MALVERN Hills District Council is facing up to a £1 million reduction in government funding – prompting fears it will become the ‘Ryanair’ of councils in a bid to balance the books.

As councillors discussed how they would address the shortfall, long-serving member Clive Smith compared the council to the budget airline – known for its add-on fees – saying he feared it would hit residents in the pocket with more “stealth charges”.

Finance portfolio holder Coun Paul Cumming has dismissed the suggestion as “flippant”, saying the council would be “reasonable”

and that residents would not be charged extra for “essential services”.

But he admitted the unprecedented cutback in government cash, which leaves the council needing to find almost £1.3 million of savings over the next three years, will put it in an extremely challenging position.

Finance chiefs believe they can slash spending by about £850,000 over the next two years but that still leaves a hole of more than £400,000 to be plugged.

They have warned there will need to be “disinvestment and budget savings”

in “non-priority areas”, while the council will have to generate extra income if it is to stay on an even keel. The council has budgeted for an additional £60,000 income from increased fees by 2015/16 and Coun Smith said: “We are already hitting people with hidden charges for pre-planning advice and all sorts of things and I am worried that it will just continue and snowball as financial pressures build.

“I fear there will be more of this stealth-charging to try and plug the gaps.”

Coun Cumming would not be drawn on exactly where cuts and additional income could be achieved when quizzed at a meeting to approve the council’s new medium term financial plan. He said a project board would produce options for cost-cutting that would be presented back to the council.

“The difficulty is that this is savings on top of savings. We have already streamlined and changed,”

he said. “We will have to look at everything and in some detail. We will obviously try to avoid services but it is too early to say for certain where we will make the savings.”

Having already lost 13.8 per cent of its government funding in the current financial year, the council now faces losing another 15 per cent in 2013/14 and 7.5 per cent in each of the two subsequent years.

As part of the council’s efforts to address the imbalance, residents are likely to see a two per cent increase in their council tax precept.

Coun Cumming