Cheshire East councillors have approved the use of the £17.6m Exceptional Financial Support from the Government – despite one fearing it may impoverish future generations with loans that won’t solve the situation.
The EFS, which has to be paid back over several years and incurs interest, is needed to balance the forecast overspend at the current year-end to protect and minimise the use of reserves.
Interim executive director of resources Adele Taylor told the finance sub-committee today (Thursday): “All you’re being asked in this paper is to allow us to utilise that in full to maintain those reserves.
“If you didn’t agree that, it’s at that point I would have to consider issuing a 114 [which would mean effective bankruptcy] because we would not have adequate resources to continue with our work.”
Ms Taylor said if all of it wasn’t required the council wouldn’t need to draw it down.
But some councillors didn’t agree.
Cllr Stewart Gardiner (Knutsford, Con) said: “I am not convinced… that we should be drawing on £17.6m.
“We do have some reserves, perhaps we should be using those first in this year.”
Cllr Janet Clowes (Wybunbury, Con) said while the council was managing to reduce some of its overspend “the fact is, we’re still in the red, and we’ve still got increased demand”.
She told the committee: “Reserves are there to do that.
“I know we don’t have enough reserves to counter the whole £18.3m overspend for this year but again, it begs the question, we have these quarterly reports now, and consistently we haven’t met our own targets.
“We haven’t met our own MTFS budget lines, and by the sound of it, we’re not going to be able to do that by the year’s end.”
Cllr Reg Kain (Lib Dem) also expressed concerns about using the EFS.
“I have serious reserves about all of this, because I can’t actually see the situation changing over a number of years, and all I can see is that we are going to impoverish future generations of Cheshire East residents with loans that won’t actually solve the situation,” said the Alsager councillor.
Cllr Gardiner said the room was obviously split and called for a recorded vote on the recommendation in relation to utilising the £17.6m EFS.
The recommendation was approved with councillors Lata Anderson (Wilmslow Ind), Dawn Clark (Crewe, Lab), Alan Coiley (Wistaston, Lab) , Brian Drake (Alsager, Lab) voting in favour and councillors David Brown (Congleton, Con), Janet Clowes, Stewart Gardiner and Reg Kane abstaining.
(Story by Belinda Ryan, local democracy reporter)
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