Key proposals in the 2013-14 budget include a £32 million cut for adult social services and a £23 million reduction for children’s social care.

Most of the 900 job losses will come from the Children, Young People and Families Department and the Local Services Directorate. The council’s non-schools workforce has fallen from about 19,000 to 15,000 in two-and-a-half years – a 27 per cent reduction.

More jobs will go in 2014-15, bringing the total reduction to about 34 per cent of the 2010 workforce.

Council funding for the voluntary sector will be trimmed by £4.4 million. More than 5,500 children will no longer have access to a range of services including short breaks for disabled youngsters and intensive family support.

Controversial plans to reduce home to school transport services to the statutory minimum will be released next week.

A public consultation period into the 2013-14 budget process will include four open meetings this month where Sir Albert and deputy council leader Ian Ward will answer questions.

The bulk of next year’s savings will come from so-called salami-slicing, cutting budgets proportionately for almost every council service. But Sir Albert said such an approach would not deliver the volume of savings required in future and he is leading a strategic review which will determine how the council can stop delivering non-statutory services.

Sir Albert said it was inevitable that vulnerable adults and children would suffer.

“There’s no doubt that we will be taking away services fundamentally. You can’t cut 50 per cent of the budget without doing irreparable damage to services and the quality of life in this city.”

He is bracing himself for judicial reviews by protest groups angry at losing services and he could not guarantee that the council’s budget plans would be backed by the courts.

At a press briefing, Sir Albert introduced what he is calling the Birmingham Jaws of Doom – a local take on the Barnet Graph of Doom which projects how the London borough will soon only be able to afford to run social services and will have to stop providing all non-statutory services such as community libraries, leisure centres and voluntary sector funding.

Birmingham could only watch in horror as the jaws opened wider, with pressures for social care going up and Government funding going down, he said.

Sir Albert added: “The issue is not whether we close certain activities, but how many we close down. The issue is no longer whether certain groups continue to receive services, but how many of those who are currently receiving services will lose these services.

“This is not about the council taking the opportunity to take the low hanging fruit. From now on it will be about decommissioning services that are extremely valuable to people in this city.

“I worry about the impact on vulnerable people and about what we will be doing to undermine the vitality of the Birmingham economy.”

Sir Albert’s strategic review will look at ways of “increasing citizen responsibility”, which translates to asking people to do more things for themselves rather than rely on the council. One idea being looked at is the possibility of handing money directly to families where children still qualify for free schools buses, leaving it to parents to organise transport themselves.

The council would save a substantial amount of money on taxis.

 

 

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