South Holland District Council leaders warn of ‘transformational’ changes needed to services

‘Transformational’ change will be needed to council services in order to weather the financial storm ahead, district leaders have warned.

Members of South Holland District Council’s cabinet discussed a projected £353,000 budget overspend for 2023/24 at their meeting on Tuesday.

They say the figures come from a spike in homelessness and greater need for support in this area, rising costs of services and the need to find extra budget savings.

Finance portfolio holder Paul Redgate said members are being asked to be ‘proactive’ in managing their budgets during a ‘volatile’ situation and said: “We find ourselves in a challenging financial environment and we will need to work hard with our services to look at opportunities for efficiencies and innovation.”

He pledged that this was not necessarily about making cuts, but about ‘doing things smarter’ – and that a failure to act would impact on the reserves.

He said other authorities were facing much worse challenges but that the authority needed to avoid ‘falling into that trap’.

Council leader Nick Worth said that, in terms of the savings required: “It is going to be quite transformational for our services to make those savings.”

Coun Bryan Alcock, an independent councillor who heads up a scrutiny committee, said the next five years were going to be ‘extraordinarily difficult’. He said the authority had received two ‘windfalls’ in terms of a one-off £299,000 payment to support drainage boards and £316,000 more than expected income from the council’s investments and questioned the plan for these.

Coun Redgate said the authority did not want to do anything with them just yet, adding: “At this point, it’s about being prudent and frugal.”

Coun Worth felt the drainage board costs will be a ‘significant issue’ – having accounted for all of the rise in council tax bills. He said a group of 15 councils was set to lobby the government further on this, but tempered expectations on the likely success, warning: “It will be a bonus rather than an expectation. That’s going to be a continual issue.”

Deputy leader Tracey Carter said that she was confident that improvements were being made in tackling homelessness – and said issues with staff retention and a reliance on agency staff had been addressed.

She said buying up three new properties would also help to cut the number of families in temporary accommodation.

Deputy chief executive Christine Marshall also said that savings of £250,000 had been identified via a new procurement process ahead of a new strategy for this.

Members were also told that the council is stepping in to work with developers to ensure that planning commitments to affordable housing could still be met, despite issues in the market. As a result £6.66m had been brought forward from future capital programmes. Coun Redgate said longer term funding opportunities will be looked at for this.

Tuesday’s was a ‘special meeting’ of the cabinet, called because the back office services provider PSPS had failed to deliver a report in time for the last meeting.