By JANE FIELD

SERVICE cuts are on the cards in Warrington as borough council chiefs try to bridge a £4 million shortfall in Government funding.

The council's Standard Spending Assessment the amount the Government thinks it will cost to provide a national level of service per adult in each authority area is already one of the lowest in the country for education and social services.

It is set to increase by just 4.1 per cent to £158.2m again less than the national average and the amount of external support from the Government is increasing by only 3.3 per cent to £114.8m.

A necessary package of efficiency measures has been agreed by councillors in order to prevent a sharp rise in council tax. These will include selling off Hatter's Row shopping centre off Horsemarket Street to aid its development, and closing the council's information centre in Rylands Street and reopening it in the market.

An increase in rents on commercial properties including the market and the introduction of charges for collection of bulk refuse have also been agreed, along with cuts to subsidised bus services and a shake-up to improve ways of working together in the voluntary sector.

Grass cutting, toilet cleaning, other ground and building maintenance, firework displays and parks games will also be snipped at the edges or put out to tender, while a new joinlty-run youth and community service under the Connexions scheme will also see savings.

At a meeting of the borough's policy and resources committee on Monday, councillors agreed that education and social services would take priority and get a share of savings made in other departments to bridge the shortfall.

Council Leader John Gartside says the cuts are necessary to continue to provide a high standard of education and cater for an increasing number of older people in the town through social services provision.

"We are trying to be more specific so that some areas do not have cuts at all. It is about looking at areas where the service could be better provided by someone else or we don't need as much," he said.

"Hatter's Row, for example, we are selling not just because of the revenue drain but because we feel it would be better run by a commercial developer.

"While services such as grass cutting and cleaning, which are already done to a high standard, could be done less."

Savings of £2m will support the Education Development Plan. Home-to-school transport continues to rise due to increased volumes putting more pressure on the budget, as does special educational needs spending, and the department as a whole must adjust to maximise resources going directly to schools and other priority areas.

Education services must also account for the difficult issues raised by falling pupil rolls and the loss of a number of teaching posts within schools.

Additional resources of £200,000 from savings, rising to just under £1m, will be available to support increasing users and dependencies within social services.

But savings within the service will still have to be made and may include delaying recruitment, freezing additional spending and changes in approach to service delivery.