Party leaders meet to discuss Leeds budget cuts

Leaders of the five main political parties on Leeds council will today hold a summit meeting to discuss the £150 million government cuts faced by the authority over the next four years. Leeds council and Labour leader Keith Wakefield, Conservative Andrew Carter, Liberal Democrat Stewart Golton, Morley Borough Independent's Robert Finnigan and the Green Party's Ann Blackburn will sit in private around a table at the Civic Hall today to look at areas where the cuts could fall. The talks come as councillors yesterday at an executive board meeting at Leeds Civic Hall were told that there was an overall overspend of £8.5 million projected for the council after six months of the financial year. Council leader Keith Wakefield said the leaders needed to ask themselves what services they wanted the council to provide. He added: "We have to look at what we can run, what partnerships we can form to deliver services and what services we have to stop. Our current position is not sustainable." Liberal Democrat Stewart Golton said: "It is important to tackle some of the real issues we face. Given the huge cuts we face, the traditional departmental salami slicing will not work. We need to make sure that services that are essential are done well and the ones that perhaps we don't need to do are deprioritised until the economic environment improves." Conservative Andrew Carter said: "There are going to be some very difficult decisions to take, some of which we can make together. There will be differences of opinion and we won't agree on everything." Green leader Ann Blackburn urged the leaders to leave politics out of the discussions. She added: 'We have to come together to do our best for the people of Leeds." Schemes mothballed The discussions come as executive board members heard that the council's five-year capital programme was 'not sustainable in the long-term' and that the 'phasing' of schemes would be necessary. £5.7 million worth of schemes were mothballed into the reserved capital programme and were 'unlikely to proceed or postponed', including £3.3 million for highways maintenance. It was recommended that further business cases will be considered for 42 projects including work to Otley Civic Centre, minor traffic management schemes and extensions to city cemeteries. Several hundred projects were recommended to progress. The full agenda item 8 report can be found here. A £250,000 business support scheme for Kirkgate Market was given the go-ahead. Criticism over letter Carter, meanwhile, attacked the administration for sending a letter out to all its 31,000 employees about cutbacks and job losses at the council - when 14,000 of them weren't affected. He said it wasn't made clear to staff in areas like education that they weren't affected by the staffing cutbacks. He added: "It is wholly wrong that it wasn't made crystal clear to staff who was in this and who wasn't." But Keith Wakefield said that the difficult challenges faced by the council affected everybody, whether their jobs were directly affected or not and said that the letter also asked for suggestions on how to save money - with 2,500 reponses so far. Also at the meeting, councillors heard about a successful pilot scheme involving the Moor End day centre for people with learning disabilities in Hunslet being closed and replaced with activities tailored to individual needs at other community venues. The council agreed to roll out the programme - agreed last year - and close three more centres at West Ardsley, Horsforth and Wetherby, subject to consultation. Ramshead Wood at Seacroft or Potternewton will likely close in the long term.