Durham County Council’s Cabinet will make final recommendations on the 2012-13 budget next week.
Amongst the headlines are proposals that council tax stays at the same level for the third year running and that spending priorities, identified during widespread public consultation, continue to inform financial decision making.
What savings do we face?
The council’s current Medium Term Financial Plan (MTFP) identified a savings target of £123.5m over four years until April 2015. The report to Cabinet updates this figure to £159.2m for the five years until April 2016.
It also anticipates how future Government reductions could impact on the figure, creating an increased savings target requirement of £171.8m over the six years until April 2017. That equates to an overall reduction of 40% of the council’s budget as it stood before the MTFP was agreed last year.
What did we do?
In November 2010 some 8,000 residents offered their views on how the council could deliver the savings it was required to make over the four year plan due to such large reductions in Government grants.
The public’s views were that the authority should continue to prioritise making savings by reducing management and support costs, increasing fees and charges and improving levels of efficiency.
The consultation has also continued to influence which services are protected as far as possible, with the following identified within the report as proposals for approval:
· Protecting the winter maintenance budget
· Increasing adult social care by £2.15m – in recognition of the increasing demands on the service
· Increasing the safeguarding children budget by £1.5m – reflecting the continued increase of children entering care
· Additional revenue of £3.5m to support the council’s capital programme
Leader of the council, Cllr Simon Henig, said: “We continue to face unprecedented financial savings which inevitably mean making very difficult decisions on spending priorities. This can only become more so if our predictions regarding future grants are correct and our budget is indeed reduced by 40 per cent by 2017.
“To help us manage our approach to this situation we asked the public for help following the Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review and late last year we took those preferences back out into the communities we serve, via our Area Action Partnerships, to explain progress made.
“There is no doubt the cuts in spending are painful but we have responded to public concerns. While we continue to protect and increase spend in the areas identified as top priorities by residents; we remain focussed on achieving greater savings in areas including management costs, communications and support services, so as to protect front line services as far as possible.
“It is however pleasing that in these most uncertain of times we have still been able to allocate an additional £100m over the next three years towards new capital projects, delivering on our pledge to boost the county’s economy through regeneration and job creation initiatives.
“We have also had significant success in applying for external funding as seen recently in the announcement of a £6.9m grant for superfast broadband.”
Cabinet members will consider the report when they meet at County Hall on Wednesday February 8, and it’ll be considered by full council on February 22.
