​Balancing the budget now and in the post-Covid years

Council leaders are making plans to balance a budget hit by austerity and Covid and build a successful future for Bury.

The latest budget forecasts are that the authority will need to make cuts of £64 million over the next four years.

Around half of this shortfall will be met by using the council’s reserves to cover one-off losses of income due to the impact of Covid, but the rest will have to be made up by cuts to council spending on services. Under current plans, there will still be a gap of £15 million after the current cuts being proposed have been factored in.

Councillors at next Tuesday’s cabinet (24 Nov) will be told that the authority faces a shortfall of £21m in the next two financial years (2021/23), with a further £43m in the two years after that, making up the total of £64m.

Councillor Eamonn O’Brien, leader of Bury Council, said: “We have suffered ten years of austerity which have stripped over £100 million from our budgets. On top of this, there is ever increasing demand for services – particularly in adults’ and children’s social care, which together make up two-thirds of the council’s annual budget.

“And now there’s the impact of Covid to deal with, which cannot be underestimated and will significantly impact our finances and the local economy for a long time to come. The council has suffered a major loss of income during the crisis, and we will not know what our financial settlement from the Government will be for some weeks to come.”

He added: “Despite this uncertainty, we are in a strong position to meet these challenges. When we last set our budget back in February, we made sure to put money back into our reserves to improve our financial resilience, we had balanced the books over the previous year and had set out an achievable savings plan for the year ahead.

“By building up our reserves before the coronavirus pandemic hit, which has turned out to be exactly the right thing to do, it will help us to better manage the budget reductions and ensure that savings do not undermine our corporate priorities, such as addressing the climate emergency and the Bury 2030 plan. We are still confident and determined to build a healthy and prosperous future for Bury.”

As well as using reserves, the council is considering a range of budget reductions. The largest savings target is in adult social care provided through the One Commissioning Organisation, which will save £9m over the four years through a number of service changes and priorities including more emphasis on community care.

There also savings of £1.2m earmarked in children’s services, around the reviewing of contracts and the removal of vacant posts.

Proposed ‘transformation’ measures would save £5m through closure of council buildings and more agile working, self-service and ‘digital first’ measures, and promoting more self-care at neighbourhood level.

A further £1m could be raised by the closure of civic venues, dimming street lights at night, and improving the efficiency of waste collection services.

If approved by cabinet, the proposals will go out for feedback from staff, residents and businesses, and a final report brought back to full council for approval in February 2021.

ENDS

Press release issued: 19 November 2020.