150 jobs could be axed and council tax could rise by almost 4% as part of a drive to save almost £19 million from Blackpool Council's budget.



A report discussed by councillors tonight recommends 80 redundancies and the ending of 70 temporary contracts.

Other measures recommended include offering council staff unpaid leave and introducing a £1 charge for pensioners on trams.

Despite the cuts, the report also suggests significantly increasing borrowing to help local businesses in addition to plans previously announced to build a hotel on the Wilkinsons site.

The report to the Executive Committee of Blackpool Council from Director of Finance, Steve Thompson, details what's being called an 'Efficiency Plan', which says: ''Achieving savings of the scale demanded has required concerted action and consideration of a broad range of initiatives, whilst maintaining strong financial management and budgetary control, addressing any areas of overspending in a timely manner, maximising savings and ensuring value for money.

''A Savings Programme constituting 7 thematic workstreams has been developed and finessed over the last few months. This exercise has generated the necessary service budget target savings of £18.7m in 2017/18. In setting realistic budgets for the forthcoming year services will be expected to meet any additional service-specific pressures that may emerge within the cash limited budgeting regime.

''As part of the £18.7m savings target it is anticipated that in the year 2017/18 there will be 80 redundancies and in addition there are a further 70 employees in temporary contracts which will come to an end and up to 50 vacant posts will be deleted. These staffing reductions will come about as a result of services ceasing, reducing or being reconfigured and delivered differently. Early retirements and voluntary redundancies have been encouraged in order to mitigate compulsory redundancies. In order to reduce the numbers of redundancies across the Council it is assumed that employees will continue to apply for voluntary unpaid leave and that the 5 days' unpaid leave on average continues.

''A variety of support is on offer to affected employees from a dedicated member of the Council's Employment Adviser team.''

The report also recommends taking advantage of low interest rates to significantly increase borrowing for the council's Business Loan Fund from £10m to £100m: ''On the back of Wellbeing powers the 2009/10 budget established a targeted Business Support Loans Fund to safeguard and create jobs for Blackpool. As at 31st December 2016 £7.2m of business loans had been defrayed, assisting 12 businesses to either create or safeguard 228 jobs. As part of this year's budget process it is recommended to increase the fund to £100m with immediate effect to support further businesses including public sector partners.''

The report concludes that in future years Blackpool Council will have to find £4.8m savings for 2018/19 and £6.6m for 2019/20, but increases in council tax and revenues would mean there should not be more drastic cuts.