WORCESTER residents must brace themselves for a “step change” in the services provided by their city council when £3.1 million cut-backs are announced next month.

Council leaders warned this week they simply cannot afford to continue providing the range of services currently on offer in the city with the size of budget available to them.

The city council now has just over a fortnight to finalise exactly how it can cut its £16 million spending plan for 2009/10 by one fifth, after an independent study revealed a gaping black hole in the Guildhall finances.

While the council must clearly continue to carry out its legal obligations – such as collecting the rubbish and dealing with planning applications – non-essential services such as community centres, youth support work, museum and gallery services are all under threat.

Tory council leader Simon Geraghty told a meeting of his ruling cabinet that next month’s announcement would make grim reading.

He said: “It’s a fundamental shift in what this city council can do, the provision it can make, the services it can offer.

“It’s a step change and we have to accept that.

“Three million pounds is a considerable amount of money to take out of this city council.”

The city’s long-serving chief executive David Wareing, who is due to retire early next year, told the council’s scrutiny committee that he believes it is no longer possible for an average-sized district council to offer such a wide range of services as Worcester does.

He said: “You will find the breadth of services we’re trying to maintain is greater than in other comparable towns.

“You will find a county town with museums services but not so many parks to maintain.

“You will find a county town with a theatre but not also nine community centres.

“We have built up a range of services that are expected of a county town that we are struggling to maintain because we are funded like an ordinary district council.

“That to me is the fundamental problem.”

Mr Wareing said these financial pressures were causing district councils across the country to make savings by banding together into larger authorities.

He said: “This is about the long-term viability of district councils.

“That’s why a number of them are having the problem solved for them by being ushered into or opting to become unitary authorities.”

A scheme to create a unitary authority for the whole of Worcestershire was rejected by county councillors two years ago.