EAST Hampshire District Council leader Ferris Cowper last week outlined a raft of ongoing “radical plans” to shake up how the council provides services.

At a Community Forum meeting at Bordon’s Forest Community Centre, Mr Cowper told residents how the council would find new and innovative ways to generate funds. Central to the plans was “a real shift in mindset”, he said, which would see East Hampshire residents regarded not as tax payers, but “customers”.

In outlining the budget for 2016-2017 last Tuesday, Mr Cowper explained the council’s long-term aims: “The council’s financial strategy is quite radical. Nobody else in the country has a strategy like this. Our plan is to remove our reliance on Government grants by 2019-2020 while maintaining all our key services to the public - that is unique in the UK. We are also hoping to have a council tax of zero by 2024.”

It is expected that general Government grants to councils, traditionally one of a local authority’s main sources of income, will reduce by 48 per cent between 2016 and 2020 and eventually disappear.

The council intends to make up this shortfall in cash through money-making business ventures, selling its services to other local authorities and through investment in “blue-chip commercial properties”.

“The conundrum is solved by finding new sources of income - that’s the fundamental solution to the challenge,” Mr Cowper said.

One such venture is a reforming of services which could be “commercialised” to give residents “a choice”.

For example, people could pay a premium to have their bins collected more regularly. But Mr Cowper stressed that the baseline service would “always be free”.

Another big investment could be the “personalisation of services”, which would see each resident having their own complete “portfolio” to streamline interactions with the council.

Mr Cowper compared it to a customer’s experience with Amazon - whereby recent purchases and a full record is kept.

He spoke highly of the Whitehill and Bordon Regeneration Project, a key district-council scheme, which last year saw “enormous” inward investment of £120million.

The leader criticised Government plans to let councils keep all local business rates, which made headlines last year.

According to Mr Cowper, it is “not the offer it appears to be” as the amounts will ultimately fall short of money taken away with diminishing grants.

“I don’t care if George Osborne is in the room, it’s rubbish,” he said.

Despite little resistance at the Forest Centre forum, Mr Cowper was criticised by some of those who attended the Alton Community Forum, on Tuesday night this week, who said the council might end up being run “for profit not for people”. An accusation the leader emphatically denied.

At the Bordon presentation, the district council’s service expenditure for the coming year was outlined: n Community and leisure services - £2.03m.

* Economic development - £801,000.

* Environmental health - £1.1m.

* Housing - £485,000.

* Planning Services - £1.346m.

* Street cleaning and waste collection - £3.1m.

* Support services and other operating costs - £6.8m.

* Whitehill and Bordon regeneration - £903,000.