Wrexham Council remain guarded on huge in year budget measures to save £23.8m

Wrexham Council ‘did not answer’ budget questions put to them by the BBC, and our own sets of questions have been the mould for the authority’s first public update.

The Council are remaining tight-lipped over millions of pounds worth of budget changes despite requests for clarity over how it will impact on services.

The local authority’s previously-approved budget was blown apart at the start of July after it was revealed that a forecast £23.8m financial black hole was now expected.

It led to an “extraordinary” report being presented to Executive Board members, and voted through, giving the green light so “immediate actions” could be taken to mitigate the budget forecast.

As Wrexham.com previously reported, the measures were unprecedented in their scope, with all departments asked to identify in-year savings of around 15% with ‘all areas of expenditure and income’ to be examined.

The actions were also unusual in how they were executed as normally powers are delegated directly to senior officers.

However, on this occasion it was agreed the measures would be implemented “…in consultation and agreement with the appropriate Lead Member and the Leader and the Deputy Leader of the Council” – referred to as political approval.

Political involvement in the full scope of a department’s budget is rare and could be seen as an exceptional blurring of the line between operational and political matters.

In at least the last 40 days, millions of pounds worth of budget savings have been identified and approved politically via this process.

We have been told that Lead Members, along with the Leader and Deputy Leader of the council have sought backing from the councillors in the ruling administration before taking decisions forward.

Weekly financial tables have also been provided to all councillors, regardless of their political grouping, with just over 400 words of commentary accompanying them.

Several councillors have told us they were unhappy with the lack of detail and quality of explanations provided in those documents – with those outside of the ruling Independent and Conservative coalition particularly feeling left in the dark.

The process has taken place behind closed doors, with elected representatives specifically told not to inform the public what is going on, nor with any formal route to ask questions and no method to scrutinise the measures.

Wrexham.com has had sight of the regular updates shared with staff and councillors, along with other information. We have also reported on the silence in response to some questions asked about cuts to library service and revealed a £19k saving which will result in no new library books being ordered.

Oddly, the story about the council library service prompted a further clarification from the council on the same day to to detail what impact it would have on front line provision.

As it is summer recess, there is no executive board meeting scheduled for August, with no media briefing being held with lead members.

Before last Friday, there was no communication with members of the public on the financial situation the local authority – which is possibly facing the second biggest budget black hole in Wales (see below for today’s BBC data).

Over the previous few weeks, we have asked Wrexham Council several questions on some of the budget measures being considered.

With the budget update documents including details for specific departments, we looked to query specific areas or items.

We were later told we would get a copy of a wider statement aimed at informing the public about how the council intend and are progressing work to find the £23.8m savings needed inside the financial year.

Wrexham.com asked Wrexham Council about some of the proposed budget savings, including libraries, whether the City of Culture bid would still go ahead, car parking, carbon projects being paused, social care, as well as vacancy management and the immediate stopping of overtime.

Wrexham Council replied on an oddly familiar range of specific points: Libraries, City of Culture Bid and as it was happening – events, car parking, carbon project pausing, social care, vacancy management.

They did proactively say a review into the use of agency workers has also started.

They also revisited proposals already in the public domain – including an increase to green bin charges and cuts to PCSO funding.

However, the response does not give the key figure of how much of the £23.8 million black hole remains, nor are there any figures attributed to the service areas mentioned, apart from libraries.

We can report £11.2m of measures towards bridging the £23.8m black hole appear to have received ‘political approval’.

They are mostly made up of ‘efficiencies’ and changes to fees and charges. ‘Service cuts’ make up a relatively small sum of £678k.

When asking our questions we did not realise they would form the basis of the Council’s update to the public – or to be blunt – we would have asked more at the time.

Wrexham Council’s update can be seen in full below:

Recruitment
Recruitment for new or vacant jobs at the council has been paused, and is only being undertaken for key posts with approval from senior managers and lead members.

A review of the use of agency workers has also started.

Carbon reduction
Political discussions are ongoing about what we take forward in this area.

We’ll continue to work hard to reduce unnecessary travel by employees and promote other behaviours to help reduce our carbon footprint in Wrexham.

City of Culture
The council remains fully committed to the bid for City of Culture 2029. The available budget as agreed at Executive Board in 2022 is £500k in 2023/24.

A programme of events is currently being devised with the Interim Board who will confirm their priorities at the next meeting in September.

Some of the upcoming events currently being organised for 2023/24 under the City of Culture branding include:

Wal Goch (football festival)
Comedy Festival
St David’s Day
The Tour of Britain is also a significant event which contributes to the City of Culture programme, although this is funded from a different source.

Libraries
We’ve worked extremely hard and have found a way to save around £19k on new library books, but we’ll still be spending around £130k on new books for our libraries this year, and have access to wider resources across the North Wales libraries consortium.

