This week at our Council Meeting we formally adopted the Council’s budget plans for the next year & updated our Medium Term Financial Strategy, which covers the next three years.
The annual budget session is perhaps our most important meeting of the year. We decide how the various pots of money we are allowed to spend should be used to provide the best possible services for the best possible value. It is important to note that we don’t start with just under £200m in a bank account and a blank sheet of paper and then start dividing the money across the many departments and services we run and provide. Most of the money this Council spends goes on Adult and Children’s Social Care budgets – it’s the same for any local authority with responsibility for those services.
That has to be the case, not just because those are very necessary, but very expensive parts of what we do, but also because the funding we get from central Government for those things is ringfenced: we couldn’t spend a penny of it elsewhere even if we wanted to. This is true of other funding in other areas two, but Social Care is by far the largest. We also have statutory duties to provide certain services including waste collection, planning, and housing services amongst others. If you’re interested, there’s a graph on page 13 of our Revenue Strategy that neatly illustrates where the money will be spent.
This doesn’t actually leave a huge amount of room for manoeuvre with the remaining money available, so it requires very careful budgeting. Especially given that inflation and cost of living pressures apply to us as a Council, just as they do to our residents. I’m pleased that the budget we have passed will see us continue to invest in all those services, and particularly want to note that we are still increasing the amount we spend on Children’s Services as we support their improvement plan. The budget for this year is balanced, but we will need to identify some savings in the two years that follow. This is not a particularly unusual position for a Council to be in, especially in the current climate, but will require careful work. There are many ways this can be done, including delivering services more efficiently, through careful procurement, and through financial management such as restructuring payments or judicious use of reserves. We will explore all the options available to us; exactly how these savings will be achieved will form part of the budget for next year and the year after.
I would ideally like to see a longer-term approach applied to Council funding, allowing us to plan for the future with more certainty and deliver better value for our residents. I appreciate this isn’t an easy thing to do; Central Government faces financial pressures and demands all the time on a scale that dwarfs the sums we deal with as a Council. They have to do their job of setting the budget, and medium and long-term financial planning, just as we do here. It is, however, something I would like to see explored. Until then, we will continue to do the best we can for everyone in Solihull with the money we have available to us.
At the same session we agreed our Carbon Budget. It sets out the CO2 tonnage we expect to be responsible for each year and makes sure that we not just keep track of, but also seek to reduce it year on year. Protecting our environment for future generations is one of our top priorities, but it also has impacts now: helping to ensure that the air we breathe is cleaner and that we protect and enhance our natural environment, for us all to enjoy, both now and in the future.
I know many of you are eager to see The Core Theatre reopen. Whilst our investigations into the structure of the building continue, the initial news is that we are hoping to reopen the venue next year. I’ve talked at length about it in this news release so won’t repeat myself here, please do take a look and lets all hope we’ll be able to return to our beloved theatre in 2025.
We’re seeking to appoint a new chair of the Solihull Employment and Skills board. Paul Thandi CBE DL is stepping down after a decade in the role and I’d like to thank him for his contributions and his commitment to ensuring that opportunities are provided for local people to get the right skills to get them good jobs across Solihull and the region. His are big shoes to fill, but I’m sure we have many qualified candidates in our thriving borough, so please take a look here to find out more.
And finally, we’ve partnered with Street Tag to launch a new challenge to get local people out and about exploring their neighbourhoods, parks and green spaces by walking or cycling. Street Tag is a mobile app that encourages you to go to new locations and enjoy the areas in which they live. There’s more information here.
Thanks, and have a great weekend,
Councillor Ian Courts.