Nottingham City Council has outlined a plethora of savings proposals to tackle its budget gap of £50m for 2024/25, having been issued with a section 114 notice last month.
In November, Nottingham’s section 151 officer, Ross Brown, issued the council with an s114 due to it forecasting a £23m overspend for 2023/24. The authority has also been under government intervention since September and as part of this is subject to the scrutiny of an Improvement and Assurance Board.
A report, which is to be presented to the council’s Executive Board on 19 December, outlined that Nottingham faces a further budget gap of £50m for the next financial year and put forward a series of savings proposals to manage its financial position.
The main savings proposals include reducing council staffing levels of over 500 full-time posts, restructuring and reducing tiers and overall capacity in the adult social care assessment function and increasing council tax to 4.99%.
“In the majority of officer developed savings proposals, the application of service redesign has been adhered to against the principle of the lowest resource deployment possible to comply with the necessary legal obligations for service delivery,” the report said.
Other savings measures involve the council reviewing library services and community centres as well as reducing public transport infrastructure to minimum statutory provisions.
David Mellen, Nottingham City Council’s leader, said: “In Nottingham, a s114 had to be issued for the current year as the cost of providing care for adults and children and people presenting as homeless has meant we simply can’t balance our budget this year.
“As things stand, unfortunately the budget pressures we are seeing are unlikely to reduce next year and like many councils, we are facing a serious gap in our budget for 2024/25.
“This means officers have had to put forward proposals for significant savings and service reductions which no-one would want to make but have to be considered by councillors if the council is to meet its legal requirement to set a balanced budget.”
Government underfunding
According to the report, the budget gap is due to a combination of measures including the impact of inflation, the increasing demand for council services and government underfunding.
Nottingham’s financial capacity has been impacted by a reduction in government funding of £97m each year since 2013/14 and a decrease in its core spending power of 28.2% in real terms, the report explained.
Historic issues such as the failure of Nottingham’s council-run energy company have also impacted its financial resilience, with the authority suggesting that “past issues” of financial governance led to the appointment of the Improvement and Assurance Board.
After the initial savings proposals have been considered by councillors at the meeting on 19 December, a public consultation will take place before any final decisions are made in February.
A separate report that will also be presented at the same meeting of the council’s Executive Board recommended disposing of Nottingham’s investment property assets to help “mitigate potential future financial risks arising from capital and revenue expenditure”. No details of the value of the assets that are set to be disposed of were disclosed to the public.
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