Newcastle Council denies 'inefficiency and waste' claim after £21m cuts announced

Newcastle City Council chiefs have denied that the authority is riddled with “inefficiency and waste”, as budget cuts of more than £21 million take a step forward.

Council tax will rise by 4.99% in the city next year, with school meal fees and garden waste collection charges also due to be hiked as the local authority seeks to balance its books. Having already slashed £381 million from its annual spending since 2010, the cash-strapped local authority says it must now make a further £62.8 million of savings by 2028.

The council’s Labour cabinet agreed on Tuesday night to put its latest plans, which also include the loss of 40 jobs and reducing the amount spent on placements at privately-run children’s care homes, out for a five-week public consultation before they are finalised in the new year.

And council leader Karen Kilgour was left incensed by Lib Dem accusations that the civic centre was plagued by “so much inefficiency and waste”. Opposition councillor Peter Lovatt claimed that the council could have avoided the need for some service cuts by making itself better organised, saying that the authority was too “reactive” in its work rather than intervening in problems at an earlier stage.

Coun Kilgour replied: “I take exception to the fact that you describe the council as inefficient. We have had 14 years of cuts and we are down to the bone. If there is anything inefficient in this council, we would have appreciated it if you raised it years ago because it would have made it a lot easier [to find savings].”

She added: “Preventative work is much more costly. Of course we would much rather be working in areas that are preventative, particularly if you are looking at long-term change in health and social care. Until we get the level of investment we need, some of that is very difficult to do and we have to concentrate on what our statutory duties are in a budget that is decreasing while we have increasing demand for the same services.

“The idea that we are somehow getting it a bit wrong is naive at best.”

Coun Paul Frew, Labour’s cabinet member for finance, said that the council’s next round of cuts would have a “minimal” impact on jobs – with most of the 40 posts to be lost coming through deleting vacancies. He added that only £0.1 million of the savings put forward for 2025/26 were actual reductions in frontline services, those being a plan to close the City Library at 2pm on Saturdays and to pull out of the Bikeability cycle training programme.

With councils having campaigned for years for increased grant and longer-term certainty over funding from central government, Coun Frew cautioned that they “can’t expect a revolution” immediately now that Labour is in power. He added: “However, the indications are that we can expect more support than we would have got from the last government and then a process of the system being changed in the years following.

“I don’t want to be hugely critical of the pace of that, because local government is a diverse sector. Different councils have different needs and it is going to take time to consult on different changes around business rates and council tax,

“What we continue to ask for from the government is and what, from conversations I have had with ministers, we will receive is a settlement that is needs-based, multi-year, and fair. That will come in the future.”

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