Report from Manchester City Council Briefing on Budget Options held on 8 January 2015

Headlines for the Voluntary and Community Sector

Sir Richard Leese presented an outline of the thinking of the Council Executive. The big changes are a review of Council reserves and the £11million airport dividend. This has led the Executive to conclude that some of the options may no longer be required and others could be modified. The Council is therefore sharing the Executive’s view on which options they are “minded to take” and extending the consultation to allow time for more views on these revised options.

This is an initial briefing by Macc. We will be releasing a more detailed report when we have analysed the papers. Remember that nothing mentioned below has been decided upon yet. Everything is simply an option until it is signed off by the full Council meeting in early March. The consultation is still going on.

There weren’t a lot of surprises: broadly, the Executive are inclined to favour the less severe budget options. They are keen to concentrate on efficiency savings rather than service reductions where possible. However, this still means a large amount of voluntary and community sector organisations are going to face crippling cuts that will affect the viability of services, organisations, buildings and jobs.

Key Points
The Council are mindful that there is a General Election in May 2015 and so they are focusing on what they would need to do to save £59million in 2015-2016 rather than balance the budget to the end of 2017. This is an important shift: it may mean less pain in the short term but it might also mean that, if the next Government doesn’t increase Manchester’s funding there will be at least £90million of savings to find in 2016-17.

So these are new / revised options of which the Executive are “mindful”
• To invest in areas such as Looked After Children and Neighbourhood Services. Some of this might come from reserves and the Airport Dividend
• To continue funding for refuges while a review is conducted of domestic violence spending in Manchester.
• To continue the Youth and Play Fund at the same level.
• To cut young people’s information advice and guidance.
• To cut £615,000 from advice services and move from a universal to a targeted system, but not to make the additional £300,000 cut which would remove provision to everybody except people who live in private rented accommodation.
• To reduce CASH grants by around 33% rather than 100%.
• To reduce funding to cultural organisations by £200k.
• To cut VCS infrastructure funding by £60k in 2015/16 (not originally an option) and thereby avoid the need to cut it by 100% in 2016/17.

What next
Remember these are still only options and although there is some more hopeful news for some organisations, this is not the time for complacency or defeat. All voluntary and community sector organisations still need to be talking to Councillors, attending scrutiny and consultation meetings, filling in impact assessments. We must carry on campaigning until the final budget is produced.

The full reports can be found attached.

Regular updates and resources available on our voluntary sector cuts pages