City Council responds to the Comprehensive Spending Review
21 October 2010
Responding to the Government's Comprehensive Spending Review, Councillor Bernard Priest, executive member for Finance and Human Resources said:
"The coming months and years are going to be tough for Mancunians and we have a responsibility to support our residents in any way that we can.
"There will be no knee-jerk reactions to the spending review as our preparations over the last few years have been focussed to ensure that we deliver the best services to our residents in the most efficient way. We believe that we are now in a strong position to minimise the impact on frontline services.
"We anticipated that such a situation might arise and in our forward planning we have ensured that central to everything we do is the maintenance of frontline services.
"We have a good record on this and over the past decade our council tax increases have been the third lowest in the country. We have maintained this policy by increasing efficiency year-on-year at the same time as improving services.
"The reason that we have been able to do this is because we have been engaged in a process of transformation within the council leading to a more flexible workforce and we are still aiming for no compulsory redundancies which we can only achieve through this process.
"This structural transformation is changing the authority into a very different organisation with major changes to the way we deliver services, for example through our new one-stop customer service centre at First Street. However, I want to make clear that under no circumstance is there a trade-off between efficiency and frontline services to the people of Manchester.
"We also need to ensure that we are improving and delivering the services that Manchester people want as their priorities are the driving force behind what we do. For example Mancunians have told us that local libraries are an important community resource and as a result we have invested in libraries. This has been backed up by increased use of all our libraries citywide.
"We know that over the coming years ordinary Mancunians will find life more difficult and they will need support. We want to ensure that we are in a position to give it to them by ensuring frontline services are delivered in the most efficient way. One of the ways we are seeking to do this is to identify areas where services can be shared with the other nine Greater Manchester Authorities and other public bodies in the city region."
