£12.5 million budget deficit for Conwy Council

Conwy Council is facing a budget shortfall for the next financial year of £12.5m.
If the authority was to cover this through council tax alone, it would have to hike rates by 23%, councillors were warned at a meeting of Conwy’s finance scrutiny committee today.
A report to members of the committee outlined the situation as the council looks to set a balanced budget next March for the financial year of 2020/21.
Schools and social services made up the bulk of the council’s spending, accounting for 30% and 28.3% of the authority’s £220,001,000 budget.
Of the £12,494,000 savings needed, all but £1,768,000 arose as a result of outside pressures such as UK and Welsh Government policy.
Cllr Sam Rowlands, the leader of the council and cabinet member responsible for finance, said: “It is fair to say that there are huge financial challenges in respect of services to children generally, together with the financial pressures in adult social services.
“It is essential that a recovery plan is established to ensure that we can provide the services we need to during 2019/2020, whilst at the same time we formulate the budgetary options for 2020/2021 so that we can set a balanced budget for that year.”
He added: “We are facing a £12.5 million deficit to balance our budget for next year.
“The vast majority is coming not from our own decision making here in Conwy but from government policy or external demands.
“We are asking Welsh Government that whenever they make a policy change that they fund that.
“To be able to tackle the deficit if we don’t receive the funding from Welsh Government, we will need to deal with it through cuts to our services and there is likely to be an increase in council tax as well.
“If we don’t do anything to our services to plug the gap, that’s the equivalent of increasing council tax by over 23%.
“Now of course, we won’t do that because we are looking very carefully at our services to see where we can make savings.”
Councillors agreed that a consultation should be carried out with the public on the budget in January.
Residents are already having to deal with a 9.6% council tax hike this year, and one member of the authority felt the public needed more say on the budget.
Capelulo councillor Anne McCaffrey said: “Lots of councils go out in January to their residents with all of the options and take feedback from them. We don’t do that and I think we missed a real trick.
“We know budgets are never nearly enough, we know council tax is obviously predicated on the back of this, and one of the things that upsets our residents is they don’t feel they get an insight to give feedback.”

By Shane Brennan – Local Democracy Reporter