Brighton & Hove Councillor Offers Reassurance Following £10m Budget Shortfall Report

Brighton and Hove City Council will not end this financial year with a £10 million budget shortfall, a leading councillor told the cabinet.

A forecast published in cabinet papers indicated that, after the first two months of this financial year, there was a risk that the council would end the year £10 million in the red.

But Councillor Jacob Taylor, the deputy leader of the council, said that the risk was in the event of a “do nothing” scenario.

At the cabinet meeting yesterday (Thursday, June 18), Councillor Taylor said that the council would need to stay focused on keeping measures in place to end the year on or under budget.

He said during the budget-setting process in February that the council had to make its biggest ever package of savings – £24 million – to close the largest budget gap in the council’s history – totalling £30 million.

Councillor Taylor, the cabinet member for finance, said:

“We spend a hell of a lot of time as an organisation working on those savings packages, where can we find savings.

“It would be great if we could be doing more proactive and positive stuff and, indeed, we are as a council, which is fantastic, but those savings packages take work.”

He said that £6.4 million of the £24 million savings package was currently at risk but the situation was not bad considering the scale of savings – and it was early in the financial year.

Pressures on the budget were particularly acute in “demand-led” services such as community care and temporary housing, with a £4 million forecast overspend.

Health and adult social care budgets were under pressure because more people had increasingly complex demands, the cabinet was told.

Councillor Taylor said that the number of homeless people in England and Wales living in temporary housing has risen to a record 112,660 households.

In Brighton and Hove, the number of households presenting as homeless last year went up by 20 per cent and so far this year it had already increased by 30 per cent.

Spending on temporary housing was running at 20 per cent over budget.

The budget for schools was also at risk of an overspend – totalling £456,000 – and 46 schools required a “licensed deficit” totalling nearly £11 million. The cabinet papers said that the council did not have enough money to cover the shortfalls.

Council leader Bella Sankey said that she met with other Labour leaders yesterday in her capacity as deputy leader of the Labour group at the Local Government Association.

She said that other councils were experiencing similar financial pain in adult social care, children’s services and temporary housing.

Councillor Sankey said:

“It was really heartening for me for the first time when speaking to ministers today to hear ministers who really understand the pain and the crisis that is now afflicting local government.

“These are ministers who have worked in local government for significant periods of time, that understand the importance of prevention and having the room and the space to do things differently, but also understand we have not had that room or space for so long.”