Council has £4m budget gap to fill before February

West Sussex County Council has a budget gap of £4.4m to fill before February

West Sussex County Council has a budget gap of more than £4m to fill before February, it has been revealed.

Cabinet member for finance, Jeremy Hunt, told a council meeting that the budget gap for 2024/25 stood at £44.9m before any council tax increase was imposed.

Assuming an increase of 4.99% in April, the gap would fall to £16.2m, while cuts of £11.8m would decrease it to £4.4m.

“Although I’m confident that we will close the gap, it’s going to take some work to achieve it,” Mr Hunt said.

“To date, the clear message from government is that there is unlikely to be any additional funding coming our way despite the huge pressures we are facing, especially across our social care services.”

According to the proposed reductions, £4.4m will be taken from the children and young people learning and skills budget and £3.9m from adult services – the two portfolios which take up the highest proportions of the overall budget.

A further £1.6m will be taken from highways and transport, £1.2m from support services and economic development, £300,000 from finance and property and £200,000 each from the community support, fire and rescue and environment and climate change portfolios.

Taryn Eves, director of finance and support services, said: “We clearly have a lot of work to do.”

'Financial resilience'

The budget proposals will be examined in a six-week online public consultation, which will run from 30 October to 10 December.

Feedback will be considered by the cabinet when preparing the final draft budget and capital programme, which will be presented to council in February.

Mr Hunt said the council will continue to send a message to the government about the “financial problems” facing authorities nationwide.

“We will continue our collaborative lobbying of government to ensure they recognise the funding constraints and rising demand that is having a severe impact not only on many of our own services, but on the financial resilience of our whole local government sector,” he added.