Video Loading

Bins would go unemptied, grass left to grow and potholes ignored, if further council cuts are not agreed next week.

The bleak prediction has come from Kirklees’ leader Clr David Sheard as the council desperately searches for ways to fill a £104m gap in its budget.

Clr Sheard has said at current spending rates, everything but social services will be at risk by September 2018 if they don’t take the knife to frontline services yet again.

Kirklees Council leader David Sheard
Kirklees Council leader David Sheard

His stark message comes ahead of the annual budget setting meeting of all councillors on Wednesday.

Kirklees’ cash nightmare has seen finance bosses forced to spend almost half their reserves in just one year.

A stunning £43m of the total £93m reserves have been spent in 2016/17 alone.

Top councillors have blamed the crisis on under-funding by central government.

Work on potholes in Lockwood
Work on potholes in Lockwood

Four more years of harsh cuts are now set to be agreed or the council could face having to completely cease frontline services such as waste collection and road maintenance.

Clr Sheard has said the council is spending its reserves at a rate of £800,000 a week with them forecast to run out in a little over 18 months.

“What happens when we run out of reserves?” he said.

“At that stage, everything but social care is stopped. I don’t mean cut, I mean stopped and closed.

“Every time you ask someone what the council does, the first thing they come up with is bins, then they might talk about roads then schools.

“Very low down their realisation is social care.

“When we start switching the funds off to all other organisations, the very last one, and we would be really desperate, will be social care.”

A report into the social care crisis in the UK found an extra £1.1bn was needed to sustain services last year.

In response the government launched a new policy allowing a 3% social care precept on top of council tax.

It will see Kirklees ‘rates’ shoot up by 10% over the next two years – 6% of which is purely to fund social care.

The council provides social care
The council provides social care

But councils have said the hefty local tax will still leave them without enough money.

Clr Sheard added: “We’ve got to emphasise that everyone is calling for the government to fund social care but putting it on the rates is not the way to do it.

“A 3% rate rise for Westminster will probably achieve a damn site more than a 3% rate rise for Kirklees.

“We’ve got to change the agenda and stop people thinking this council is just about emptying bins and cutting grass. It’s about looking after people.

Kiklees council tax bill
Kiklees council tax bill

“This is a budget that none of us want to do and has many parts that are disastrous for us.”

Opposition groups are allowed to suggest amendments but it is not expected that any major changes will be made to the Labour-run council’s plans.

The budget meeting begins at Huddersfield Town Hall at 6pm on Wednesday.