Budget-setting will have to start now for next year, councillors heard, to help cover the cost of a £3 million black hole in Brighton and Hove City Council’s finances.
In the past financial year, pressure from inflation, increased demand for council services and a higher than expected pay award for council workers resulted in an end-of-year overspend.
Labour council leader Bella Sankey said that the budget-setting process for next year would start now.
She told the council’s Strategy, Finance and City Regeneration Committee: “That overspend will need to be paid back to the working balance over the next three years which only adds to the difficulty that this administration will face in terms of balancing the books during our term in office.
“We have agreed with officers that our budget setting process for 2024-25 should start right away and we will work creatively with residents, trade unions, officers and council workers to try to find ways to close the budget gap while maintaining vital frontline services and being ambitious for our city.”
During the meeting at Hove Town Hall on Thursday (22 June), finance chief Nigel Manvell told councillors that there were two “significant areas of pressure”, with inflation adult social care and services for children and families.
He said that care placements for children and adults with learning disabilities and the home to school transport budget all faced higher costs and put the blame on inflation.
The council’s families, children and learning directorate had a £103 million budget and overspent by £2.8 million.
Mr Manvell said that difficulties for adult social care were eased through negotiations with the National Health Service (NHS) to support winter planning and mental health.
The local government pay award, set nationally, cost more than £5 million more than budgeted for in February.
The council also suffered a £1.2 million fall in parking revenues, he said. And providing for the homeless after the “everyone in” policy during the coronavirus pandemic continued to add £700,000 extra to the cost of temporary housing.
Mr Manvell said: “That does indicate there are some underlying significant pressures still within the budget and still existing.
“But when we look back at last year, inflation was particularly exceptional – and I don’t think anyone would predict that it would peak at 11.1 per cent as it did in October.
“That, too, was compounded by cost of living issues that began to rise and cause higher service demands in some areas of the council.”
When the council set the budget in February, under the Greens, councillors had to consider the “in-year” financial position, which forecast a £6.5 million overspend at the time and a £1.4 million drop in council tax revenues.
Mr Manvell said that the end-of-year overspend of £3 million was better than earlier forecasts, with spending and recruitment controls helping to reduce the amount.
The council had a working balance of £9 million, he said, which would cover the overspend although it would have to be repaid at a rate of £1.6 million a year over three years.
Mr Manvell told councillors that reserves totalling £37 million were earmarked for specific purposes while the working balance was there to cover unexpected spending.
But he said that 2022-23 – the financial year to the end of March – was the first time that Brighton and Hove City Council had used the working balance to cover its deficit.
Labour councillor Jacob Taylor asked if it was really the first “out-turn overspend”, given an overspend on services in 2019-20 when the budget ended up as balanced.
Mr Manvell said that, in previous years, some departments had had issues, but the overall budget was balanced by reallocating funds and using some reserves.
Councillor Taylor said: “It is clear that this city has faced a double whammy of a Conservative government that has continued, in a heartless way, to underfund all public services but particularly local government.
“And we’ve also had a Green Party that has made bad financial decisions whenever it’s been in office and we as a Labour administration have to deal with that circumstance.”
Green councillor Sue Shanks said that most of the opposition councillors were not on the council during last year’s budget-setting process.
She said: “I do think it is a bit unreasonable to attack something which was a minority administration – and it was agreed that would happen in terms of the working balance.”
In previous years, she said, the forecasts had indicated an overspend that had been met from reserves.
Councillor Shanks added: “This time we didn’t do that from reserves although there are reserves we could go back to in the future.”
Conservative Alistair McNair said: “Labour won the election in 2019 and there were many financial mistakes made under Labour in 2019.”
He cited a pay deal for rubbish and recycling staff, which averted a bin strike planned to coincide with Pride, adding: “I do look forward to a more frugal or more competent Labour administration now.”
Labour councillor Julie Cattell said that Cityclean, the council’s rubbish and recycling service, did not strike in 2019 when Labour was running the council.
“Creatively with residents, trade unions, officers and council workers.”
But not business and companies!
If the council wants more cash it needs to generated by business. Attracting more small and large companies must be a priority.
I agree that conversations should be had with everyone, hopefully, this was just an oversight in articulation.
Who would have thought that removing prime parking spaces by the seafront would lead to a loss in parking revenue? Not the greens apparently! This was mainly money from tourists, so money coming into the city. The council so far has tried to replace this by increasing resident permit prices – so taking more money from within the city. Wrong strategy!
Who could see the fall in parking revenue. (pretty much everyone), with reduction of spaces on Madeira Drive, the A259, the Laines and city centre and Valley Gardens phase 3 will only add to this as would the Mareira Terraces cycle lane. All future schemes need to seriously look at the long term impact on council finances
Maybe look at a good park and ride scheme.
I am really in favour of a good park and ride scheme, even just focusing on the Royal Sussex County Hospital, with so many people working in that building, and with the expansions one can expect more, providing this service will help provide the facilities needed for our hospital workers.
