Westminster City Council will cut 520 roles from a workforce of 3,700, saving £29 million a year, as changes to government funding, rising costs and growing demand leave it facing a £160 million gap by 2029.
BBC London News led on the announcement on 20 October. Reporter Ayesha Buck set out the figures: 520 roles, one in five of them senior management, and further savings still to be found from the council's spending budget.
Cllr Paul Fisher, Cabinet Member for Value for Money and Finance, told the BBC: "It is a difficult day, but we're here to meet the challenge of massive government cuts and also making the council leaner and more efficient."
Frontline services
Asked where the jobs would go, Cllr Fisher said the roles would be across the council but that all of them are non-frontline: "We will not see an impact to frontline services resulting from this."
He did not hide the scale of what lies ahead. "There are likely to be cuts to services, but not as a consequence of the announcement we're making today," he said. "There have to be further government cuts and savings that we introduce, because our government funding from the Labour government is reducing by 50%."
A "deeply unfair" assessment
The council blames the government's revised funding formula, which redistributes money towards areas of higher deprivation. Cllr Fisher called the so-called fairer funding assessment "deeply unfair" and "an attempt to redistribute money from well-run councils like ours".
Other London boroughs are in the same position. The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea has said it will formally challenge the government, and Wandsworth has warned it may have to double council tax bills. Council tax in all three boroughs has been among the lowest in the country for decades.
Westminster residents can expect further savings announcements next month.
Tell us what matters to you
If you have views on how the council should balance its books, tell us at westm.news/listening.
