Adult social services set to bear brunt of extra £20m cuts at Oxfordshire County Council

Last year Oxfordshire County Council announced £64m of cuts over the next four years.

One year in, it has proposed to cut another £20m.

An extra £9.2m will be cut from adult social care services as council leader Ian Hudspeth said around half of its budget is spent on just two per cent of the population, including older people, people with physical and learning disabilities, and vulnerable children.

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Another £3m will be cut from services for children and families, including savings to be found in the council’s early intervention service.

That is on top of cuts last year of £7.1m to adult social care and £6m to children’s services, which is separate to children’s social care.

• Ian Hudspeth

Mr Hudspeth said: “The council is facing unprecedented budget pressures from the rising cost of care and this pressure is expected to continue for years to come.

“We have a legal responsibility to provide this care and we willingly provide it. However the rising cost regrettably means other services valued by the majority of residents, such as roads and public transport, are being squeezed. We have to make sure we have a good, balanced budget.”

The county council said the number of older people receiving care has grown by seven per cent in the past year, people with learning disabilities by 14 per cent, those with mental health problems by 19 per cent and people with physical disabilities by 19 per cent.

The council leader said if services weren’t cut, care services could account for 75 per cent of the budget by 2020, leaving no room for other areas to be funded properly.

Mr Hudspeth said: “Unless we get additional funding, the county council will struggle to do anything but provide a safety net for the most vulnerable people in Oxfordshire.

“The safety net will always be there.”

Oxford charity Yellow Submarine supports adults with learning disabilities by providing them with apprenticeships and traineeships. It has received funding in the past.

Anna Cheetham, from the charity, said: “We’ve made huge steps forward and now this is a big step backwards. We en-courage people with learning disabilities to do more and need less and this prevents us from doing that.

“The long-term consequences of these cuts we feel could be of greater damage. By getting people with learning disabilities into work we reduce the Government spend on benefits. These cuts are short-sighted.”

These extra cuts have stemmed from increased pressure on both adults and children’s social care, but councillors will not decide exactly how the axe will fall until next year.

The council said it was not able to raise council tax by 1.99 per cent for 2015/2016 as it had hoped. This would require a referendum. Mr Hudspeth did not respond to requests for comment on this.

COUNCILLOR GRANTS

• Gill Sanders

GRANTS for community groups and organisations from local councillors have been discontinued, saving £315,000 
Some 63 councillors get £5,000 a year to pay for community projects.
Under the new plans, this will be cut completely. 
Councillor Gill Sanders provided IT equipment to the Rose Hill and Donnington advice centre to help people apply for benefits online, a food chiller for mental health charity Restore in their cafe, and also funds towards the running of Rose Hill junior youth club. 
She said: “It’s been incredibly useful and helped support so many groups.
“I have been able to do such good work and help such good causes, but those groups will have to find money from elsewhere now.
“It’s really sad that I’m not going to be able to support those local groups anymore.”

ENVIRONMENT & THE ECONOMY

• Savings from no longer leasing superfast broadband lines from communications companies – £150,000 
• Management restructures – £450,000 
• Staffing costs for highways projects moved from revenue budget to capital budget – £1.5m 
• Residents’ annual parking permits to increase from £50 to £60 and raised on-street parking charges – £350,000 
• Supported and subsidised transport, such as bus services, taxis and buses for children with special educational needs etc. – £2.05m 
• Area Stewardship Fund (a fund for non-essential road maintenance given out to individual councillors) discontinued – £800,000 
• Winter Maintenance saving from using more modern technology – £125,000 
• Changes to real-time passenger information technology, such as digital signs on bus shelters – £280,000 
• Ad hoc property work on council buildings – £108,000

CHILDREN, FAMILIES & EDUCATION

• A review of children’s centres and early intervention services – £3m
• £1m of this will come in 2015/16, with another £2m in 2016/17. This is on top of an already agreed cut of £3m by 2017/18, resulting in a total cut of £6m
• Early intervention centres, such as those in East Oxford, Littlemore, Witney, Abingdon and Didcot, provide support for families with various issues
• Cabinet member for education, Melinda Tilley said she did not expect any centre to close, but instead these savings would come from merging services
• Mr Hudspeth said a decision on how the axe would fall on these services would not be decided until later next year

ADULT SOCIAL CARE

• Unidentified, to be found over the next three years – £3m 
• Learning disabilities services – £6.1m 
• A consultation on how these services are being cut is already being carried out. The council is still deciding where to axe £1.5m, part of the £6.5m cuts to these services it made last year
• Reducing cost of contracts in adult social care – £200,000 
• Changes to delivery of home personal care visits – £300,000 
• Changes to 15-minute personal care visits for some people has cost less than previously thought, leading to a saving
• Larger block contracts with providers of care – £250,000

OTHER SERVICES

• Fireand Rescue and Trading Standards: 
• Delay to expansion of Bicester fire station – £650,000 
• The station at Bicester was due to change from an on-call station to having a day crew due to an expected increase in housing. That increase in homes has now been delayed, so the council has decided to not make the changes as of yet
• Review funding of a police officer being seconded to trading standards 
• Registration service: 
• Rise in cost of ‘enhanced’ wedding ceremonies – £32,000 
• Basic wedding ceremonies will stay at £50, but other ‘enhanced’ ceremonies will rise by £10 to £220. Weddings at approved venues, such as Blenheim Palace, will also increase in cost. A £400 wedding would cost £420 under these plans. 
• Legal services: 
• Reduction in charges of the council’s legal team – £200,000 
• Libraries and Cultural services: 
• Review of management support structures - £95,000

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