Surrey County Council set its gross expenditure budget for the 2016/2017 financial year at £1,686m. SCC aimed at efficiencies totaling £83.5m during this period via adding charges on some services while implementing service reductions in other areas.
Where will the cuts manifest this year?
Adult Social Care – £55.3m
Public Health – £4.8m
Children, Schools & Families – £3.5m
Orbis and Business services – £2.3m
Highways – £3.2m
Environment – £2.3m
Fire and Rescue – £0.7m
Cultural Services – £0.6m
Services under – £0.15m
Examples of the frontline service cuts are:
Introduction of charging at Surrey’s community recycling centres
The cycle training scheme gets reduced funding
An 11% Funding reduction for community youth work across Surrey
Insufficient funds to maintain, let alone, fix the roads under SCC jurisdiction
Cuts between £0.84m – 2m to bus services (in multiple waves)
Increasing Adult Social Care – Co-pays
Street light cuts
In spite of the above efforts, the 2% increase of council tax, and the introduction of the 2% adult social care precept (so a total of 3.99% increase in council tax) SCC still fails to deliver the £83.5m of efficiencies. As at 31 August, services forecasted about £6m overspend by the end of the year. In October this numbers was closer to £21m. While Social Care is undertaking serious work to make savings and recover its financial position, at present, no specific action has been identified to tackle the situation.Additionally, the Cabinet notes that at this point in the financial year, services may yet encounter delivery challenges, which present risks to their 2016/2017-outturn positions.
During 2017/2018 – £26m, and during – 2018/2019 £50m of savings need to be identified, in addition to the already planned efficiencies.To make matters worse, the government proposed a negative (!!) revenue support grant (so essentially a tax) for SCC for the 2019/2020 financial year.
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