I think you will find NHS staff have free use of Brighton Marina for parking and get free travel to and from the Hospital on the no 7 bus (or they were).
The county hospital has grown beyond its capability where infrastructure is concerned with no alternative put in place.
They closed the Children’s Hospital and put it in at RSCH, no additional thought had been put on parking for parents or even the Ambulances that would generate extra traffic. They keep adding bits yet fail to address the transport requirements that would be required.
We desperately need a park and ride, sadly, the ‘Greens’ poo poo a scheme presented by B&H buses based on their fantastic Football park and ride that works so well. A comment made by a green member said and I quote, ‘We’re worried in case local people use it’.
That just sums up the logic of the ‘Greens’ mentality and one reason they got theirs ar$es kicked out.
I actually didn’t know about the Marina or the 7 bus. It was a thing for a while during C19, but most of those were rescinded.
I have had no problems driving an ambulance to the Royal Alex behind the RSCH, they don’t generally create extra traffic for longer than a few minutes, because quite frankly, they have places to be and not enough time to be in them. There’s also some discussion regarding a change in the road structure of the North Service Road coming up at the next HLG meeting to address that specifically.
What we did have a problem for a while was idling PTS outside the A&E junction, one that we resolved very effectively at the last HLG meeting in the short term, and the new developments give them specific space for them to be in the long-term.
Maybe reduce the extortionate parking charges, then more people might come and visit.
I rarely come into Brighton now due to the parking costs (and the bonkers road layouts).
The price of parking is an interesting one because the charges are generally outweighed by the fines. When the fine becomes balanced with the fee, it makes financial sense to gamble with getting a ticket and paying what you would have done or getting free parking due to not being caught.
I’m not advocating this sort of behaviour, of course, but one does have to appreciate the practicalities of these sorts of things. Flytippiing has the same issue within it.
How much potential parking revenue did the Greens forgo by removing parking spaces from Madeira Drive etc? Idiots! Thank God they’ve been kicked out – they completely screwed everything. We can thank the stupidity of the Greens for the dire financial state we are in
The i360 is a major hole in the finances at the moment. That’s the big problem that, if solved, even partially, will generate a lot of needed income for the council.
Councils should not be relying on parking revenue to support services. And they certainly should not be making decisions based on the reduction of parking revenue they may or may not cause.
Removing the parking meters – pure discrimination by BHCC !
Of course. Also it is much cheaper and simpler for tourists to go to Worthing, Eastbourne in act anywhere but Brighton.
They’re also removing the parking meters in Worthing and Eastbourne. Oh, and every other part of the UK, given its driven by the mobile companies removing the infrastructure that supports the card readers. But don’t let the truth get in the way of your hatred of Brighton, eh.
Unfortunately, by definition, it is objectively not discriminatory. There’s a bit of case law that supports this opinion, as it doesn’t only affect a single demographic, as alleged, according to several datasets. Furthermore, it only affects a tiny amount of the UK’s population, distilled even further when you consider just Brighton’s population, and even further mitigated by that number trending downwards, and estimated to continue to do so.
However, I’d be open to the idea that there may be some fringe areas that may benefit from a meter, but it’d need to be weighed against the cost of maintaining such a machine, which has the added cost of being by the sea, and having a shortened lifespan compared to other non-coastal cities.
The new council hasn’t listed businesses as those it wants to work creatively with. This is a huge risk, not just to local jobs but to the council itself. Why the council? Well, the council is a major landlord. It owns many leisure, hospitality and retail sites in the city. We rely on the rental from these. Yet all of this is at risk with the cost of living crisis. This spending is just what people can cut back on (and many already have). Yes, the seafront may look busy. But is the tourist money still flowing in as well? The council needs this to continue and we as residents need it too (if it drops, we’ll have to make up the gaps with higher charges and poorer services).
So please Labour, let’s see if you are business-friendly as the national party claims, and work with hard-pressed leisure and other businesses. Especially your own tenants! Helping them will help you and all of us residents!
Total discrimination. Empty parking bays during the day. Tourists going anywhere but Brighton and Hove as it is so expensive and difficult. Cannot get speakers to come to events as they can’t park.
You’re simultaneously complaining there is no where to park AND that there are loads of empty spaces. Yawn.
The complaint, Martha, is that the number of pay-as-you-go parking spaces has been reduced, and that those spaces that remain are so expensive that people go elsewhere.
What this actually means is that less cars come to Brighton (good?) but that many people now choose to take their spending elsewhere (bad). And it’s not like arriving by train is affordable either.
This article is already out of date in that it doesn’t mention the increase in parking charges due to come into force in July – new charges which, for city centre areas, are shocking. £5 an hour?
If you have a speaker coming to an event, you purchase them a guest permit, they are £3.50 a day, and allows them to park in residential bays. Simple.
Ho Ho – today’s announcement of up to 300% hikes in parking fees will help.