Changing energy supplier has saved the council cash but finance chiefs have warned there is still a £25 million deficit.
North Yorkshire Council says it has saved five million pounds since coming into existence in April.
However the savings are partly due to a reduction in its energy bill.
The executive member for finance – Councilor Gareth Dadd – says more savings are needed to balance the budget.
Councilor Dade says the savings are partly the result of a local government reorganization that took place in April and saw seven district and city councils merge with the old county Co8NCIL to form a new authority.
Switching energy suppliers has helped North Yorkshire Council save a whopping £5 million.
The council says it has been able to get a somewhat better deal because the single authority is larger than the seven district councils it replaced.
But council director Gary Fielding says that does not mean there is cash to spend.
The new council says huge savings have also been achieved by redeploying staff to fill vacancies following the merger of North Yorkshire County Council and the previous seven district and city authorities in the biggest change to local government since 1974 , so as to pave the way for a transfer deal. ,
However, there are significant financial pressures in the council’s two largest directorates, health and adult services and children and young people’s services.
Both directorates have seen increasing demand for their services, and for example, spending on the provision of care and supports for adults is estimated to have increased by £20.7 million since the end of the last financial year.
The support needed for young adults with multiple disabilities and older people with complex needs associated with dementia has also put an acute strain on council finances.
A significant reduction in income is also predicted within the council’s planning services, with a fall in funding forecast of £1.3 million for the current financial year as a result of a reduction in the number of applications across the county.
Housing services are also facing major financial pressures with an estimated £628,000 extra cost in the current financial year. The main reason is the cost of housing for homeless people, accounting for an estimated £424,000 in excess expenditure. Work is being done by the council to reduce future costs.
The deficit of several million pounds in the council’s budget is being covered for the first year through one-time use of reserves, with some additional savings thereafter. In the long run, the financial gap is expected to widen and will need to be met by additional savings.
A masterplan is now being drawn up to maximize millions of pounds of savings across North Yorkshire councils to help combat the unprecedented financial challenges. A plan to introduce savings should be set by February next year to ensure that the new authority does not have to continue to rely on cash reserves to balance its books.
During the new council’s second year of operation, it is estimated that there will be a further shortfall of £30 million, with a further annual shortfall of £45 million predicted in the third year. Unless savings are made, a total of £105 million will need to be used from council reserves over the next three years.
The council says its budget shortfall is due to a number of factors, such as high rates of inflation, supply chain issues and rising staffing costs, as well as the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, the opportunity to streamline the way key services from waste and recycling to education, highways and planning are delivered to around 33,000 businesses and 615,000 residents of North Yorkshire is considered essential to help cope with the new growing demands. Finance of the Council.
By joining services and maximizing spending power, North Yorkshire Council expects to recover between £30 million and £70 million, which will become annual savings. The scale of the new council’s operations would result in a total cost of around £1.4 billion, including £343 million on schools.
However, opposition leaders on North Yorkshire Council have questioned the council’s statement.
Councilor Stuart Parsons, leader of the independent group, said the council’s planning service was “refuses to serve”, waste collection changes were made without consideration of staff or the public, the highways team was “delaying works they needed to do”. should have completed”, and that there was a severe shortage of customer service staff.
He said:
“Money is being saved by not providing services. Residents are not getting answers to their questions from the council, so they come to me, but I am meeting with the same hesitation to say hello. Where earlier there used to be one or two emails, now there are six or seven.
Councilor Steve Shaw Wright, leader of the authority’s labor group, said it had become clear there would be further cuts to services,
“There doesn’t seem to be any advantage to this great new solidarity”.
He said:
“It is appalling to some people. You almost have to be in the next door category of death to get any kind of service. The mild and moderate ones have gone out the window and the severe ones are almost headed in the same direction.
Councilor Brian Griffiths, leader of the Liberal Democrat group, highlighted concerns over the authority’s planning service, and said that changing the council’s management structure in a short space of time had proved “difficult” and that the authority had undertaken the necessary work to reallocate the workforce. The quantity must have been underestimated.
Source: www.bing.com
