Issue - meetings

A report from the Leader of the Council, Councillor Eamon O’Brien is attached.

The Leader, Councillor O’Brien presented the medium term financial strategy.  The Leader reported that at the start of the year, Bury was faced with a budget gap of circa £23m over the next 4 years. Since then, Covid has added a further £39.1m of one-off cost pressures on the council and £1m of ongoing costs. In addition, further demands on the council have seen the ongoing budget gap increase from circa £23m to circa £33m. For both the one-off cost pressures and the ongoing pressures there is higher proportion of savings that are needed in the first two years of the strategy.

With a financial challenge of this scale, the Council needs to balance the need of delivering more savings on an ongoing basis and utilising its reserves to support the one-off costs. Financial resilience and sustainability however needs to be at the core of the financial strategy and reserves can only be spent once. As options that will deliver ongoing savings are developed those that can provide one-off savings are also needed in order to replenish and slow down the ‘run’ on reserves.

The Leader reported that the report updates Cabinet on the work to date to align the financial and the corporate planning processes and provides framework for engagement with the Cabinet and sets the context on which options to manage the financial gap are currently being developed. Given the scale of the financial gap, options are now planned to be brought forward to Cabinet in November for discussion and consideration.

Delegated decision:

Cabinet agrees to:

• Note the updated MTFS position;
• Note the significant financial challenge faced by the Council and the context of financial uncertainty that is impacting on financial planning;
• Note the proposed approach for managing the gap including the use of reserves, efficiencies through transformation and the identification of efficiency/budget options;
• Approve the next steps and the proposed approach and that a detailed report will be presented to Cabinet in November.

Reasons for the decision:

This report sets out the current anticipated position and the impact, in particular of Covid 19. It identifies the current risks associated with the budget and required steps to manage the projected gap. This will assist Cabinet in formulating proposals to submit to Council before 8 February 2021, for the Council budget and council tax calculations for 2021/22.

Other option considered and rejected:

To reject recommendations contained within the report.