It’s ‘Budget’ time again at Cheshire East! Public consultations are over, last year’s performances have been checked and new budget proposals examined. Enough remained in the kitty last year to ‘up general reserves’ to £11.5m and Government provided enough in grants, to cover Covid costs to date (with monies still in the account in case)
Finally, we’re told the budget is balanced next year but only if we raise the council tax by the maximum 2.99% (£7.2m) of which 1% (£2.4m) is for social care.
But look carefully!
Last year saw an underspend in social care, the Government settlement for 2022/23 has provided £11.341m in Social Care Grant (£3.363m more than we budgeted for) and New Homes Bonus came in at £2.694m more than predicted. That’s a great, unexpected one-off bonus of £6m for next year.
But whatever our Labour/Independents colleagues bring forward to spend it on, there’s another, new ‘pot of dosh’ that’s been created by their administration since 2019 .
The “MTFS Reserve” sits quietly in the Finance Sub-Committee draft reserves strategy and on the 5th January 2022 held nearly £8m of non-allocated funds.
When asked, we were told that this is a ‘smoothing reserve’ - held separately for a Council to correct any errors and unplanned costs in their MTFS! Great idea! But don’t forget, this ‘smoothing reserve’ is nearly two thirds the size of the General Reserve and more than the whole of this year’s Council Tax hike!
Remember CEC’s Corporate priorities; Open Fair (and Green)? Although we are asking the Audit and Governance Committee to look into this, there’s currently nothing ‘open’ about how monies are accumulated and then spent via this MTFS ‘smoothing’ Reserve. Indeed it can be argued that in budget terms, it’s creation is an extremely useful mechanism for hiding the ‘rough with the smooth’!”
Cllr Janet Clowes
Conservative Group Leader, Cheshire East Council.
Ref: https://moderngov.cheshireeast.gov.uk/ecminutes/documents/s91146/Draft%… (Table 6)
