Staffordshire fire service faces £5.75m more budget cuts
The fire and rescue service in Staffordshire faces further cuts of £5.75 million over the next five years, it has been revealed.
The emergency service is undergoing an overhaul of the way it operates as it looks at new ways to save money. It has already had £4m cut from its budget in the past two years.
The Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Authority has now been told that it will have to lose £1.75 from its 2015-16 budget, a cut of 8.8 per cent.
Last year it had to deal with a £1.5m shortfall.
The figures have emerged as the Government confirmed its funding for local authorities over the coming year.
The cuts will leave Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service with £18.2m on top of what they can collect through council tax, compared with £19.7m last year.
The authority's strategy and resources committee will meet next week to decide whether to raise its council tax levy to help compensate for the fall in income.
Members will discuss three options, whether to accept the Government's offer of a one per cent freeze grant to those authorities who choose not to increase council tax, or to raise the council tax by either one per cent or 1.95 per cent, just below the limit of two per cent, which is the trigger point for a referendum.
Only the council tax, which generally provides the service with just under £22m, over half its income, is under the authority's control.
Option 2 - increasing its part of the council tax by one per cent - would result in a rise for Band D householders of just 68p a year, from £67.64 to £68.31. Option 3 would mean an increase of £1.32 a year.
Staffordshire and West Midland fire service now share a control room covering both counties in a bid to save money. Since April last year, emergency calls have been handled by the new combined control centre in Birmingham.
Around 20 Staffordshire Fire Service workers were redeployed to new jobs.
The two fire services were given £3.6 million by the Government to fund the merger.
The budget proposals are to be discussed by the committee next Monday before their recommendations go before the full authority on February 16.
