A budget special from Northamptonshire County Council.
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Draft budget and council plan 2017/18 published
Proposals for the second year of our four year budget and council plan have been published aiming to save a further £66.9m over the next 12 months.
With service demands still soaring across the county and the amount of money available to run them being heavily reduced, we have published plans aimed at making sure the needs of the most vulnerable are met while keeping council tax among the very lowest in the country.
This year's proposals
At the heart of this year’s proposals are targets to reduce front line service duplication – where people are receiving more than one service to meet the same need from public services and how this can be streamlined, and a ‘fair and equitable’ use of council resources.
The proposals also include the first savings to come from consolidating 12 headquarter buildings into the new ‘One Angel Square’ public sector hub. Further proposals are included to explore a unitary local government model for the county to save millions across all council services in future years of the four year plan.
The draft proposals include a rise of 3.95% in council tax including 1.95% for general council services and an additional 2% specifically for adult social services.
We're also outlining how we are embracing the government’s view that councils should use capital receipts – that is money generated from property and assets - to help transform local services.
Leader of the council Cllr Heather Smith said: “Here in Northamptonshire we really are at the forefront of the country’s targets to reduce public spending and therefore look at completely different ways of delivering public services.
“This is the second year of the four-year budget plan announced in 2015 and once again it’s clear that to be able to continue to deliver services to this county’s most vulnerable and meet the ever-growing demand for such services, we have to make savings, generate additional income, and take a fundamental look at how we do things to make sure as a sector we are delivering the best possible value for money."
Cabinet member for finance Cllr Robin Brown said: “This year we have adopted a zero-based budget approach to all our services. This means that rather than looking at existing budgets and deciding what changes should be made we have started from the position of each service having zero money, and then looking at what they need to deliver their outcomes. This process confirmed that our key services of providing for vulnerable children and adults are facing huge increases in demand with no associated increase in income, so we need to continue to find ways to do things differently across the board.
“For example, where people are receiving several services from the council and other organisations, which are all aiming to achieve the same thing for them, we are looking how these can be more streamlined to remove any duplication of effort at a time when we can’t afford such duplication.
“The government has also made it clear that where possible we should use our assets to help pay for transformation and so we are putting forward proposals that do just that to assist in our work to transform into the Next Generation Council, which is pioneering the way local authorities deliver services.”
Areas of spend
The budget outlines the largest areas of spend for the council over the next year to be:
Children’s Services: £131m
Including:
An extra £2.3m to cope with the increased number of children needing care
An extra £1.2m for increasing contract payments and wages
Adult Services: £143m
Including:
An extra £1.7m for increasing payments to care providers to provide better care standards
An extra £3.9m to cope with increased the increased number of people requiring care
Place Services including highways, transport and waste: £82m
To help balance the budget a series of service transformations, reviews and cuts are being proposed including:
£9.8m review of targeted early help service contracts including children’s centres.
£12m savings in the purchasing and placements in adult services
£8.7m savings in removing duplication of services happening across health and adult social care
£8.5m review of Olympus Care Services
£20m over four years pursuing Unitary Local Government Model for Northamptonshire.
Single unitary authority could deliver huge savings
Plans to look at a ‘one unitary council’ model for Northamptonshire local government will start next year following a report from Ernst and Young indicating such a model could save a county like Northamptonshire up to £29m a year.
Potential savings
The first set of potential savings are outlined in the draft budget proposals published on Monday, 12 December to start coming into effect in the year 2019 / 20 and the inclusion in the budget comes just weeks after the report by Ernst and Young was published called the ‘Independent Analysis of Governance Scenarios and Public Service Reform in County Areas.’
Cllr Heather Smith, county council leader, said: “We believe it is essential that under the current budgetary pressures that local public services are under we need to do all we can to safeguard local services and deliver value for money to our residents. Currently there is clear duplication of activity across the eight councils in the county.
“However this is not simply about how local councils are set up in isolation of all the other changes which are taking place. Rather the issue is about the complete transformation of public services.
“Based on examples from other areas of the country and recent studies, we believe the move to a single unitary authority provides the most financial benefits to the tax payers of Northamptonshire and will next year be conducting a full appraisal of the options.”
Have your say
Please look through the full proposals and draft council plan on our website. We encourage you to take part in the consultation, which is open until 24 January, 2017, to have your say on our proposals.
Following the consultation, a report will be presented to Cabinet in February. Approval will then be given at a meeting of the Full Council on February 23.
Read the proposals and take part in the consultation