ASKING Barrow borough residents for their views on slashing a projected £2m budget deficit and replacing school bins that are more than a quarter of a century old are two items going before a council committee tomorrow. 

Barrow Borough Council is developing its budget strategy for 2016-2020, which will aim to eliminate the projected accumulated 2019-2020 General Fund revenue budget black hole of £2.37m.

Tomorrow Barrow Town Hall's executive committee is recommended to agree that a public consultation exercise is carried out on the five-year budget strategy.

The committee will discuss gathering public views over a four-week period and then those opinions being reported back to a later meeting of the full council, where members would be considering adopting the budget strategy. 

The council has said any public consultation would start after staff and unions had been briefed. 

Within the executive committee document, the corporate risk management paper, it says that the potential impact of not having future financial stability and not addressing the deficit could be that "the overall capacity of the council to deliver services may need to be scaled down and may fall below users expectations."

The committee has also been recommended to agree that the Budget Contingency reserve is used to fund an estimated £21,000 for replacement waste containers for collections from schools and charities.

The document says that many of these bins are more than 25 years old.

The council collects waste from schools and charities for a service charge.

The report says the bins are becoming unserviceable, but that some could be refurbished and kept as spares.

The council wants 55 1,100 litre bins at the cost of £296.05 and 15 600 litre bins costing £282.66.