The council could wipe out its overspend by the end of the current financial year which runs until the end of next month.
Council leader Bella Sankey said that she was determined to balance the books in the current financial year and added that an in-year overspend was dropping.
Councillor Sankey told the cabinet that the latest figures – from the end of December – showed that Brighton and Hove City Council risked being £3.3 million over budget in the 2024-25 financial year.
Spending controls have reduced the predicted overspend from the £10 million forecast last July.
She told a cabinet meeting at Hove Town Hall: “It is vital a council takes every step available to it to balance its books.
“With increased demand and costs over the last 12 months in statutory areas where this council has a legal obligation to deliver services, we had predicted a significant overspend.
“Spending controls, recruitment freezes and the introduction of innovative and different ways of working throughout the authority, however, have had a genuine impact.
“Our forecast overspend as of month nine (December) is now down to £3.31 million. That represents 1.3 per cent of the net budget and approximately 0.7 per cent of the gross budget.
“We are determined to continue bringing this figure down and to break even – and my thanks go to all our staff here at the council who are working so hard to do so.
“I know these are difficult circumstances which is why our work on a medium-term strategy and our Labour government’s commitment to multi-year funding is so important. We need to end the hand-to-mouth approach to local government services.”
Deputy leader Jacob Taylor said in November that the overspend was going in the “wrong direction” as it had increased – and this led to more spending controls being put in place.
Increased costs and demand in adult social care, children’s services and homelessness had all adversely affected the council’s finances.
It had also missed its savings target, with £4.5 million out of £23 million not achieved.
He said: “We should be able to get into a position where we can come to a break-even position thanks to the hard work of officers.
“But clearly there needs to be a continued focus alongside the other important priorities including setting the budget for next year.”
Councillor Taylor told the cabinet yesterday (Thursday 13 February) that the recruitment freeze had had a significant effect on council staff.
It would be much easier without £51,000,000 of debt from the Pole-n-Donut’ !
Even easier if qualified people were running the show, that is responsible people that can count.
The 30 year £1 billion PFI waste contract the council took out in 2003 has been a really poor deal for the city and been costly over time as well. It might not be such a visible reminder of council wastage, misplaced confidence etc as the i360, but just because it’s less visible, doesn’t mean councillors should forget about it either.
It was about 5 or 6 years ago when the National Audit Office estimated projects funded under PFI sometimes ended up costing 40% higher than the costs of projects financed by public borrowing, and some as much as 70%. Over many years since Tony Blair’s championing of PFI people have been lumbered with huge interest costs still being paid off.
Must be something in the small print that allows these contracts to be brought under control and not allowing the tearaway interest to carry on, the only ones blocking such a move are the Council,
Something in the small print to bring PFI contracts under control is, unfortunately, overly optimistic. Most PFI contracts were designed to be binding over their full term, with termination clauses that impose severe financial penalties on councils attempting to exit early.
A 2018 NAO report found that cancelling PFI deals is often prohibitively expensive, meaning Brighton is effectively locked in. Even those with renegotiation clauses, typically, the firms often hold the leverage, and restructuring deals generally result in only marginal savings. Central government has stopped using PFI for new projects, but existing contracts remain a burden unless Brighton can negotiate a buyout—something that is rarely affordable, and less so in their current condition I suspect.
While it would be great if Brighton could simply rein in these contracts, in practice, they are often stuck with them.
mmmm,, even more optimistic would be to sue the people responsible for negligence and then claim on the contract insurance, optimistic at best but teach them a lesson about reality and consequences, me daydreaming of course.
You’re being silly; regardless, you wouldn’t be able to prove it, even a precursory look shows that hasn’t happened in this case.
On the upside – only 8 years to go !
Indeed, here’s hoping the new contractor will be able to provide some revenue share for a positive direction.
They better not be attacking the Libraries to pay for the iSore write off.
I’d like to protect libraries and more importantly, access to literature, but with them being really expensive buildings to run, especially when the footfall in some of them are not great. I wonder if there is a more sustainable way to do so?
They are only expensive to run because the Jubilee syphons more than half the Libraries budget in corrupt PFI payments. It should never have been built. People much preferred the original Brighton Library. Hove Library was given to Hove people on donated land by Andrew Carnegie.
The footfall is rather low in several libraries, showing our value for money.
And the 51 million? and the waste on Valley Garden. amazing how things can be hidden by these people.
That was explained when the write off was announced. Paid off over a period of time and hopefully some kickback from the new operator with a revenue share.