Birmingham Council’s leader warned of the “end of local government as we know it” yesterday after saying Britain’s biggest local authority will be forced to slash 1,000 more jobs this year.

Labour-controlled Birmingham City Council has already reduced its staffing by a third since 2010 as Westminster Tories squeeze its budget.

Sir Albert Bore said last year that the council faced “enormous financial challenges,” but prospects had become even worse because of government cuts to funding up to 2018.

“The average cut in (government-defined) spending power for 2014/15 across England will be £71.44 per dwelling. In Birmingham it will be £145.33,” he said.

“But the indicative figures for the next year (2015-16) are even more unfair. Birmingham is due to receive a cut of £147.42 per dwelling, while the national average will be just £45.32,” he said.

Sir Albert said the authority faced having to make annual savings of £822 million up to 2018 because of a combination of grant cuts and increased spending pressures in areas such as social care.

The council has previously announced cuts totalling hundreds of millions of pounds and next year it will have to find an extra £200m of savings.

He said: “The scale of the cuts means we need to completely rethink the role and structure of the city council and how we achieve the outcomes we seek — what I have called ‘the end of local government as we know it.’

“We cannot simply carry on doing things as we have always done them or delivering the services we have become used to for decades.”

GMB union regional officer Gillian Whittaker said workers were dismayed.

She said: “The services across Birmingham are already stretched and our members are already overworked.

“To find more cuts across Birmingham and local services is very upsetting as our members are already uncertain about their jobs.”

Unite union regional officer Lynne Shakespeare said that some  Conservative local authorities are having their budgets increased.

She said: “Not surprisingly, Birmingham is in the top 10 of councils to suffer the biggest cuts, while some rich Tory shires are actually seeing budget rises.

“Whatever happened to ‘we’re all in this together’?”