DURING the worst budget restraints Dorset has ever seen, the county has struggled to cope in the past 12 months after experiencing confirmed cuts of around £67million.

Although the full extent of the cuts is still not clear, the county has already has lost hundreds of jobs, businesses, services to the cutbacks since the Comprehensive Spending Review in October 2010.

The knock-on effect will add many more millions to the final bill.

In this week-long special report chief reporter Miriam Phillips will look at the worst affected areas, how our local authorities are coping with the changes and how our county hospital has pulled itself out from its spiralling financial black hole. Following this look at the county as a whole we will be reviewing the local authorities with a series of exclusive interviews, examining our 999 emergency services, businesses, and highlighting the real tragedies of these cuts.

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CUTS of around £67million in the last year are only the ‘tip of the iceberg’ for our cash-strapped county, it has been warned.

Following the grim news that the county council faced cuts of £50million last year – thousands of people took to the streets to ‘mark the death of public services in Dorset’.

The scenes in the county town of Dorchester mirrored the march which took place last week when thousands of public sector workers went on strike to protest against pension cuts.

Now the situation is even worse than expected with a funding shortfall meaning the county council faces cuts of £57million as well as cuts of 25 per cent for West Dorset District Council and 28 per cent cuts for Weymouth and Portland Borough Council.

The borough’s shocking settlement of 28 per cent less than what it requires to balance its budget was the worst in the country.

And the Autumn Statement from Chancellor George Osborne warned that there were more public cuts on the way.

As well as announcing another two-year pay cap of one per cent on public sector salaries he said hundreds of thousands more jobs would go.

It will inevitably mean more pressure on jobs at County Hall, at West Dorset District Council and Weymouth and Portland Borough Council.

Services that are already feeling the effects of the austerity measures are likely to become even more squeezed.

Schools, the police, and the NHS are all likely to be hit as the government tries to tackle the country’s massive debt burden.

Library services, the Weymouth Women’s Refuge, lollipop patrols, day centres and carers have all been affected by the county’s cutbacks.

It also comes in a week when the government also announced that the search and rescue helicopter operations on Portland will be axed by 2017 in cost saving measure.

The shock announcement compounds the area’s grief after being told Weymouth-based Portland Coastguard Control centre will leave the area by 2015.

Council chiefs and union staff have described the cuts as ‘the worst the county has ever seen’ and the situation is predicted to get worse.

Unite union secretary for Dorset County Council and borough councillor Paul Kimber said the cuts in the last year are just the ‘tip of the iceberg’. He said: “It has been very hard on a lot of people but particularly the elderly, service users and young people without jobs.

“I’m not sure why Dorset always has to take such a hard hit – when you look at the other regions it seems that the county always takes a tough knock on every formula awarded to us.”

Speaking at the march in Dorchester last Wednesday on the day of the public sector strike Unison branch secretary for Dorset, Pamela Jefferies, said: “People do feel very strongly about what is happening, they have cut our jobs, they have cut services, they cut pay and now they are coming for our pensions.”

In an interview with the Echo the county council’s leader Angus Campbell said that there had been a ‘seismic shift’ in the way local authorities are funded and that the council has worked hard to cope with unprecedented cuts.

David Clarke, chief executive of the partnership between Weymouth and Portland Borough Council and West Dorset District Council mirrored these comments and said, ‘it’s going to get a whole lot worse’.

However, it’s not just local authorities that are struggling with budget cuts.

Dorset Police is axing 20 per cent of the workforce after being told to make cuts of £6.3million and the fire service received a six per cent funding decrease although it already received 18 per cent less than the national average in government funding per head of population and receives one of the lowest settlements in the country.

It is not all doom and gloom. The Dorset County Hospital Foundation Trust has managed to pull themselves out of a crisis by spending the last two years getting the hospital and its services back on sound financial footing.

Despite facing a deficit of £5.1million at the end of 2009 and the financial watchdog Monitor declaring their cash crisis so serious that it placed them into a ‘breach of authorisation’. A move which if left without substantial improvement could spell the end of the trust.

Chief executive Jean O’Callaghan said it was a hard process but something the trust can be proud of.

She added: “It will still be very challenging but now it’s time to leave the poor performance of the past behind and move forward.”

Also in Weymouth developers have started work on the former New Look site at the Weymouth Gateway where around 1,000 jobs will be created at a supermarket, hotel, restaurant and a New Look headquarters.

investment of £60million will be ploughed into the development over the next two years. On top of that next year’s Olympic 2012 sailing games in Weymouth and Portland are predicted to bring in a huge investment to the borough.

The cuts Dorset has faced since the spending review in October

Authorities

• Dorset County Council – shortfall of £57million - lost 500 roles and of that 167 redundancies

• Weymouth and Portland Borough Council – 28 per cent cuts totalling £1,454,000

• West Dorset District Council – 25 per cent cuts totalling £1,934,000 Emergency services

Dorset County Hospital – Was facing a deficit of £5.1million two years ago – now predicting a surplus of £700,000 by the end of this financial year.

• Dorset Fire and Rescue Service – Six per cent cut in funding

• Dorset Police – £6.3million in cuts – 20 per cent of the workforce to be axed

• Coastguard – Weymouth coastguard control centre will be scrapped in 2015 and Portland Search and Rescue helicopter to be axed in 2017 – a loss of around 50 jobs in total Services which have taken a hit

Libraries

• Lollipop patrols

• Weymouth Women’s refuge

• Day centres

How have you been affected?

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