Dudley Council announces plans for £7.5m cuts (From Halesowen News)

Dudley Council announces plans for £7.5m cuts

9:00am Sunday 5th February 2012 in News

DUDLEY Council's budget for the coming financial year will see a further £7.5millon shaved from the authority's spending.

Councillors hope to ease the pain of budget cuts for residents by freezing council tax with a £2.8million grant from the government but concede redundancies at the authority are inevitable.

The budget, which will go before Dudley's cabinet on Wednesday February 8, follows a tough round of cuts which has seen the council shave £22million of its spending this year.

Councillor David Blood, cabinet member for finance, said: “We have listened to what people have had to say in drawing up what we think is a fair, but sensible budget.

“We have changed a number of proposals after extensive consultation, balancing the need to maintain more than 800 services at the highest level possible.”

Council leader, Cllr Les Jones, said: “We have shown over the past year that compulsory redundancies have been the last resort and we will continue to reduce staffing numbers where necessary through a mixture of freezing vacant posts, redeployment into alternative jobs, job sharing, retirements and voluntary redundancies.

The budget will go before a meeting of full council for final approval on Monday March 5.