More cuts needed despite saving £38m - Shropshire Council

Lezley Picton said the council would struggle to afford the rising cost of social care

Despite cutting almost £38m from her budget, the leader of Shropshire Council has warned the authority faces even more drastic cuts in 2024.

Lezley Picton said she has done her best to protect services, but with costs continuing to rise, she is running out of options.

"Next year there really is nothing else left," she said.

The authority is on course to save £47m by April, but will have to find an extra £20m for social care in 2024.

Roger Evans, leader of the Liberal Democrat opposition group, said he believed the authority would survive this year through "one-off" savings, but there was "great trepidation" about the year to come.

'Shock of century'

Ms Picton said that as a result of the extra financial pressures she was looking at a total shortfall of £23m in the next financial year.

If the council is to avoid bankruptcy it will probably need to cut all but essential, statutory services, she explained.

She said she did not want to issue a section 114 notice, effectively declaring the council bankrupt, as other authorities have done this year.

The Conservative leader said she found it "very strange" to see other authorities go down that route, because it would have once been "the shock of the century".

"Now it's just like we declare a 114 and we move on", she said, but she said it would mean government-appointed commissioners "take away everything that most residents value and love".

Ms Picton said she had taken a different approach to making savings, resisting the option to close the likes of libraries and leisure centres

But Mr Evans said that if his group takes control of the authority in the May 2025 elections, he would seek to issue the section 114 notice. That would mean the authority couldn't commit to any new spending, and would have to draw up a new plan in 21 days to come within budget.

While the authority could no longer rely on its reserves to get out of trouble, Ms Picton said, it was "not at the end of the road yet" and there were a few things it could still do to reduce the burden of social services, which now makes up around 80% of her budget.

That could mean digital solutions or earlier interventions to avoid children going into care, with the authority looking to seek the maximum rise in council tax.

"Out of every £5 Shropshire Council spends, £4 is spent on social care. 50 pence is spent on the waste contract, so emptying your bins. Everything else we do is out of that 50p - even the big ticket items like highways comes out of that," she said.

'Look at government funding'

Ms Picton, who has been in local government for two decades, said she had tried hard to protect services like libraries and leisure centres and said it broke her heart to see such facilities closing elsewhere in the country.

She said the council had tried to "do things differently" instead of making cuts.

But she added: "There's no doubt about it that local government funding needs to be looked at and needs to be looked at extremely quickly."

She also argued the winner of the next general election needed to recognise "it costs more to deliver services in rural areas than it does in the urban areas".

But she conceded: "I'm not sure for local government it matters who's in power."