Council chief confident in budget and says long-term strategy is paying off

Income from Nuplace, leisure services and operations is expected to provide an additional £5.68m of that pressure.

A service review and re-design is expected to save £1.6m with other efficiencies across the authority providing £6.8m.

The council is proposing to save £2.78m by service restructuring and staff savings across the organisation.

Since 2009/10 the council has made £156.9m of savings.

The authority is also proposing a council tax increase of 4.99 per cent – equating to an extra £1.09 per week for a Band B property – with the additional income to be used to offset the rising costs of adult and children’s social care.

David Sidaway, chief executive of Telford & Wrekin, said that the ‘majority’ of staff savings and service restructuring had been partly delivered or were in place.

“I feel fairly confident we can deliver year-on-year,” said Mr Sidaway. “To make £157m in savings is a testament to the performance of the organisation. Thank goodness our longer-term strategy continues to invest in our borough as it has paid dividends from many years ago.

“I think it’s a strong budget, a difficult budget, but thank goodness we find ourselves in good order.”

The council has a general contingency of £3.95m, a further £10m for inflation or pay contingency, and a Budget Strategy Reserve of £21.7m.

Michelle Brockway, interim director of finance and human resources, told the council’s business and finance scrutiny committee on Tuesday night that in the current financial year the net expenditure was £147 million.

Of that 75 per cent (£110m) was spent on social care for adults and children.

She said to fund that expenditure £82m (56%) came from council tax, £53m from business rates and £12m from the government’s revenue support grant.

Mrs Brockway said that the council received their revenue support settlement for the next financial year confirmed on December 18.

“For the sixth consecutive year we have received a one-year settlement,” she said. “This means we have very little certainty to plan ahead.”

She added that the government’s had cut its Services Grant by 84 per cent which has resulted in a reduced income to Telford & Wrekin of £1.32million for the next financial year.

The council’s medium finance strategy document says that this was an unexpected cut and that the government had given ‘no prior indication’ that the grant would be cut to that extent.

“This has resulted in further efficiency savings that will need to be identified across the council which have been included as part of the 2024/25 savings,” says the strategy.

Mrs Brockway added that despite this year’s proposed 4.99 per cent council tax increase the borough is still expected to have the lowest in the Midlands for a Band D property.

Additional investment of £5.9m will be put into adult social care and £7.6m for the children safeguarding budget.

Mrs Brockway added that the council had a ‘track record’ for 16 consecutive years of finishing within budget whilst providing £156.9m of savings and additional income since 2009/10.

Councillor Andy Burford said that the council had ‘live with uncertainty’ due to only have a one-year financial settlement from the government.

Councillor Burford also commented ‘how little’ revenue a council tax increase provided – the 4.99 per cent council tax increase will raise an extra £4.04m.

Mrs Brockway said the reason the amount was ‘quite low’ was because of the amount of properties in council Band A and B compared to more affluent areas.

The council’s business and finance scrutiny committee gave their approval of the proposed budget. The budget is the subject of a four-week public consultation running until February.

Anybody wishing to view the proposals or send feedback should visit: www.telford.gov.uk/budget