Big trouble in Great Yarmouth as statutory services become unaffordable
0Great Yarmouth Borough Council is set to consult on which services it could stop providing, after predicting that it will run out of money to cover its outgoings in 2015/16.
A draft budget for the year 2014/15 says that the council is set to run significant deficits for the three years up to 2016 which are likely to exhaust its £5.6 million of reserve cash.
The council will now prepare a new medium-term financial strategy to set a new framework around service delivery, with a public consultation penciled in for the summer.
The report said: “These projections are not sustainable even in the short-term.
“The council will need to consider options for moving forward, which will include consideration of which services it can continue to deliver.”
The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has reduced the authority’s grant to £7,023,364 for next year, a cut of 13.8 per cent.
The council claims this will leave them with the largest proportional reduction in spending power of any council in the UK at 18.36 per cent.
However, the council will be protected by a DCLG promise that no council will suffer a reduction in spending power of more than 6.9 per cent.
Despite this, and a round of efficiency savings undertaken by the council, a spokesman said that the council would “be faced with tough choices to make in the next few years” in relation to service delivery.
Great Yarmouth is represented in Parliament by local government minister Brandon Lewis.
This week, a report by the Local Government Information Unit said that a third of councils have warned that financial constraints may place them in a situation where they are no longer able to provide their statutory duties.
Dr Jonathan Carr-West, chief executive of LGiU, said: “The reality is that unless all parties can agree a radical future for council funding, everything from road sweeping to social care will be increasingly difficult to deliver.
“Everyone agrees the system needs radical reform but the only changes we are offered are piecemeal and marginal.
“Funding of statutory services cannot be sustained if the local government finance fudge continues.”
