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When councillors last met to consider the extent of the savings needed, the council had a budget gap of £50m over the four years to 2028 with £17m of that falling within the next financial year. Since then, the council has been working hard to identify ways to close the gap. The latest financial report, to be considered by councillors at a meeting next week, shows an improved picture with a four-year gap of £13m and just under £4m to find in the year ahead.
As part of its work to prepare the budget for next year and future years, the council has been hearing directly from local people, businesses, community representatives and partners about their priorities and the issues that are important to them.
Cllr Mike Bell, Leader of the Council, said: “We’ve listened to what local people have been telling us over the past couple of months, and I hope everyone we’ve spoken to will recognise that.
“People told us that crime and community safety, services for vulnerable people, improving the condition of our roads and pavements, supporting our town and village centres and strengthening the availability of public services are all important to them. We have listened and will make sure that our budget will allow us to continue to focus on these areas.
“They also suggested ways we might be able to save money, and our savings proposals focus on making more efficient use of land and buildings, modernising working practices to cut costs and improve efficiency, targeting resources at the most vulnerable, and making use of technology to support delivery of services.”
Executive councillors will meet on Wednesday 6 December at 2.30pm to discuss the progress with financial planning and to approve the publication of the draft savings plan for further conversations with the community before a final budget is prepared and presented to Full Council for decision in February 2024.
Cllr Bell added: “We remain a low spending, low taxing council and we continue to deliver a wide range of services for our communities. However, like councils across the country, we face huge challenges meeting the needs of a growing community while costs go up and government funding goes down.
“We’d hoped for announcements in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement that would see the Government offer much-needed support to Local Government to address areas such as adult and children’s social care, but none was forthcoming.
“This makes it incredibly hard for us to plan our budget with any degree of certainty. Our biggest single risk is not knowing how much funding we might get from central government in the next year and years ahead. In order to start to balance the books we’ve had to make some difficult decisions to increase our income or deliver services differently. Despite this, real challenges remain simply to maintain services at their current level, never mind fund the improvements many residents would like to see.
“We will continue to press government for fair funding in the coming weeks.”
The Executive meeting takes place at 2.30pm on Wednesday 6 December at the Town Hall, Weston-super-Mare and is open to the public. It can also be viewed live online or played back at a later date.
An online consultation and series of community events was launched last week to gather local people’s views on the council’s priorities for the next four years and the budget required to deliver them.