Lincolnshire braced for 'eye watering' budget cuts

Councils across Lincolnshire are predicting they will have to cut the equivalent of 1,400 full-time staff in the next five years.

The figures come as chief executives at Lincolnshire County Council and the area's seven district councils prepare to deal with expected budget cuts.

Officials at the authorities want to keep redundancies to a minimum with jobs going through natural wastage.

Some roles could also be outsourced to private companies.

Lincolnshire County Council Chief Executive Tony McArdle said the changes facing local authorities over the next few years would be "eye-watering", irrespective of who forms the next government.

He said: "I don't think the scale of it is like any of us who work in local government or in the public sector generally will have ever seen before."

We're obviously talking to the employers about the kind of ways we can protect jobs and the kind of services that they provide

John Sharman, Unison

Savings of more than £80m are likely to be required a year by 2013.

"We are already the council making the greatest efficiency savings in the region and we also have a comparatively low staffing level to begin with," Mr McArdle said.

Broad estimates suggest the county council may have to shed the full-time equivalent of up to 1,000 jobs over the next five years.

Compulsory redundancies will be kept to a minimum, he said.

At the seven district councils, at least 400 posts are predicted to go in the same period.

The figures emerged in a BBC Lincolnshire survey of chief executives at Lincolnshire County Council and the area's seven district councils as they prepare to deal with expected big cuts in the money they receive from central government in the aftermath of the recession.

Services are likely to be cut as councils reduce their spending.

A tourist information centre in Lincoln has already closed with another under threat in Sleaford.

In Boston, an arts and exhibition centre which only opened five years ago could be mothballed for two years to save money.

Unison, which represents thousands of local government workers in Lincolnshire, says it is pleased councils are not proposing wide-scale redundancies and instead are looking at other ways of reducing their workforces.

"We're obviously talking to the employers about the kind of ways we can protect jobs and the kind of services that they provide," said Lincolnshire branch secretary John Sharman.