Cheshire East would not balance its books in adult services this year even if it closed all its libraries and leisure centres and didn’t spend a penny fixing roads, a councillor said.
Cllr Andrew Kolker was speaking as the adults and health committee yesterday (Sept 23) discussed the massive financial pressures of social care on the council.
The service is predicting a £20.7m overspend at the end of this financial year, with the council overall expecting to overspend by £27m.
The Dane Valley councillor said: “£20m is just a monumental amount of money.
“I’d also like to know where this money is going to come from.
“Just to put it in context, if we closed all our libraries, we closed all our leisure centres, and we didn’t spend a penny on the roads out of the revenue budget, you still wouldn’t come to the budget required, so what went wrong?”
Helen Charlesworth-May, executive director of adults, health and integration, said £20m “is a very, very shocking figure, nobody in the department or the council is complacent about this”.
She added: “I think it is also incumbent upon me to say that it is very, very unlikely that the department will be able to balance its budget this year, a reduction of £20m between now and the end of the financial year is very unlikely.”
But she did say it was possible it might be able to cut the overspend to £16 million by the year end.
In response to the question about how the council was going to pay for this, finance officer Nikki Wood-Hill said Cheshire East would have to use the exceptional financial support from the government.
Cllr Ken Edwards (Bollington, Lab) said there needed to be a detailed breakdown of costs and the predicted overspend from adult services.
“We have had some general, vague comments, we’ve had no figures,” said Cllr Edwards.
“£20m is an enormous sum, pushing us, I think, into a situation where adult services are taking more than 40 per cent of the whole budget of the council. Can that be sustained?”
Conservative group leader Janet Clowes (Wybunbury) agreed.
“We need that level of detail in order to drill down into the mechanics of how this has happened,” she said.
Cllr Liz Wardlaw (Odd Rode, Con) was critical of the position the council found itself in.
“We didn’t plan for it. We didn’t see it coming, we should have,” she said.
“We’ve been looking at this potential dilemma for at least 18 months, the savings that have been predicted have not been achieved.
“I don’t see anything new in the savings that are anticipated going forward.
“Increased charges, be more effective in staffing, agency staff reductions…
“So, I never see anything dynamic or new happening.”
With regard to any proposed increase in fees and charges, Cllr Wardlaw said: “How many clients can afford these increases?”
The committee agreed it would provide a detailed financial breakdown of the predicted overspend to the corporate policy committee, as had been requested by the finance sub-committee earlier this month.
(Story by Belinda Ryan, local democracy reporter)
Surely there should have been figures/costs etc included in this report. After all it is nearly 6 months into the financial year. Management control is not to be seen.