Comparison 'wide of the mark' over council's finances

Shropshire councillors, scrutinising the authority’s budget for 2019/20, made the statement after reading a ‘better value’ inspection produced by Northamptonshire County Council.

The latter authority hit the headlines earlier this year when it effectively went bankrupt after it issued a Section 114 notice – the first local authority to do so in two decades.

But Shropshire Council, which is under financial pressure, insists that any comparison between it and Northamptonshire is wide of the mark.

The council revealed last month that there is a potential overspend of £6.9 million on a gross budget of £561.95m this financial year. The authority is predicting that the main overspend will come in children’s services, at just more than £3m, while it also expects to overspend in adult services, place, commercial services, finance, governance and assurance, workforce and transformation and public health.

But Tom Dodds, intelligence and insight manager at Shropshire Council, on behalf of the taskforce group, said experts looking at its books had recognised the work that had been done to tackle the issue.

Consideration

He said more details will be revealed next week, adding: “Inspectors recognised that there was a clear contrast between the way that Shropshire Council approaches this work and the way that Northamptonshire County Council operated.

“These and other updates were used by the Task and Finish Group to inform their consideration of the financial strategy and the particular issues they focused their work on.”

The Financial Strategy and Innovation and Income Task and Finish Group was initially set up to look at the draft financial strategy for 2018/19 to 2022/23.

But members chose to continue their work to look at all areas of the 2019/20 budget and haves provided an interim report on their findings which will be presented to the performance management scrutiny committee on Wednesday.

At that meeting the group will be asked to consider the pressure on children’s social care services and investment across Shropshire with particular focus on economic growth and the impact housing can have on council services and budgets.

Requests from the taskforce group to assist with its work include more clarity on the deliverability of the savings attributed to the transformation of the council. They also want to review plans related to public health savings in 2018/19 and 2019/20.

Mr Dodds added: “The Task and Finish Group provides the opportunity to identify any immediate questions with the proposed 2019/20 budget and the financial strategy, and identify areas of focus for a longer term overview of the plans and progress to innovate and raise income, as well as understand the impact of any proposed service cuts and the use of reserves to smooth savings over a period of time.”

Further work will continue while the budget is being put together through November, January and February.