£110m Council cuts are on top of this year's cuts

For clarity, I should point out that the £17m Cornwall Council cuts which we've been reporting on BBC Radio Cornwall in recent weeks are completely separate from the £110 million which the council announced (with the loss of 2,000 jobs) yesterday.

When I asked chief executive Kevin Lavery how the £17m would be saved, he told me the cuts would be applied precisely where central government had dictated - there would be no shuffling of money between departments or budget headings before April 2011. I put it to him that the government was saying local authorities now had the "freedom" and discretion to cut where they wanted.

"It really annoys me when they say that," he said. "We are too far down the road with spending plans for this year to make significant changes before April. So if government takes away the money for a certain project, it will stop. Simple as that. We don't have the ability to go round taking it away from other projects."

The £110m/2,000 jobs cuts package will be considered at a Cornwall Council cabinet meeting on 13th October, debated at the November full council meeting and implemented in January.