The council needs to save £25 million to balance the books in the budget for the 2026-27 financial year starting next April.
This figure – the budget gap – has been brought down from the £40 million that had been forecast in July, the council’s cabinet was told.
Potential savings of about £12.5 million had been identified, leaving about £12.5 million to find in either savings, cuts or increased revenues.
The Labour deputy leader of Brighton and Hove City Council, Jacob Taylor, said that huge challenges remained, not least in funding the adult social care to which people were entitled.
He said that the net funding for homelessness and temporary housing would soar next year – from the current figure of £8 million to about £20 million.
Councillor Taylor said that officials had been looking hard at high-pressure areas such as emergency and temporary housing, high-cost care placements for adults and children and home to school transport.
Savings would also be made through reduced pension fund contributions, a decision taken by East Sussex County Council which manages the council’s pensions.
At Hove Town Hall last Thursday (11 December), Councillor Taylor said: “What we don’t want to do is cut frontline services. What we want to do is make efficiencies and savings.”
In the past two years, he said, the council had faced the two biggest budget gaps in its history, adding: “There were some difficult decisions made.
“But the vast majority of closing those budget gaps has been achieved through savings, innovations, restructuring, staff doing things differently and providing services in the same way to the customer but in a more efficient way.”
The council is due to set an overall budget of about £1.1 billion including capital spending on major projects.
The pace of work on some of those big schemes could be slowed down to ease the financial pressures on the budget.
The council is also reviewing its portfolio of land, property and other assets, with a view to raising £30 million in the coming three years.
Some properties, such as the old Slipper Baths, in Barrack Yard, off North Road, Brighton, could be turned into housing to reduce the amount paid by the council to private landlords for temporary accommodation.
The council’s chief executive Jess Gibbons said that the corporate leadership team was meeting weekly to focus on the current overspending on emergency and temporary housing. This was down to more people coming to the council for help each month.
Ms Gibbons said: “Financial sustainability is possible for this council but it will take serious transformation and transforming to a new operating model – one where we invest in digital, where we invest in technology and we look at how we can be more productive as a council.”
Green councillor Raphael Hill said that the pressures being faced by the council were also being faced by many other councils.
Councillor Hill said: “Councils overspending on adult social care isn’t about abstract numbers. It’s about the unmet needs of real people.”
Proposals locally include saving £300,000 by moving 28 people from relatively expensive housing into new purpose-built apartments at Brickfields, on the former Knoll House site, in Hove.
Savings totalling more than £800,000 could be achieved if more people were to receive care at home rather than in expensive placements.
Ms Gibbons quoted the chair of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Care, Jess McGregor, saying that the underfunding of adult social care was “forcing councils to make impossible decisions”.
Councillor Hill said: “When people see their bills increasing, taxes increasing and services being cut, they see austerity.
“People who rely on care and support, as well as those who provide it, will be understandably worried about the sustainability of services given no new funding was announced.”
The cabinet was told that public health funding was being used in more creative ways, an approach that has attracted some criticism.
The final draft budget is due to be published in the new year before being considered by the council’s cabinet and voted on at the annual budget council meeting on Thursday 26 February.
Councillor Taylor added that the council had to set a legally balanced budget – one with no budget gap – by law by a fixed date.
New Labour austerity
No, it’s the consequences of Old Conservative Austerity. Because lag time.
It is a consequence of waning productivity, damaging taxes that overly penalise ambition and sucess, borrowing too much, allowing too many people to come and live here, excessive benefits being paid out – often to the least deserving, a covid hangover, and a general malaise that the country is suffering from.
I do not have the answers, and unfortunately neither do the political class, I suspect mainly because they are overly enthralled to their political ideology and few have ever been wealth creators.
I do know that blaming the feckless pseudo-Tories while making things worse is not the answer. What we need is a government that encourages wealth to be created to increase the tax take, not relentlessly bang on about how broad the shoulders are of the middle classes, while removing all incentive to do better.
Whilst I agree that assigning blame is ultimately unproductive, it is important that we aren’t subjected to revisionist narratives that seek to ignore or sidestep why the current government is having to deal with these issues in the first place – because that is dishonest.
My point is that they are not dealing with it. They are actually making it worse, and I think that we are about to enter into a state of stagflation. I am very much afraid that “Austerity” is here to stay for a decade or more. Perhaps longer if governments do not tackle spending and encourage growth. We have seen how employers and businesses have reacted to NI hikes, windfall taxes and net zero targets. People have no confidence in their future so are not spending. The super-rich and the talented are leaving the country. We are on a downward spiral.
That’s a measured and reasonable fear. The country does feel stuck in a low-growth, high-situation that is politically and socially corrosive right now. Pragmatically, you could argue this reflects a lack of effective course correction while the Cons were in power, despite multiple opportunities since 2010.
Labour, on the other hand, has not yet had the fiscal space or leverage to meaningfully course-correct. Whether they do so over the next few years remains an open question. I’m an optimist, so my opinion is that we’re witnessing containment at the moment, rather than transformation. That is a difficult sell at the best of times, and completely respect the perception of a downward spiral.
The council CEO who is not allowed to make political comments “quoted the chair of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Care, Jess McGregor, saying that the underfunding of adult social care was “forcing councils to make impossible decisions”
Think that says it all Benjamin. The council is being force to make impossible decisions because of “underfunding”. The council has legal duties to meet in relation to social care responsibilities and it is being underfunded by central government in the HERE and NOW. That’s down to the current LABOUR government and their budget decisions. It may also be correct that past difficult decisions were down to prev underfunding from Tory Governments, but current underfunding is down to Labour underfunding now, and a weak Labour council to afraid to challenge their colleagues in Westminster about the devastating impacts this is having locally.
