Birmingham's Labour leader John Clancy will accuse the Government of wrecking council services as he looks to move on from the controversial departure of chief executive Mark Rogers.

The council leader has come out fighting as he prepares for the annual budget meeting this week highlighting the Government’s ‘unprecedented nine-year attack on local government spending’.

It follows a difficult seven days for Cllr Clancy in which his handling of the Mark Rogers exit was widely criticised and the council was handed another scathing report from Government inspectors.

Mr Rogers will officially leave the city council on Tuesday and the search for his replacement launched.

But now he is calling for the council to stop ‘obsessing about procedural issues’ and concentrate on how they deliver the latest round of brutal funding cuts - with £71 million due to be cut in 2017/18.

There are more protests over the cuts expected in Victoria Square on Monday. That is on top of almost £600 million since 2010 with a promise from Government of a further £170 million to go by 2021.

During that time the council has made 10,000 staff, about half the workforce, redundant. He is expected to say: “By the end of this decade, nearly two-thirds of the revenue budget as it existed in 2010 will have been removed.

City leader Coun John Clancy
City leader Coun John Clancy

And all of this at a time of soaring demand for adult social care and a crisis in the NHS. “This year alone, we have had to deliver £92 million of savings. The fact is we are spending a lot, lot less on public services now than we were seven years ago.

“Whatever the Government says, we all know the truth: cuts to public services at such unprecedented levels cannot be achieved without harming those least able to look after themselves.”

He said the easy cuts, the obvious waste and inefficiencies, have ‘long been blown away’.“Almost a decade after the global financial crash, one thing is clear: austerity isn’t working. Austerity is destroying the very public services upon which so many Brummies rely.”

Cllr Clancy will also draw attention to the Birmingham economy’s buoyancy and highlighting a 13.5 per cent economic growth rate over the last five years.

City centre developments like Paradise, Smithfield and Curzon suggest this will continue as well as deliver 10,000 new homes.

He will say: “The private sector must step up and deliver homes at a scale never before achieved.“Poor quality housing isn’t only a moral issue, it’s an economic issue too and that’s why building decent homes is right at the top of my agenda along with protecting children.”