Council bosses in Newcastle have been forced to deny that they are doing the Government’s “dirty work” by imposing more than £23m of budget cuts.
Politicians were challenged by hecklers at a meeting on Monday night, where plans to slash the city council’s s pending next year were being discussed. The local authority recently unveiled proposals to up council tax by 2.99%, reduce social services budgets by £6.5m, and potentially increase car parking tariffs in the city centre by 20p-per-hour.
Newcastle City Council has already had to make savings totalling £347m since 2010 and says it must now find another £63m in the next three years, £23.2m of which will come in 2023/24. Campaigners who interrupted a cabinet meeting on Monday claimed, as the council launches a seven-week public consultation, that the latest round of cuts was already a “foregone conclusion” and would have a damaging impact on people from deprived communities.
