Council tax is expected to rise by almost 5 per cent again next spring with Brighton and Hove City Council facing a forecast £105 million budget shortfall over the next four years.
The council’s deputy leader Jacob Taylor told fellow cabinet members that the council was trying to tackle a £37 million budget gap next year alone.
Councillor Taylor, the council cabinet member for finance, said that people were paying more but receiving fewer services because demand for social care had not kept pace with funding.
The Labour deputy leader said that the forecast increase in council tax would again consist of a 2.99 per cent general rise plus a dedicated 2 per cent for adult social care.
He told a cabinet meeting at Hove Town Hall on Thursday (26 September) about an analysis by the Local Government Association (LGA) which represents councils up and down the country.
The LGA analysis found that in 2010-11 councils spent an average of 41 per cent of their “general fund” on adult and children’s social care. Last year, 2023-24, it accounted for 61 per cent.
Councillor Taylor said: “In Brighton and Hove, the figures we’re going to publish are similar if not a little bit higher on those kinds of care budgets.
“To make clear, this statement is in absolutely no way to try to blame or put the fault of this budget increase on people using these services. Quite the opposite.
“To make it really clear, nationally there has been an observed problem where both the cost and demand of social care nationally has gone up.
“In that context, the overall settlements that local government have been getting have not been keeping up with those pressures.
“That means inevitably that other non-statutory things – things people associate with the look and feel of the city or leisure facilities or things they would like to see their local council providing – have struggled to be funded over that period.”
Councillor Taylor said that he wanted to get public engagement with the budget under way early so that people could understand how the budget would affect them.
Events are proposed at the Jubilee Library – as well as an online tool enabling people to allocate different amounts to different services to see the knock-on effects on other parts of the budget.
Green councillor Ollie Sykes asked when “star chamber” – or high-level – meetings would start and when the line-by-line draft budget proposals would be available.
He said: “Moving to the cabinet system, the administration wants to be more open and transparent so the general fund budget timeline allows for consultation.
“The promised star chamber process is not included in the budget timeline and it’s not clear when line-by-line draft budget proposals will be made available for public and member review.”
Councillor Taylor said that the “star chamber” was not defined in statute but senior councillors and officials would continuously review the process.
He said that he would like the line-by-line budget to come out as early as possible and earlier than the last budget when the government settlement was not published until the end of November last year.
In Brighton and Hove the annual budget for 2024-25 – the current financial year – was £924 million, with most going on education, adult social care, housing benefits and housing.
A further £211 million for the capital programme took the total budget to £1.1 billion.
Talk of council tax hikes by Labour, but ZERO talk of them challenging their pals in Westminster to simply fund local councils properly.
It was only seven months ago when Labour councillors in Brighton made 100% clear that the hardship councils face is a direct result of Tory austerity and that it is political choice why services are being cut. Now they in power both locally and in government, they are not ending this austerity and playing smoke and mirrors and trying to deflect it’s now their political choices causing, or threatening to cause, so much hardship. If Councillor Taylor does value local Government he should insist that Keir and co fund councils properly and that they make noise publicly condeming them if they don’t.
As a reminder, copied below are Councillor Jacob Taylor’s comments from late Feb THIS YEAR where he said:
“An attack on civic life in every corner of the country, on local services and institutions that make life better or just more bearable for some residents.
“I asked earlier what kind of government would allow this to happen. But of course, this Tory government hasn’t “allowed” it to happen – this isn’t some quirk of history that they didn’t see coming – this is a deliberate choice to underfund and degrade local government.
“This is only happening because the Conservative Party doesn’t value local government. Well, we do and we’re hoping to get a Labour government very soon that can provide sustainable financing to local authorities.”
Nothing’s “changed” except massive backtracking on Labour’s part, with their councillors in Brighton and Hove now seemingly prepared to accept local government funding is still going to be screwed by their own Labour Government. Shameful.
Surprise surprise, there should also be a refund for various services never delivered, like Politicians not/never performing or attending,
Having saddled the city with the redundant white elephant called the i360, we really should be going after the originator, a certain Jason Kitcat.
Send him the bill.
Could say the same about those behind the (not) “value for money” £124 million contract with Veolia that the council are still locked into, plus loads of PFI contracts taken out. A dreadful legacy of the last Labour government that pretty much farmed loads of our public services out to the private sector who have made money off the back of it all.
New Labour = Old Tory.
Time to cut some services,council tax is becoming unaffordable
Most have been but many are legal obligations such as social care.