‘No drastic cuts’ pledge as council faces £2.8m overspend

There will be no major cuts to Shropshire Council services in order to bring this year’s budget back in line, its leader has said.

Councillor Peter Nutting says he is confident a projected overspend of £2.771 million this financial year will be under control by April, as has happened in previous years when even larger overspends were predicted.

He made the comments at a meeting of the council’s cabinet, in response to concerns raised by the opposition Liberal Democrat group that “drastic cuts” might need to be made.

Councillor Nutting said: “I can give you a reassurance that we will not be making any drastic cuts, certainly not in this financial year and I don’t believe we will need to in the next financial year.”

He said the council’s leadership would get the budget in line through “prudent management” and “keeping pressure on officers”.

Councillor Nutting added: “It’s a challenging time, we are in the middle of a pandemic, and that as given us extra costs, but generally I think we have done very well and I will be surprised if the £2.7 million we are looking at at the moment is not dealt with by the end of the financial year.

“If you look at the last three years, when we have been going through the year we have always been predicting huge overspends but when we get towards the end of the year we get them under control.

“I’m sure that will happen again this year. I am quite content with the situation in a very, very challenging year.”

Cabinet was meeting to discuss the financial monitoring report for the second quarter of 2019/20, which revealed the council’s position had worsened since an overspend of £1.925 million was predicted at the end of quarter one.

Councillor David Minnery, portfolio holder for finance, said: “Obviously action is required and action is already underway. Management are working on that as we speak and in fact have been doing so for quite some time.”

Councillor Minnery said the situation was, “nowhere near as bad as it has been at this point in the financial year for each of the last two”.

He added: “Yes we are concerned about it and yes we need to get it sorted out, but it’s by no means the level of work that we have been looking at previously.”

The main reason for the projected overspend is an increase of £1.8 million on accommodation for homeless people.

Councillor Minnery said if it was not for this new initiative, the council would now be looking at an almost balanced budget.

He added: “I would challenge anybody to say that we were wrong to go in that direction.

“I think that’s a very vital piece of work the council is doing and we will find the money from somewhere as we go through the year.”