The town hall needs to save nearly £50m in the next few years.

Stockport council is planning to bring in new charges to reduce its £130m annual social care bill.

The council wants to make social care ‘fairer’ and has launched a public consultation on plans to slash spending, saying it needs to make ‘difficult decisions’ to balance the books.

Proposals include financial assessments for everyone getting council funded care, and scrapping a £485 cap on weekly charges for those getting care at home.

Other measures could see the council start charging interest on money owed to it for social care, introduce fees for arranging care for people not eligible for council funding who pay for their own support, and remove a 50 percent second carer discount.

Stockport council currently spends nearly 40 percent of its total budget on adult social care, but it is under growing pressure financially and has a £49m black hole to plug by 2027/28.

Approving the proposed changes to social care would save the council around £750,000 a year in total.

Coun Keith Holloway, Stockport council’s cabinet member for health and adult social care, said the town hall must make “tough decisions” to ensure frontline services continue.

He added: “Like many councils across the country, we face significant and unprecedented financial challenges, with rising costs and reduced funding from central government.

“We understand how important adult social care services are to residents, and that’s why this consultation hasn’t been taken lightly.

“To protect these essential frontline services, we are proposing changes to our adult social care charging policy to bring it in line with approaches already adopted by many other councils.”

Bin collections could also change as part of Stockport’s cost-cutting measures, with blue bins set to be emptied every four weeks rather than fortnightly, and introducing a new £59 yearly charge for green bin garden waste collections, discounted at £39 for those who get council tax support.

Council leader Mark Hunter said last month that Stockport is facing “significant financial challenges,” but added that it is not in “imminent danger” of issuing a section 114 notice for effectively going bankrupt like some local authorities have done.

The biggest pressures on Stockport council’s budget include an ‘acute shortage of affordable housing’ leading to more spending on temporary accommodation, inflation, and the growing need for looked after children placements.