A FURTHER 300 to 400 jobs are expected to be shed at a North-East council in the next four years.

That means up to 1,200 jobs will have been lost altogether since 2010, more than a quarter of the workforce of Stockton Borough Council.

The council is likely to close at least one but probably two libraries in the coming year to save £130,000; will cut back on street cleaning, grass cutting and flowers to save a further £650,000 and slash £700,000 from the £2.1m budget for the council’s 12 Sure Start-style children’s centres.

The authority has already made savings of £52m as a result of reductions in Government grant money since 2010 and now expects to be forced to make a further £21m worth of cuts over the next four years. That will represent a reduction of 61 per cent in Government funding since 2010, not taking into account inflation.

Bob Cook, Labour Leader of the council, said dealing with the coming financial year was; “the most difficult since I became leader,” and the balancing the books was proving to be “a monumental” task.

He also expressed concerns that the Government model of replacing grant money with local taxes assumed that about 1,600 news homes would be built in the borough every year. In fact only about 450 news dwellings are built each year.

The authority is also worried it will be made to pay between £3million to £4million to Virgin Media who are making a national appeal against business rate payments the company currently makes to local authorities. The council has set aside the money, but if Virgin Media win the authority would lose about £500,000 in business rates.

In common with most other councils, the local authority which currently has an overall budget of £164million, is also facing increases in the number of vulnerable adults, especially pensioners, it must look after. The number of ‘looked after children’ the council must care by law for is also increasing every year.

The leader is proposing to close Egglescliffe village library and is looking at also closing Fairfield Library in the Fairfield area of town.

Other savings would come from reducing the council’s Environmental Health and Trading Standards service to save £230,000 and slashing community transport schemes.

As previously reported in The Northern Echo, the authority is proposing to increase council tax by 1.9 per cent (about £1.32 a month for Band A properties) and impose a new two per cent adult social care levy.

Cllr Cook said: “We’ve come under fire in recent years for holding reserves, but the fact is we will need to use £6.7million of reserves to help plug next year’s budget gap alone, and a further £2.6m the following year. Without them we’d be looking at drastic and immediate cuts across the board.”

The new budget measures will be put before the authority’s cabinet meeting next week and then the Full Council on Wednesday, February 24.