Northamptonshire council meets to vote on huge cuts
Northamptonshire council backs 'radical' cuts to services
(about 1 hour later)
Crisis talks are under way at a cash-strapped council set to approve massive cuts to job and services.
A cash-strapped council has approved massive cuts to jobs and services in a bid to tackle a funding shortfall of £70m.
Northamptonshire County Council is facing a funding shortfall of £70m. Councillors are discussing an action plan to reduce spending.
Northamptonshire County Council backed the action plan to reduce spending during a crisis meeting.
Children's services, road maintenance and waste management are among the areas in line for "radical" cuts.
Children's services, road maintenance and waste management are among the areas facing "radical" cuts.
Other councils face similar issues, with East Sussex planning service cuts to a legal minimum "core offer".
Other councils face similar issues, with East Sussex planning service cuts to a legal minimum "core offer".
The government sent in commissioners to run Northamptonshire in April after the authority revealed a projected overspend of £21m for 2017-18.
But the council was forced to issue a second spending control order to stave off a projected budget shortfall of £60m-£70m this financial year.
'People will die'
A small group gathered outside County Hall ahead of the meeting to protest against the planned cuts.
As it started, a member of the public blasted the councillors who were not present.
Bianca Todd said: "There are county councillors who are not here today. You have got to be kidding me. We're making national news.
"When people die this winter, because they will die this winter, the blood will be on your hands."
Chief finance officer Mark McLaughlin told the meeting the council "cannot continue to spend money it doesn't have" and admitted some previous actions were "clearly wrong", but said the challenge can be "turned into a success".
Labour group leader Bob Scott said past decisions had been "catastrophic" and his group would not vote to harm the people of Northamptonshire, while Lib Dem group leader Chris Stanbra said there were "unanswered questions" about "who knew what and when" during the crisis.
Northamptonshire's leader, Conservative Matt Golby, said balancing the county's books would require "some very difficult decisions" including "rigorous controls on spending, recruitment and contracts".
"We will meet our statutory duties and I'm happy to say that. We're not putting anyone at risk. That's not what we're about we're not going to give up," he said.
Analysis by BBC Political Reporter Brian Wheeler
In Tory mythology it is free-spending "loony left" Labour councils that get into financial difficulties, not prudent Conservative ones.
The reality has never been quite like that. The last time a council went bankrupt, in Hackney, East London, in 2000, it was run by a Labour/Tory coalition.
But there is more to the Northamptonshire County Council crisis than embarrassment for Theresa May's government - although that is acute enough, given that the council stuck rigidly to the government's spending guidelines.
Local councils have borne the brunt of austerity, with central government funding falling by about half since 2010.
If, as some predict, it is not the last council to go under, this will become a national crisis, not a local one, something Labour has been predicting for a long time.
An unspecified number of redundancies are also expected to be proposed at the special council meeting.
Could it happen anywhere else?
Northamptonshire County Council, which has an annual budget of £441m, is the only authority so far to have formally declared itself at risk of spending more than the money it has available.
However, the National Audit Office (NAO) has warned as many as one in 10 larger local authorities in England with responsibility for social care are draining their reserves and will have exhausted them completely in three years unless something changes.
It projected that another one in 10 would run out within five years.
These reserves are sometimes seen as "rainy day" funds. They are there for unplanned expenses or planned one-off costs.
They do not get topped back up again unless the council finds the money from somewhere else.
Research released by the County Council Network (CCN) in June suggested England's 36 shire authorities face funding pressures totalling £3.2bn over the next two years.
CCN chairman and Kent County Council leader Paul Carter said: "Shire counties face a triple whammy of funding reductions, rising demand for services and are the lowest-funded type of authority.
"Counties are shouldering a disproportionate burden and the elastic is close to breaking."
A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesman said: "The financial challenges facing [Northamptonshire] council are clearly serious and reinforce how important it was that we took swift action to appoint commissioners.
"These commissioners will continue to work closely with the council as it takes the necessary steps to rebalance its finances."
