We’d love to be in a position where a rise isn’t needed, but this year more than most it is necessary.
We must ensure we have the funds to enable you to carry out your jobs effectively by protecting vital services and supporting older and vulnerable people, but we are obviously mindful of already stretched household budgets.
We believe the proposed rise of 3.75% strikes the right balance between what we need and what is fair to Derbyshire residents.
Of the 3.75%, 1.25% would go directly to funding adult social care costs, in particular staffing and running our home care service, helping people to come out of hospital more quickly, freeing up hospital beds and staff retention payments, and 2.5% for general council expenditure.
When our Cabinet meets on Thursday 2 February this will be considered alongside details of how we will manage and spend a proposed £675 million net budget for the coming year.
Read the full Revenue budget report.
Departmental teams together with finance colleagues have been working extremely hard to ensure the books are balanced and have had a real challenge due to factors beyond our control including inflation, rising fuel and energy costs and demands on adult and children’s social care. Inflation alone has added an extra £39.6 million just to stand still for the year ahead.
Challenges lie ahead. We have a savings target of £16.2 million for 2023 to2024 and over the 5-Year Financial Plan up to 2027 to 2028 the savings target is estimated at £46.7 million.
We remain a well-run and efficient council offering value for money to our residents and balancing our books every year is down to sound financial and efficient management.
However, the money we will receive from the council tax, government and other funding streams will not meet our full requirements and there may be difficult decisions to make, but as an enterprising council we all continue to pull together and work hard to develop new ways of working that will make us as efficient as we can be while providing the best value for money.
Cabinet’s proposals will go to a meeting of the Full Council on 15 February and following that I will update you on the outcome.