Wolverhampton braced for economic storm with major council savings ‘inevitable’

Council leader Ian Brookfield today said the financial damage caused by the Covid-19 necessitated “a new way of working” for the authority, with more staff working from home and services “redesigned”.

He said the £55 million Westside project would be delayed as the city eases its way out of lockdown, with work pushed back from August to a likely start in late autumn or winter.

And the council could become a “jobs broker”, helping to get thousands of people who are made unemployed in the coming months back into work.

Mr Brookfield, who has led the authority for the past year, insisted there would be no redundancies at the council and said it would not go bankrupt.

• MORE: Wolverhampton's Westside development hit by coronavirus delay woes

But he said it was “inevitable” that savings would have to be made over the next financial year.

“The oncoming economic storm is going to mean changes for the whole city," he said.

"We are heading for some desperate times. We need to protect as many people in the city from what is going to happen to the economy – which the experts are saying is ‘depression’ rather than ‘recession’.

“As a first step we will need to look at redesigning services.

"It is likely that over the coming years the council may well look totally different from how it has looked for the last three decades.”

He said the council was likely to move away from its “penchant for big buildings with everything in the one place”.

He added: “We have got to get away from the obsession with bricks and mortar so we can focus on providing services. The likelihood is we could save millions.”

On Westside he said: “I think everyone will realise that because of what we are going through, there is going to be a natural delay of around three to four months.

"The cinema chain feel, like us, that there is going to be a change in the economy and leisure is going to become more and more important.”

Talking of the opening months of his year at the helm of the city council, Councillor Brookfield assembled his Cabinet and outlined his key vision – a revamp of youth services.

He set about either kick-starting or continuing the projects he wants to see transform the city, including the Westside and Brewers Yard schemes, the railway station upgrade and the redevelopment of the area around Molineux.

Then the coronavirus hit, and as he puts it: “It was like a wall came down and everything changed.”

“A lot of the plans we had for the future of the city have had to be put on hold while we focus on protecting people,” he says, remarking that his role as leader has taken increasingly strange turns as the pandemic has developed.

He has been volunteering at the food hub at Aldersley Leisure Village – which last week completed its one millionth package – boxing up items and taking them out on deliveries.

He recently opened the first stage of the city’s revamped railway station, telling people how fantastic it looks and then urging them not to use it yet.

“We’ve got this great new facility and I’m having to tell people to stay away from it if they can,” he said.

“These are difficult times for the city and there are really difficult times ahead, but what I’ve seen from people here in the past few months gives me confidence that we can get through this.”

Mr Brookfield says he has a number of fears about the post-Covid era, with the country’s economy likely to enter a depression and unemployment expected to rocket.

He says that he is confident the council will not go bankrupt, but warned that changes would be necessary if the authority is to balance the books.

He said: “We have been grateful for Government funding we have received and up to now and we have still got some left in the pot.

“But the knock-on effects of the virus will mean less business rates and less council tax. There is going to be a financial hit.

“We always look at the long term and we are better off than a lot of places. We are not going to go bankrupt, partly because we have been very careful with our finances.

“However, there will be problems and the key thing for us is to not just sit back and suffer the consequences.”

One of the major changes is likely to involve council buildings being sold off, a move Mr Brookfield believes will save millions.

He said working practices had been brought forward 20 years, and that the lockdown had shown that many office-based staff were happier and more productive working from home.

“Of the couple of thousand staff that the council employs, does everyone need to come into council buildings to do their job?” he said.

“It’s a better work-life balance for them and actually they are more productive so everyone benefits. We’ve done a survey and people are happier.

“So we can probably save money on buildings.

“For example we have a building for births, deaths and marriages. That work is all done online now.

“We have got to get away from the obsession with bricks and mortar so we can focus on providing services. The likelihood is we could save millions.”

While he is confident that the authority will not be forced to lay off any staff, he concedes that some services may be scaled back or see changes to the way they are delivered.

“There’s no doubt we’ll have to look at how we provide services,” he says.

“The important thing is that we continue to look after the most vulnerable, but with unemployment likely to rise we are likely to have a lot of people who are claiming benefits for the first time and we’ve got to be in a position to help them.”

He says he wants to see the council become a “jobs broker” to help get people into work, with public and private partners brought in as part of a city-wide approach to creating employment opportunities.

Councillor Brookfield also wants to continue the “life-changing” work the authority is doing with rough sleepers, some of whom have been housed at a new hub during the pandemic.

“The work they are doing is incredible, and we’re already talking now about making sure we don’t go back to having rough sleepers in our city,” he said.

He says his immediate focus is on making sure the city safely eases its way out of lockdown, although he admits the prospect of a second wave of the virus later this year has given him sleepless nights.

“At some point we will get back to a sense of a normal life,” he said. ”

Councillor Brookfield said he is proud of how the city had joined forces to combat the virus. “Everyone’s come together, the public, councillors from all parties have dropped the party line for the good of the city,” he said.

He’s planning to continue in his role delivering food parcels – one which is something of a ‘back to the floor’ scenario for the former postie. “I probably spend far too long talking to people,” he says. “I was always one of the last back from delivering my mail and I’m no different now.”