Council making large cuts to help balance books

A council in Surrey says it is having to make millions of pounds worth of cuts to deal with "significant" financial challenges.

Surrey Heath Borough Council is cutting £3.14m from its budget and increasing what it charges for services in an effort to balance its books.

Plans are in place to review garden waste subscriptions, stop on-call weekend services for unauthorised encampments, cut town centre CCTV cameras, and put an end to council-staged community and civic events.

It is also set to change how Camberley Theatre is run, whilst vacant positions at Surrey Heath Museum will remain unfilled.

The council is looking likely to do away with smaller community theatre projects, take only a "crowd-pleasing" approach to the pantomime and bring in a more mainstream programme, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Nick Steevens, the council's chief executive, told the July meeting of the performance and finance scrutiny committee: "What we did was focus on the £3.14m which is essentially us trying to balance the cost of service against the income coming into the council.

"The focus is to see us toward local government reorganisation or through this medium term, but in truth we are doing very well.

"I think that this is an absolute success."

In May the council offered two plots of land for sale in a bid to help ease its financial problems.

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