BARROW Borough Council have terminated a number of contracts with an external partner, in a bid to help them slash £2.73 million from their budget.

A meeting held on January 23 decided that as part of the council's budget strategy, which runs from 2015-2020, revenues and benefits, and customer services would be run in-house as of October 1, 2018, terminating contracts with long-standing partner Liberata UK.

Leader of the Council, David Pidduck, said: "The council continues to face significant financial pressures from reduced government funding.

"This has been a constant theme from 2010 and by 2020 this council will have reduced its budget by £7.75 million in order to remain financially stable.

"All services and the way services are delivered is reviewed with each Budget Strategy.

"On behalf of the Council, I thank the current contractor, Liberata UK Limited, for the successful delivery of services during the 20 year contract."

The current Budget Strategy will run until March 2020 and aims to eliminate a further £2.73m deficit in response to the further funding cuts from the 2015 Spending Review.

Mr Pidduck called the switch to in-house services "more favourable" for the council and said the move would achieve "significant financial savings" and enable "cross-service synergies and efficiencies to be realised."