SWEEPING changes will be made to council-run services as local authorities begin to look at ways to tighten their belts in the face of dramatic cuts in government funding.

While council budgets have been streamlined and trimmed to make way for the unavoidable reductions, some Dorset councils have begun to look at new radical ways to cut their costs.

Leader of Christchurch Borough Council, Cllr Alan Griffiths, says budgets have been squeezed so tight that combining services with other authorities is the only viable next step.

Cllr Griffiths said: “We would look at combining the whole of our services if we could maintain the quality we are currently providing and cut costs at the same time.

“Retaining local control is very important but if we could make this move without compromising this, then yes, we will look at any service.

“Whichever government is in place in a year’s time, there will not be any public service that can be immune from these cuts. We need to start acting now.”

Cllr Griffiths predicts that over the next two years there will be a 10 per cent reduction in the central government grant for the borough, which could severely affect the council as nearly 75 per cent of what the council spends comes from government funds.

And he said that if there were a business case for it, the council would look at working with the other district councils under one chief executive, provided the quality of service to the public did not drop.

He said: “We have reduced our budgets as much as we can and now the only possible change will be to the services.

“But the last thing we want is for our residents to have to be calling a call centre miles away to have a simple question answered.

“At the end of the day this is going to be an extremely difficult time, not just for us but for authorities everywhere.”

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