I personally find it shameful the Labour councillors don’t have the backbone to stand up to their colleagues in Westminster, and instead are happy to simply act as admininistrators making decisions on where the cuts and service closures fall.
Absolutely, councils are underfunded. I think there is nuance though; to fund that something else has to take a hit. Do that too sharply and you get a Liz Truss situation.
I also think you might be greatly overestimating the influence a ward councillor actually has on Westminster. I think people like you and I have a much greater influence as laypersons.
Hi Ben, you recall hopefully that when the Tories took control of the country back in 2010 we were coming out of recession. Most of us knew from historic events that they would have to make cuts after the previous governments over spending antics, despite a pledge from Mr Darling that we wouldn’t be in a recession.
As usual, the Conservatives always go to the extreme with their cuts and policies, history tells us that.
Knowing that there would be shortfalls in Budgets, what do our council do, nothing, they spend money like confetti on various vanity projects and silly badges when they should be forward thinking for the future.
Put aside the i360, the council opted to have funding for VG1/2, that hasn’t resulted in the scheme generating much’ if any revenue, whereas, if they had opted for funding the Terrace’s, already that could have been generating income to help fund other schemes.
Of course we had the Brexit saga to take on board followed by the pandemic, yet despite these and the 10 years of council budgets getting shortfalls, our then ‘Green’ leaders, seemed surprised, that the budget was again short but continued to pledge more and money on vanity schemes and stupid policies that have cost this city millions in wasted taxes.
This current bunch of idiots, have just proudly announced £2 million to carry out a survey on housing repairs, money that they should be doing to carry out repairs waiting in the system already.
While I entirely agree Government Budgets fall well below the amounts needed, locally there is too much wasted and it needs to be managed better and any projects put on hold if it means ploughing in more tax payers money, no need to remind everybody, the i360 is reducing our budget by £2m every year for the next 20 years or so.
Where might this New Labour austerity leave the overblown £65m King Alfred replacement project with its £100m council borrowing debt over 50 years if “tough decisions” must be made? The drawing board, I hope. It is hardly the city’s most pressing issue.
Actually it is a pressing issue as countless councils have not done anything about it. Personally I’d much rather see something that has been promised for over 20 years, and is a relatively simple thing that the entire community can use, be delivered. That is much more important than a few in adult care be in £100k+ placements. That is not fairness, that is stupidity.
How much money are they wasting on VG3?
This would be th £7m over and above the central government grant
It’s ringfenced funding – they can only use it for roads, conditions set by the previous government
£6m was funded by govt.
£1.84m was funded by the local authority.
£5m was funded through additional borrowing.
It is, of course, possible the final bill will be higher.
Many would say this is a rather fanciful way to be spending funds during difficult financial times.
How the council could bulldoze VG3 through in the face of complaints from Brighton Pier and other local businesses as well as so many residents is disgusting. Millions of public money wasted on something economically and functionally harmful to the city. And which was not on the Labour manifesto either or many would not have voted for them.
Whenever you see photos of these ‘improvements’ being rolled out, you always seem to get a picture of cllr Muten gurning in some form of deluded happiness. Will he take personal responsibility when it all goes wrong?
And yet we borrow £5 million to remove a roundabout and replace a cycle lane (and no that is not ringfenced it was a choice because of an ever ballooning budget), plus lose about £30000 in parking revenue year on year because of parking spaces remove by VG3. I totally appreciate the tough financial situation the council finds itself in but sometimes you would question priorities
You mean they’ve spent this already???
https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/25673039.brighton-sussex-get-38-million-funding/
Free money to spend on what they like? What about paying off the £32m i360 debt for starters?
No it’s not ‘free money to spend’
It’s allocated for the new Mayor to spend.
It’s not going to B&HCC
You should attend one of their public budget engagement sessions Tracy, sounds like a good opportunity for you to learn more about budgets.
Aside from a certain person on this thread contradicting himself and then managing to patronise somebody else within a few posts.
It is perfectly obvious that the Brighton and Hove administration, whether they are Red or Green continue to make such disastrous decisions. This is exacerbated by having a closed cabinet.
All councils are suffering from dictats from either Blue or Red governments.
The devil is in the detail under these circumstances.
Considering this administration continually fails to impress the electorate and given the astonishingly low turnouts, isn’t it time we called a limit on how long these councillors can stand for election and continue to make these dreadful mistakes?
It’s astonishing to see on social media the amount of private accommodation – Airbnbs/holiday lets/high-end apartments being advertised in the lead-up to Christmas. There are all homes for which nobody local can afford.
And nobody heard of the word ‘capacity’? Surely anyone who has ever visited Brighton and people who live here can see that the roads have finally reached their capacity for vehicles. Encouraging more traffic on our roads is just going to exacerbate all the problems we already have. Messing about with red routs it’s just a diversion from the problem.
I couldn’t agree less. That’s how democracy works, elections are at a set time, sometimes the people you want win, sometimes not.
Now on the issue of awful decisions, I think it’s time we had a new Brexit vote as most who voted for it have passed away since and all it’s done is ruin the economy.
Does. The budget account for the 8 blocks of flats they are pulling down, and the serious matter of where they are accomadating everyone and cost moving these people.
Yeah, it’s one of the big pressures at the moment over the next five years or so. Although they’ll be looking for grants to offset some of this, like there’s a grant to help pay some of the cost of the waking guard I believe?
Am still waiting to see the change Labour promised. Just seeing u-turns and broken manifesto promises at the moment.