The Council Finance Director did a presentation on the  Financial Plan of the County Council on Monday night at the public Durham AAP meeting.

What was interesting was that the Council is planning to continue to focus on management savings, support savings, efficiencies and increased fees and charges to meet the savings they are making.

What was most revealing however was that the Director said that part of the savings being made were still part of the ongoing Local Government Review – The merging of the districts and county council. So when The Labour leader of the council says that all the savings the Council is having to make are because of the Government, he is not telling the whole story.

If a newly formed, newly organised, newly efficient council can suddenly find millions of pounds more in savings and the finance director says a lot of this is down to merging the councils, then only a few things are possible:

Either the Council still hasn’t finished reorganising – it hasn’t – in which case a chunk of the current savings are part of this.

Or the Council did finish reorganising – but didn’t make the savings it could have.

We are told that two positions in finance costing around £150,000 have gone recently and that this will have no impact whatsoever on service levels – straight from senior officers in a public meeting. So even if these positions were not part of the original reorganisation perhaps they should have been?

I am told that as much as half of the savings being made in one department will be through efficiencies not affecting frontline services. So even if they are not part of the original reorganisation perhaps they should have been.

So to cut to the chase all this implies that at least half of the savings Durham County Council are making will be efficiency savings not affecting frontline services.

Next time Mr Henig or other Labour councillors say it is ALL because of the government, take it with a large pinch of salt. And wonder why they didn’t make a lot of these savings three years ago which would mean we now had more money in the bank.

What the public and opposition councillors, Labour backbenchers and the Labour Cabinet must now do is question what is being spent.  For example the hundreds of thousands of pounds on Labour’s publicity rag County News. So that as many frontline services as possible are protected – and indeed improved.

My recent success at getting the 50% council tax discount for properties left empty  scrapped is adding over £2m to the pot this year. Everyone needs to look for other ways of raising and saving money and also questioning if everything the council does is necessary.

I believe that this can reduce the important frontline service cuts considerably. A huge part of doing this must rest with the senior council officers which the taxpayer are paying huge amounts to do this job, and the Labour Councillors in Cabinet.