Full Council to consider ‘balanced budget’ with £1.8m of savings yet to be found

Wrexham Council will set a ‘balanced budget’ despite a £1.8m shortfall, with the position as being described as ‘not an unusual position to be in’.

The draft budget document that includes several million pounds of cuts and efficiencies passed the Executive Board yesterday with much the same commentary that was raised in the recently sparsely attended media brief.

As reported £13m of cuts has been formalised, with a modelled 12.5% council tax rise reduced to 9.9% however leaving a £1.8m gap to be found.

Yesterday the Council Leader Mark Pritchard said: “An amount of £1.8m is still to be identified and work continues on progress to identify other options to address this.

“This is not an uncommon position to be in with regard to the £1.8m, it is very similar all across Wales, some authorities are looking for 5-6-8 million pounds. I know that the Finance Officer to my left is happy to sign off (the budget) with £1.8m to be found.”

Later in the Executive Board meeting he described the budget as ‘sound and balanced’, despite the £1.8m yet to be budgeted hole – using the word ‘balanced’ five times.

He added: “This budget is a balanced budget in delivering services, but also saving as many jobs as we can within this council and across Wales. We have to bring in a balanced budget and I think this is a balanced budget.

“I think it’s as good as we can expect at this moment in time.”

He did warn “unfortunately, even at this level, we will still have to make redundancies and we will have to do some reshaping and reorganising services across this council in the very near future”.

Councillor Paul Roberts gave an insight to the work that has taken place to get the budget over the line: “We have sat down and we’ve done detailed analysis between everybody that’s been involved.

“I think, as regards of the final package, I’d like to see if anybody could in fact do a better job than what we’ve got in front of us.

“I’m not being political, I am being honest. With assistance from Wrexham council officers, its the best of what we’ve got.

“We’ve tried to be as transparent as possible with all the 56 councillors of all political affiliations, and the amount of information that we’ve generated we have been quite transparent with the information as far as we could go within certain constraints.

“I think everyone should appreciate that, irrespective of whatever political party that you’re involved with.”

He rounded off his speech thanking the Finance Officer who he said has “…probably aged about 20 years in the last 12 months”.

Cllr Dana Davies queried the £1.8m hole along with a range of other points, and was told by the Council Leader: “The 1.8 didn’t have to be here, we could have put the council tax up another 2%.

It wasn’t the political will of this council to set the council tax up and you’re quite right the assumptions forecast was 12.4%.

But, I will remind everybody, we make the decisions on the council tax, the politicians, and we felt that 12.4 was too high.

“We came to a political decision. We set it at 9.9.

“In the budget report to Full Council it will be ‘savings to be found’. I’ll leave that to the officers to put the appropriate wording in. Will we find it? Absolutely, we will find the £1.8 .

The Finance Officer was invited to give ‘clarity’ on the £1.8m outstanding figure.

The Officer explained, “There is a column in Appendix One in the overall budget that has it as a credit to be found, if you like, as we go through the year. So that’s where it sits.

“So it’ll be in a corporate budget line until specific proposals are developed, and then they can be allocated to wherever those are in the in the budgets.

“The point about having to bring a budget forward with an amount still to be found, I think in previous years, we’ve had modest amounts of savings to be found – there was £300,000 in the budget for the current financial year, it is not an unusual position to be in.

“I think what’s different for next year is the scale, not just for this council, but for every council.

“I think as has been mentioned, compared to some examples we’re hearing from other areas, 1.8 million is a reasonably modest sum.