Nottingham City Council will make sweeping cuts as the authority set its budget for 2024/25, with more than 500 full-time posts likely to be lost.
As reported, the council is to receive capitalisation directives of £41.143m for the next financial year and £25.0m for 2023/24 from government so it can set a balanced budget. This will mean that Nottingham can use capital resources, including from asset sales, to fund revenue costs for services, with the financial support ultimately paid back to government.
Nottingham issued a section 114 notice in November amid budget pressures of c£23m, while a team of commissioners have been appointed to oversee improvements and help ensure financial sustainability, replacing the Improvement and Assurance Board.
Library services and community centre provision will be reviewed as part of the savings planned for Nottingham’s 2024/25 budget, with an activity centre also being closed.
The council will also remove its contribution to area based grants to the voluntary and charity sector and grants to arts organisations and the cultural sector. Community protection and resident development services will also be reduced.
Protestors were seen outside Council House, where the meeting took place, voicing their opposition to such community cuts.
Other potential savings will come from re-structuring and reducing tiers and overall capacity across the council’s adult social care assessment function.
On the reduction in staffing levels, the authority said “every effort” would be made to limit compulsory redundancies through targeted voluntary redundancy. The job cuts are expected to save more than £36m up to 2027/28.
A council tax increase of 4.99% was also confirmed in the 2024/25 budget.
Audra Wynter, the council’s deputy leader and portfolio holder for finance, said: “Local government in this country is facing an unprecedent financial crisis. Nottingham was one of 19 councils confirmed by the government as needing Exceptional Financial Support to balance their books. Seventeen of these are councils with social care responsibilities like Nottingham, highlighting the huge pressure we are all under to meet the rising cost of vital care services for our most vulnerable people.”
Wynter said the council’s financial reserves had been impacted by “decisions it has made in the past and this has affected our financial resilience”. But she noted that since 2013/14, the council’s Revenue Support Grant (RSG) from government “has reduced by nearly £100m every year” while Nottingham’s ‘Core Spending Power’ has “reduced by over 28% in real terms” over the same period, according to data from the Special Interest Group of Municipal Authorities.
“The council has been faced with having to make some extremely difficult decisions,” Wynter added. “Our focus will be on continuing to provide important statutory services but other discretionary services that we know local people value will be significantly affected by the savings. We will do our best as a council to mitigate the impact as much as we can.”
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