Cabe has days to make £1.1m of cuts

Officials at Cabe were working flat out this week to meet next Tuesday’s deadline for spelling out to the government how it will save more than £1 million.

Following Chancellor George Osborne’s decision to axe £6.2 billion from public spending between now and next April, public bodies have been given just a week to work out where they will make cuts, as well as detail their implications.

Cabe chief executive Richard Simmons admitted: “The cuts will hurt. Cabe is a small organisation and the demand for what it does is very high.”

The design watchdog has been told by the Department for Culture Media & Sport — one of the two departments that fund the quango — that it will be receiving £600,000 less than it was expecting this year.

This figure includes a slice from the £15 million it gets from DCMS for the Sea Change programme — the government scheme aimed at regenerating England’s seaside towns by investing in culture and heritage.

It is also bracing itself to be hit by the full 7.4% spending cut imposed on its other funder, the Communities & Local Government department.

Cabe had been due to receive £6.9 million from the CLG this year but this will now be cut by £500,000, meaning in total it will receive £1.1 million less this year from the government — just over 4% of its budget.

The watchdog declined to say whether it will be forced to cut jobs from its 124-strong payroll, but its chairman Paul Finch said it was trying to avoid redundancies.

“I don’t think that will be the starting point,” he said. “We will look at programmes where we can save or modify. We will be relying on our senior management team to make sensible proposals.”

Those on short-term contracts are most likely to be affected, along with staff working on Building Schools for the Future, which is due to be widely cut back in this autumn’s spending review.

Finch said Cabe’s planning for savings began earlier this year and added: “People were asked to identify savings pre-election so they’re not a surprise.”

In the Queen’s Speech on Tuesday, the government said it would target quangos such as Cabe under its Public Bodies (Reform) Bill. The bill will “ensure greater transparency and accountability for all [quangos]; and provide ministers with the powers to abolish, merge or transfer functions” back into departments.

Quangos will also be reviewed every three years instead of every five.