20 Feb 2023
Back in October, district council leader Cllr Chris White told residents to brace themselves for the impact of the UK’s economic conditions on their finances – and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
He was speaking shortly after it was revealed the inflation rate had hit a 40-year-high of 10.1% in September, and said at the time: “Inflation is driving up the cost of energy we use to deliver our services. Service contracts are increasing in line with much greater than anticipated inflation.
“Our capital programme needs funding. The cost of borrowing is rising for us, just as it is for residents and businesses, so we have to recognise that in our budget preparations for the next financial year.
“These factors are outside of our direct control, nonetheless they will have a very real and significant impact on our finances.
“With officers, we are looking at what the various options are as we work to close the gap in our budget for this year and next. This work continues, and further updates will follow.”
As it happened, the situation was to grow increasingly worse, with the local government finance settlement awarded to SADC much lower than was hoped.
With a massive budget shortfall of £2.3m to reconcile, the district council was forced to make some tough decisions in order to balance the books, ranging from charging residents to visit Verulamium Museum to closing Abbey View Golf Course.
Other suggestions included: increasing fees at cemeteries and lowering the length of lease from 100 to 50 years; removing all on-street pay and display machines in favour of PaybyPhone; transferring green space assets to parish councils; increasing the Green Waste charge from £45 to £60; and the commercial repurposing of council car parks to include car washing and delivery collection points.
Councillors faced a social media backlash in the wake of some of the proposals, leading to emergency measures to mitigate some of the more unpopular moves, including a stay of execution for the Abbey View athletics pavilion.
This week, talking exclusively to the St Albans Times, council leader Cllr White explained how they found themselves in this difficult situation and what options they faced now.
He said that officers, their chairs and vice-chairs were asked to present suggestions for any cuts, improvements, or requests for growth from early September.
Cllr White said: “Some ideas were just too horrible to contemplate and some were too expensive, but you listen to the arguments and work towards an overall target so there is a departmental/committee approach, and also a broader approach trying to push that [budget] gap down.”
These suggestions are then debated at committee stage before going for final approval by Full Council, at which time the proposal becomes policy.
“Obviously you can’t consult practically on every line when the situation keeps shifting.
“Certainly there were loose ends coming through from public realm [committee], which bears the brunt of the difficulties.
“People say well why didn’t you consult on the car parking charges? Well what would that have achieved? There was a behind-the-scenes process but also Liz Truss’ government at the same time, and we didn’t actually get the Local Government Settlement figure until two days before Christmas Eve. The one grant we were hoping wouldn’t go down went down hugely. Sometimes the financial reality has to dictate the strategy, but that doesn’t mean the strategy is meaningless.
“We were looking at some of these proposals some time in advance because you have to, but the actual decisions were really not until January because of the lateness of the settlement. The days when you could set the council budget in December have gone, you couldn’t possibly do that because we didn’t have enough information and were so dependent on grants.”
“There are some quite clever schemes in terms of planning – there’s something which operates in Luton whereby people pay a fee which makes it quite easy for them to amend their planning applications – which would make £100,000, but we don’t know what interest rates are going to be and inflation is going to be.
“There are all sorts of things we can look at, but we are starting to see coming over the horizon a move away from the fortnightly collection of certain things, I don’t want to touch public loos but there comes a point where perhaps we should…
“What’s left really? The process doesn’t begin again until this is all over, and hopefully we’ll have more clarity then and interest rates will stabilise and inflation come down.
“We run two swimming pools, and other councils probably would have closed one of them by now. Eenie meenie miney mo – St Albans or Harpenden? It’s a hard decision but it would have made a difference.
“The estimate by the Local Government Association of the number of pools which will close over the next few years is absolutely horrific. But we’re nowhere near doing that yet and we have to find savings elsewhere.
“It’s not fun but we have been warning people there is a problem for months.”
Are they winning hearts and minds? “I think we’re winning understanding. I think people do understand it and I do track what comes up on the doorstep.
“No-one’s going to like it at the end of the day, but we’re trying to do the sensible thing.”
