Hard-up councils may share work

Calderdale needs to save 65m over three years and its Cabinet has now agreed its budget plans which will be discussed at a full meeting of the council next month.

It is holding a consultation with local people to establish where residents might accept substantial savings and where they would not.

The authority says it needs to save 15m next year, with further savings of 22m in 2012/13 and 28m in 2013/14, and is looking to make reductions of around 3.5m a year over the next three years through transforming the way it runs it runs its services.

Council leader Janet Battye said: "We are investigating the areas of council activity where we might be able to be more efficient and make savings. We're talking with neighbouring councils in West Yorkshire – and have been for sometime – about sharing backroom functions like finance, IT, HR and legal services.

"Although some ideas and proposals are being worked up about this, none are yet ready for us to do anything with next year.

"We're also talking with the same councils about providing some specialist services together rather than separately as we do at present: this could work at least as well as our current arrangements and I expect some proposals about this to come forward in the next few months."