Libraries could shut as town hall chiefs bring in ‘savage’ cuts try to save £32m.
Highways maintenance is also expected to be hit badly by the savings by Bury council over the next three years.
Leisure centres, youth services and provisions for the elderly could also suffer under the plans. Budget proposals show which council departments will be hit – but don’t reveal exact details.
Savings worth £14.4m have already been earmarked this year, with further cuts worth a total of £17.7m planned to be in place by March 2015. A full review of the library service will start next year. The council wants to save £540,000. A similar review in Bolton, to save £400,000, led to the closure of five of the town's 15 libraries.
Libraries services in schools will also be ‘re-modelled’ to save £60,000 more from the budget.
The council stressed that a public consultation would be launched before any savings are confirmed in libraries.
A full review of highways services will also start next year to save £493,000. It will look at car parks and reducing budgets for graffiti removal, street furniture and Christmas lights.
The budget to support vulnerable people will be slashed by £1.3m, including plans to reduce funding for children centres.
Proposals to share services with other councils could also save £242,000.
Reviews will also be launched into street cleaning, ground maintenance and tree management to save £150,000. Cash for bedding plants will be cut to save £50,000.
And up to £130,000 will be saved after a review of leisure centre provision.
The council plans to save £10.4m from internal ‘efficiencies’ including sharing buildings. A 12-week period of public consultation into all of the plans is now underway.
Coun Mike Connolly, leader of the Labour-controlled council, called the cuts ‘savage’ and blamed the government. He said: "It is not just about slashing money.
"It is about trying to maintain jobs and services. I want to make it clear that no decisions have yet been taken." But Lib Dem leader Coun Tim Pickstone said: "The council isn't telling people just how much their proposed cuts will affect basic services."
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Typical politicians - saving money on the wrong things. Here in the Soviet republic of Bolton, Heaton and other libraries are to close. Meanwhile the politicians give out hundreds of thousands of pounds of tax-payers money to their pals in the trade unions; they publish at great expense a self-promotional "newspaper" that makes PRAVDA look like THE DAILY TELEGRAPH with its photos of politicians; and they are going to spend £100,100 to send out text-messages about our dustbins just to show that they are good boys about so-called global warming. Kick out the present bunch of politicians and put in some that represent the people.
"It will look at car parks and reducing budgets for graffiti removal, street furniture and Christmas lights".
Stopping the graffiti should be easy enough. Just put more police on the beat. Oh, sorry, I forgot, they have cut the police budget too.
Labour won control of Bury Council due to their criticism of previous cuts - replacing hard working and effective Lib Dems and Tories with anonymous party apparatchiks in the process. Now they're doing exactly the same thing themselves.
Why bother with politicians at all?
As someone who pays my council tax to Bury, I read every year (in our local paper) that Bury MBC is one of the councils that has a high success rate for bringing in Council Tax (taking action against those who don't pay) where has it all gone?
And yet the council tax bills will be the same.
they would save a lot of money if the people of bury took there books back.
I am all in favour of closing libraries. They belong to a bygone era when ordinary people had no access to educational materials and similar. These days, we have a plentiful supply of cheap books,secondhand on ebay for coppers ,downloadable to your kindle and plenty of research material on the internet for kids to plagiarize for their homework.