Hard work starts to balance council’s budget
Grasping commercial opportunities, making more use of assets and reducing costs by expanding services provided online wherever possible are part of the strategy for balancing a council’s books.
Due to continued rising costs for materials, wages and fuel and energy, Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council is beginning preparations for its 2025/26 budget faced with finding an additional £1.4 million just to provide the same services.
Specific concerns include the effect of a proposed Government reorganisation of the business rate system and the continuing demand to provide temporary accommodation for families seeking short-term help after becoming homeless.
Simon Tagg, Leader of Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council, said:
This is a financially stable authority, and we maintain that position through a great deal of hard work to manage costs while providing the services our residents want and keeping council tax low.
By law we cannot borrow to balance the books, so we will have to do some things even more efficiently, make best use of our assets and work with other bodies and organisations to make the most of every pound we spend.”
Planning includes for anticipated pay awards settled nationally, the fluctuating cost of borrowing and the rising costs of regeneration projects for which a fixed sum was awarded by national Government prior to increases in the cost of materials, energy and labour.
At the same time the Borough Council is overseeing three major town centre regeneration projects, having successfully bid previously for more than £50 million of Government funding, and continues to set aside a legal fighting fund for Walleys Quarry.
Stephen Sweeney, Deputy Leader of Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council and Cabinet member for Finance, Town Centres and Growth, said:
National issues have a direct bearing on what happens in Newcastle and what this council can afford to do.
Without compensation a proposed reform of the business rates scheme could reduce our income by hundreds of thousands of pounds per annum; while the rising cost of putting families in emergency temporary accommodation is affecting us all, with councils across the country spending more than £1 billion last year – 50 per cent up on the year before.
At the same time, we are also in the middle of the biggest regeneration project in Newcastle for a generation.
That work is underway and demonstrates we make effective use of our spending, but we have a vision for this borough which will require continued access to Government infrastructure funding, so we will be writing to the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, making clear that even well-run councils like ours need support and a fair deal for future funding.”