How Oldham’s £8m cuts will affect you

Oldham town hall bosses will have to slash £8m to balance this year’s books, a budget report has confirmed. 

The Greater Manchester borough is facing a £20m budget gap, despite benefitting from changes to the way the government funds local authorities. Oldham council bosses have emphasised that ‘austerity hasn’t disappeared overnight’, despite a ‘change of direction’ in the council’s financial outlook. 

Oldham council leader Arooj Shah said: “For the first time in a long while, councils are finally seeing the start of a change in direction. There is still a lot of work to do, and the impact of austerity hasn’t disappeared overnight, but this budget shows what can be achieved when funding starts to move in the right direction.

“We are being careful with public money, honest about the challenges, and focused on improvements that residents will actually see in their day-to-day lives.”

The budget hole is related to enduring high demand in adult social care (£8.9m), children’s services (£5.4m), and temporary accommodation (£4.563). Local authorities across the UK are having to grapple with these pressures as a result of historic cuts and the Cost of Living Crisis, but Oldham has particularly high demand because of its high levels of deprivation. 

As well as raising council tax and rejigging the way certain grant funding is spent to balance the books, the council will have to ‘make difficult decisions’ about where to slice the cash from.

Some of the biggest savings could come from axing up to 13 managerial positions worth around £1.3m as well as £1m worth of savings in temporary accommodation. But others will see youth centres receiving less money, changes to bin services, and the closure of day care centre.
Here’s a run-down of the cuts most likely to affect local residents directly: 

A change to fly-tipping and bulky waste collections
Oldham is planning a dramatic restructure of how it deals with bulky waste and fly-tipping. Previously, an external contractor known as Bulky Bob used to collect up to three bulky items for £23. 

Now the council hopes to cut £350k a year by bringing the service in-house. The scheme involves upcycling an old bin collection vehicle that’s no longer fit for purpose, which will combine bulky item pick-ups with responding to fly-tipping reports.

Pick-ups will cost £10 per item, with the new service expected to start by around July 2026. 
The changes also include combining gardening and grounds maintenance teams and creating multi-skill crews instead of employing expensive agency staff. 

£100k slashed from crucial youth centre
One proposal would see £100k of council funding slashed from Mahdlo – a youth charity that offers 50p activities for more than 3,200 eight to 19 year-olds. The council currently contributes £300k per year to the organisation’s £1.8m running costs. 

Under the cuts, this would be reduced to £200k from the 2026/27. 
‘No consultation’ has taken place with Mahdlo so far, and so ‘the full impact on service users or staff is unknown’. But it could result in less activities being available to young people.

The registered charity hosts an average of 861 youngsters a week – with special provisions for those with disabilities up to the age of 25. It also hosts regular workshops to deter kids from knife crime and inspirational’ opportunities to meet celebrities like Brian Cox and Gareth Southgate. 
Previous attempts to cut funding to the youth centre saw Sir Norman Stoller, founder of the Stoller Charitable Trust, described the council as ‘reprehensible’. 

Daycare service for adults with disabilities to be shut down
A daycare service for adults with disabilities would be closed down under the proposed cuts.  Chadderton Park Day Service offers an ‘alternative to traditional day care’ by teaching those with special needs key skills and hobbies such as cooking, woodworking, and customer service skills. 

Around 21 adults currently attend the council-owned MioCare Group service, which costs around £150k to run. The council wants to slash the service entirely. 

The report noted: “Some users will be able to be relocated to suitable alternative day services at similar costs and some users of the service will no longer require ongoing statutory support. 

“Suitable alternative employment will need to be found for staff where possible and redundancies made where necessary.”

Homeless families to be charged ‘fair share’ for temporary accommodation
The council has managed to reduce its spend on temporary housing – one of the biggest budget pressures facing most local authorities – by £2m since last year. This year, the council intends to slash a further £1m of spending. 

A ‘three-pronged’ approach includes charging those in temporary accommodation ‘who can afford it’ a ‘Fair Share’ charge, to help cover the cost. 

Other measures include reducing reliance on hotels by securing cost-effective housing stock, including converting Metropolitan Place, formerly home to children’s services, into accommodation. The council will also start prioritising those in temporary accommodation for housing placements to help move families into permanent housing more quickly. 

Care Workers won’t be paid National Living Wage 
Care workers will be paid the ‘Oldham Living Wage’, which is higher than the national minimum wage, but lower than National Living Wage. Care staff will be paid £13.10 an hour, an increase from last year.

However, Oldham council had intended to raise care worker’s wage up to the £13.45 per hour set by the National Living Wage foundation. The council will save around £2.456 million at the expense of a lower pay-rise for key workers.