DORSET County Council’s cabinet has backed proposals for further cuts of £5.6million next year.

The authority needs to save a further £15.2million in its budget for 2012/13, having cut £28million from its budget in the current financial year.

A total of £9.5million in savings had already been identified and the council’s budget working group has been meeting throughout the autumn to come up with another raft of savings which will find almost all of the remaining £5.7million.

They include a £960,000 saving as part of the restructuring of the learning and schools department and taking back on-street parking enforcement and ticket revenue from Weymouth and Portland Borough Council and Christchurch in a bid to save £130,000.

Other savings put forward include reviewing the council’s contract with the Connexions careers advice service for teenagers, a review and restructure of mental health services to younger people and a reduction in support to museums of £26,000.

The elderly are likely to take a hit with a £253,000 saving earmarked through additional fee paying clients within council-owned care homes and a proposed reduction in the budget for concessionary fares for elderly and disabled people of £435,000.

After unprecedented cuts in public funding last year, Dorset County Council was left facing a financial black hole of more than £50million over a three-year period.

The authority is just £3million short of its savings target of £31million for the current financial year and is expected to lose around 500 staff. Chief financial officer for the council Paul Kent said the 5.4 per cent reduction in funding from central Government was largely in line with what the council had been expecting this year and warned the tough economic times could continue for some time to come.

He said: “We have at least another five years of fiscal tightening and the question is whether we can continue to provide the level of service which we currently do within those constraints.”

Mr Kent added: “Relative to where we were this time last year I think we are in a pretty good place.

“The investment we put into reviewing our budget and trying to find savings over the last two years is bearing fruit.

“It is not an easy process and every pound is much more difficult than those we have found already.”

Council leader Angus Campbell said: “We are not going to see the good old days again.

“There has been a seismic shift in the way local Government is funded and we are going to have to work out new ways to do that and a better way of doing things.”

The cabinet agreed to move forwards with the proposed savings, which will now go out to be consulted on and developed before coming back to the committee in February next year.

The cabinet will then compile its final list of savings, which will be put before a meeting of the full council for approval.