"A Lot Of Work To Do" Says West Sussex Councillor On £4m Budget Gap Announcement

West Sussex County Council has a budget gap of more than £4million to fill before February.

The news was shared by Jeremy Hunt, cabinet member for finance, during a meeting on Tuesday (October 17).

Mr Hunt told the meeting that the budget gap for 2024/25 currently stood at £44.9million before any council tax increase was imposed.

Assuming an increase of 4.99 per cent in April, the gap would fall to £16.2million while cuts of £11.8million would take it down to £4.4million.

Mr Hunt said:

“Obviously work is ongoing to address all shortfalls and although I am confident that we will close the gap, it is still going to take some work to achieve it.”

The situation has not been helped by the government’s continued trimming of the money received by local authorities each year while costs continue to increase.

No word is expected on the provisional Local Government Finance Settlement 2024/25 until December 18.

Mr Hunt said:

“To date the clear message from government is that there is unlikely to be any additional funding coming our way despite the huge pressures we are facing, especially across our social care services.”

Looking at the proposed reductions £4.4million will be taken from the children & young people, learning & skills budget, and £3.9million from adults services – the two portfolios which take up the highest proportions of the over-all budget.

Another £1.6million will be taken from highways & transport, £1.2m from support services & economic development, £300,000 from finance & property, and £200,000 each from the community support, fire & rescue portfolio and environment & climate change.

While looking at ways to reduce spending, the council also has to respond to service pressures which demand money.

As such, the plan is to include £52.5m to cover the pressures across seven portfolios, particularly children & young people, with another £36.8m built in to cover inflationary pressures.

Taryn Eves, director of finance & support services, said £3.1million of the £52.5million would be funded from reserves

She added:

“Maintaining a prudent level of reserves is really critical to our financial stability and therefore we are assuming in our financial plans that these will be replenished over the next five years.”

The budget proposals will be the subject of a six-week online public consultation, which will run from Monday October 30 until Sunday December 10.

Feedback from that and a number of scrutiny meetings will be considered by the cabinet when preparing the final draft budget and capital programme for 2024/25 which will be presented to full council for approval in February 2024.

In the meantime, the council will continue to send a message to the government about the financial problems facing authorities up and down the country.

Mr Hunt said:

“[We will] continue our collaborative lobbying of government to ensure they recognise the funding constraints and rising demand that is having a severe impact not only on many of our own services but on the financial resilience of our whole local government sector.”

Things look even more bleak over the coming years, with a combined budget gap of more than £173million (before council tax) forecast through to 2028/29.

Ms Eves said: “We clearly have a lot of work to do.”