PAPERCLIPS, fireworks and school dinners are in the firing line as Halton Council battles to get its finances under control.

The authority needs to make £4.2 million in savings next year if it is to balance its budget, even after increasing council tax by the maximum amount allowed.

Residents are facing a 3.99% hike in tax from April, which would see most Runcorn and Widnes residents pay around £50 more per year.

But the council is still in dire financial straits, with a predicted budget hole of £5.1 million this year forcing it to halt all non-essential spending and look for further cuts next year.

Councillors are aiming to fund 'external funds' to pay for the annual firework display.

In proposals to be discussed by the council’s executive board next Thursday (February 27), the local authority has suggested a number of ways to either cut spending or boost income.

The council will ask children and their parents to pay more for snacks and unhealthy school food, which it hopes will raise £125,000.

There will also be a 200% premium on Council Tax for the 51 properties in the borough that have been empty for more than five years and a single £35 annual charge for collection of green waste, as opposed to £32 when paying online or £37 when paying in person.

Among the cuts being considered, the council is proposing to save:

  • £200,000 by cutting the budget for community and children’s centres;
  • £50,000 by asking staff to supply their own stationery;
  • £226,000 by not taking minutes at some meetings, allowing it to lay off nine full-time employees;
  • £40,000 by replacing plastic water bottles with reusable ones in schools;
  • £48,000 by finding “alternative funding” for the borough’s fireworks display.

These plans will need to be approved by the executive board next Thursday and then signed off at a full council meeting in March, but given Labour’s dominance of the council they are unlikely to change significantly.

Even with these savings, the council expects to make yet more cuts over the next three years.

As well as a £5.1 million overspend forecast for this year – mainly a result of rising expenditure on children’s services and adult social care – the council expects a budget gap of £7.9 million next year.

This is forecast to be followed by a £15 million shortfall in 2021/22 and a £4.4 million gap the year after that.

With the council’s reserves sitting at just £5 million, its ability to cover any overspend is extremely limited.

In November, the council’s chief finance officer Ed Dawson described the authority’s situation as “scary”.

In the same month, executive member for resources Cllr Mike Wharton said the council’s spiralling finances were “clearly the inevitable consequence of the huge cuts in government funding which Halton has suffered since 2010, at a time when demand for social care services in particular continues to rise”.

Over the past decade, the council has seen its budget fall by nearly a fifth – almost double the national average.