per cent, senior management by 40 per cent along with overall staff reductions of 30 per cent.

“It’s a tribute to our staff we have been able to make the savings and still have basically the same services delivered to our residents.”