Council’s Cabinet to consider draft budget proposals
Last updated: 09/01/2013
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Budget proposals aimed at enabling the Council to continue to
protect essential services wherever possible from the impact of
ongoing cuts in Government funding at the same time as meeting the
costs of new legislation and additional responsibilities and
investing in projects to boost the Cornish economy, will be
considered by members of the
Cabinet at their meeting on 16 January 2013.
This is the third year of the Council’s four year financial
strategy which set out how the authority would deal with the £170
million reduction in Government funding. As a result of the
decision by elected Members to make the majority of the savings
through efficiencies and management savings in the first year,
around £86m of savings have already been delivered, with just £11m
coming from reductions in services. This has enabled the
Council to protect universal services such as weekly rubbish
collections, libraries and leisure centres.
However, although the Council is on track to deliver the £41m
savings identified for the current financial year, recent changes
in council tax rules, the impact of delivering new responsibilities
in areas such as welfare reform and council tax benefit means the
Council now has to find an additional £6.4m savings over the £24m
target set for 2013 / 2014 – making a total of £30.4m. The
Chancellor has also announced further significant reductions in
Government funding following the next comprehensive spending review
and an additional 2% reduction in funding for 2014/15 over and
above the 6% already included from the previous year’s settlement.
As a result the Council is being asked to consider increasing
council tax by 1.97% - an increase of 42 pence a week for a Band C
property.
“Although we have protected front line services from the impact
of the disproportionately large cuts in our Government funding over
the past two years by increasing efficiency and restructuring
services, the combination of the continuing economic recession,
further funding reductions and the costs of additional
responsibilities means we are now being forced to consider
increasing council tax levels for the first time in two years“ said
Council Leader Jim Currie.
“The budget proposals already require all services to deliver
further efficiencies to cover the costs of inflation and changes in
legislation. We appreciate that many people are already
struggling to pay their bills but the scale of the financial
challenges we are facing means that increasing council tax is the
only option if we want to continue to provide a full range of
services for people in Cornwall.
“Some people have suggested that we should use our reserves to
balance this year’s budget. While this might seem like an
easy option, the facts are that we will need this money to prevent
cuts in future years. We are already planning to use some of
our reserves in 2013/14 and 2014/15. Using this one off money to
fund ongoing expenditure now will mean we are still faced with
finding more than £13m of alternative funding or making significant
reductions in services in 2015. “
The draft budget and business plan, which will be considered by
the Cabinet at its meeting on 16 January, also includes a number of
recommendations designed to help maintain universal services
wherever possible, protect vulnerable people and continue to
achieve a high level of savings and efficiencies through further
re-organisation and restructuring of services.
Following the Cabinet meeting, the draft proposals will be
discussed at special meetings of all the Council’s overview and
scrutiny committees being held during the last two weeks of
January. The feedback from these meetings and from
consultation with key stakeholders will then be considered before a
final report goes back to the Cabinet on 13 February. The
final decision on the budget will be made by the full Council on 26
February.
All the meetings of the Cabinet and full Council will be
webcast.
Story posted 09 January 2013