Balancing our Budget for 2023/2024
Have your say
Consultation status ArchivedActivity closed. Results published.
Background
West Berkshire Council has a significant funding gap of £15m for 2023/24. This is due to a number of reasons:
- The main general central government grant (Revenue Support Grant) was reduced from £24 million in 2010 to zero in 2020.
- There has been an increased demand for core council services, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and at the same time a reduction in our income, e.g. parking, leisure centres, and council tax and business rates. This is due to more people working at home, temporary closure of facilities, e.g. leisure centres, and restricted travel movements during the lockdowns, and people struggling to afford Council Tax and business rates due to furlough and loss of work.
- The growth in inflation means that it costs more to do what we need to do, in the same way as it costs you more to put petrol in the car or do the weekly shop. For example, in just two areas of our budget, 11% inflation adds over £5m to our social care budgets, e.g. care homes and looking after children in care, and over £2m to our waste and recycling contract.
The 2022/23 Revenue Finance Performance Report at Quarter Two report, considered by the Executive meeting held on the 15 December 2022, highlighted a £1.1m forecast overspend after the substantial use of risk reserves and earmarked reserves, and detailed the cost increases across a range of services. The Local Government Finance Policy Statement 2023-25 released on 12 December 2022, provides some additional funding for councils with a minimum guarantee of an increase of 3% in core spending power.
You can read more about how our finances have been affected in our Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) report.
You can also read more about where our money came from and how we plan to spend it in.
Councils are required by law to deliver a balanced budget and we cannot spend more money than we have. If we were to carry on providing the current level of service to our 161,400 residents, we would be short by £15m for next year's budget. To put this into context, this is three times the savings we would have to save in a "normal" year (£5m).
To balance our budget the range of options available include: changing the way we provide services; making internal savings, e.g. re-tendering contracts for better value for money, reducing overheads, making redundancies; spending our reserves; increasing Council Tax, including the Adult Social Care precept (raising it by 1%, would give us just over £1m), and introducing new charges or increasing existing charges for some services, e.g. green bins.
If we're unable to fill the funding gap and balance our budget, central government would assign external commissioners to review our finances, and if necessary, agree a bail-out deal to make sure that we could continue to provide statutory services.
So far we've found £7m of savings for the year ahead that will be included in the budget papers in March 2023, including a variety of efficiency, transformation and 'back-office' savings, but this still leaves us with a gap of over £8m.
Why we want your views
To help us decide how to close the funding gap we're asking residents, communities, and partner organisations where they think we should focus our spending, and their views on a number of options available to us to increase income.
We'd also like to know whether you think we should be targeting resources on those that need the most help, such as vulnerable children and adults, whether you think we should increase fees and charges with the rate of inflation, and if we should continue to invest in reaching net zero carbon and protecting the environment.
How to take part
If you'd like to take part, please complete our survey by midnight on Sunday, 29 January 2023. It should take about five minutes.
If you have any questions about the consultation, please email rcpteam@westberks.gov.uk
What happens next
Your feedback will be taken into consideration and used to inform the Budget papers which will be considered by elected members at the Full Council meeting being held on Thursday 2 March 2023.
What you told us
We received 376 responses to the consultation. Overall people felt that our priorities should be supporting social care, education, highways and transport and housing. Planning was seen as the least important area for investment.
There was a very small level of overall support for the 5% increase in Council Tax overall compared to one of below 5%, and very little support for a 10% rise. The option to go to a Council Tax referendum was not supported by a substantial majority of respondents. However, the majority of respondents that felt we should increase fees and charges with inflation, as well as investing in activities to achieve net zero.
There was consensus that that working-age universal claimants on the Council Tax Reduction Scheme should not receive a further £150 of support for Council Tax payments.
What we did
In response to the Government announcement (after this consultation was released) of a £25 reduction in Council Tax for all Council Tax Reduction scheme claimants, we proposed to re-allocate this part of the budget to the exceptional hardship Council Tax budget to provide further support to residents overall in light of cost of living pressures.
We proposed to continue to invest in activities to achieve net zero, including developing renewable energy provision and installation of on street electric vehicle charging points across the district.
The full report is available as part of the Full Council meeting held on Thursday, 2 March 2023.
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