We’ll still receive hundreds of new books each month, including copies of all of the top 10 bestsellers in English fiction and non-Fiction, children’s books, audio books, large print books and Welsh language books.

We will also continue to buy and provide online e-books and e-audio books through our Borrowbox app.

Social care
Social care charges to the public will be largely unaffected and will continue to be implemented in line with the national policy for fees and charges for social care in Wales.

Some efficiencies will be made by making sure fees continue to be fairly implemented across Wrexham.

Car parking charges
Parking fees in our car parks are still under review and no political decision has been made yet. Discussions are ongoing.

On ‘carbon reduction’ councillors have been given information that the delay in seven carbon projects has had political approval, contrary to the information above.

We asked Wrexham Council what the seven projects were, why they were being affected, and when they are scheduled to restart.

We invited comment from the Lead Member – who heads up an important area of the local authority that declared a climate emergency. The response, in full, is above.

As the Planning and Environment Departments are entirely absent from the update, we have since asked the council for the Lead Member to comment on:

• Cuts in planning, specifically around a large four figure sum on ‘subscriptions’, what they are, and if cutting them will impact service provision.
• As social care makes up a large part of the overall savings found, we have asked for extra detail on how extra money via property revaluation works and why they were not done historically.
• We have also asked for a ‘fact check’ if the Lead Member is aware of any issues around historic agency staff expenses processes.
• Environment are exploring the ‘disposal’ of ‘surplus’ vehicles and equipment, and we have asked when they were first identified, and why they were not disposed of previously.
• We have asked what a ‘review’ of winter maintenance routes will be looking at, when it is due to complete and if there are any service impacts expected.

If and when Lead Members respond to the new queries, we will of course publish their replies in full.

We will also attempt to inform you of how the remaining £12m gap will be plugged.

BBC UK-wide council budget investigation : Wrexham Council ‘do not answer’

Our probing comes at the same time the BBC Shared Data Unit has released figures from across the UK, showing the average council now faces a £33m predicted deficit by 2025-26 – a rise of 60% from £20m two years ago.

Together, the 190 authorities surveyed by the BBC said they would need to find £5.2bn to balance the books by April 2026 – even after making £2.5bn of cuts this year. Six councils will receive emergency support from UK Government in the current financial year.

Between April and June, the BBC approached 218 councils in total, asking for details contained in each authority’s ratified budget for 2023-24 and their medium-term financial strategies and other information.

Wrexham Council “did not answer”, say the BBC.

In some cases, the council supplied the agenda papers for the authority’s budget to the BBC.

If that process happened, the BBC filled in their data sheet and sent the findings back to the corresponding council for verification. The BBC say Wrexham Council didn’t respond to that either.

Only one other council in Wales did not respond to the BBC’s UK wide data collection. The BBC shared the data with publishers under embargo a week ago with publication date of today.

The full BBC data will likely be everywhere this morning, however some headline figures include:

• Hampshire County Council is set to make the most savings overall in the UK (£80m), followed by Surrey (£69m) and Norfolk (£59.7m).
• However, as a proportion of the net budget, nearby Shropshire is set to make the most savings this year – its £51.4m schedule of savings amounts to 20.1% of its annual net budget.
• On top of the savings, councils plan to use £1.1bn worth of reserves to balance budgets this financial year. Among them, Bradford is planning to use £52.8m worth of reserves – the largest total in the UK and nearly 12% of the council’s yearly net budget.

In Wales, 17 out of the 20 councils in the BBC study plan to make £182.0m worth of savings and use £72.7m worth of reserves in 2023-24. The 20 authorities who responded predict a combined two-year shortfall of £394.8m by 2025-26.

The largest savings in the BBC data are: Rhondda Cynon Taf £27.8m, Swansea £20.3m, Newport £19.5m, Cardiff £17.7m and Powys £16.5m.

However that list is not quite accurate as due to Wrexham Council’s non-response, the £23.8m second place position will not show in the wider reporting.

Our interest in the financial situation appears to have baffled some people in the Guildhall, with councillors and staff being told not to leak things to Wrexham.com.

However, the large BBC Data Unit project may go some way to show there is wider interest not just locally, but across Wales and the UK.

The only attributable comment on the budget was released on Friday when council leader Mark Pritchard said: “Each and every department is making a contribution to finding these savings, and we’re working hard to do this with as little disruption to the public as possible.

“We’ve looked at lots of ideas and options, and although we don’t have all the answers yet, we’ve made huge progress.

“So far we’ve identified around half of the savings or efficiencies needed. It’s not a painless process, but we have no choice but to meet this challenge head-on.”

Deputy council leader David A Bithell said: “It’s sensible to take action sooner rather than later.

“It’s a difficult time for councils across Wales and we will have to make some tough decisions, but our goal is to continue to provide our local communities with the services they need.”

The raw BBC data can be found Council Finances 23_24.pdf.

Top pic: The public figure that has been ‘avoided’ however by how much is not officially known.