Residents have been warned that upcoming cuts will lead to 'a hard few years', with the council's finance boss telling the News that council tax may rise, streets may be dirtier, hundreds of council jobs could be lost, and even playgrounds may reduce their opening hours.
The grim predictions come as Southwark Council scrambles to save up to £100m over the next three years, following drastic cuts to local government spending announced at last month's Autumn Budget.
Councillor Fiona Colley, Southwark Cabinet Member for Finance, Modernisation and Performance, told the News that many council services on the front line would inevitably suffer.
Many of the proposed cuts, which will be confirmed in February, will be impossible for residents to ignore, especially when it comes to reducing the number of street cleaners.
Children's play areas may also fall foul of the spending cuts, due to the supervision required for adventure playgrounds.
The council's proposals will reduce £67m in spending – still a long way short of the £97m decrease that they are expecting to face.
Cllr Colley revealed that hundreds of council jobs would be cut in an attempt to bridge the "big gap", with an effort to remove higher-level positions where possible.
She said: "There will be a lot of jobs to go. We haven't identified numbers as yet, but to give you a comparative: this year we had to save £33m and we thought that was equivalent to about 200 jobs, so if we need to save £97m, a rough-and-ready reckoner is getting along to 600 jobs.
Cllr Colley also highlighted the areas which would be protected from cuts – in particular children's care.
Cllr Colley concluded that, as a resident of the borough, she was well aware of the impact cuts would have. She said: "It is a hard job, it's not fun. I have a child and I worry about the changes to adventure playgrounds and youth services, we'll want to make sure that we minimise that impact on the front line.
She said that the council's spending cuts were unfortunately unavoidable due to the huge reduction in local government spending implemented by Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osbourne.