Council agrees savings for 2024

At last night's Full Council meeting (Wednesday 13 December) councillors agreed savings of around £4m for 2024-2025.

These include plans to work towards shared services with other councils, businesses, and voluntary and charity sector partners to reduce staff costs and boost resilience, and to look at various areas of the council's work to find the £4m that needs to be saved. The council continues to see the costs of providing temporary accommodation increasing as seen in the national housing crisis.

The council held a public consultation in November asking for residents, businesses and groups or organisations for their opinions on the proposals. There were over 100 responses to the public consultation, with many suggestions around tackling the housing crisis. The suggestions have been passed to senior officers for further investigation where appropriate.

Cllr Paul Barnett, leader of the council, said: "I am pleased that the savings for next year have been agreed now. By having these conversations earlier in the year, we will be able to start work in January on the proposals we have agreed so that we have the best chance of making these savings.

"We have not yet had the details of our government grant for 2024-25, and we continue to talk to them about additional support for our increasing housing costs, but while these conversations are on-going we have committed to balancing our budget ourselves without additional financial support.

"Recent events like the town centre flooding have shown the importance of keeping our reserves for emergencies. This budget allows us not to spend reserves but also balance the books."

Councillors will meet again in February to finalise the budget, including council tax for 2024-25, once the government grant has been agreed. There will also be the opportunity to update any figures that have been used in these budget savings proposals at that point.

You can watch the meeting back again and view the full proposals in the meeting agenda.