Cllr Sophie Cox: Councils are working to unsustainable financial models

I know it’s not everyone’s favourite subject but it’s time to talk about money. And as our most recent budget update report shows, we are still a long way from balancing our budget in February.

The main reason being that our Council finances - like so many others right across the country - are in an unsustainable position, given the demands on them from housing.

From the roughly £40 million that Worthing Borough Council has in its expenditure budget each year 24% is being spent on housing support - with the biggest pressures coming from emergency, temporary and supported accommodation.

Nonetheless, despite the current gap in our budget, we are doing everything we possibly can to close it before we reach February and find new ways to prevent every year from being a crisis year in local government finance.

Back in July we agreed as a Council across both Adur and Worthing to adopt a new financial strategy, which would see us move away from traditional means of borrowing money for projects and investments - towards income generation and finding external funding for projects.

This new sustainable way of financing will help to ease the pressures that we are currently facing and make us more resilient as we move ahead.

Also I was recently at the London Gatwick Economic Summit where I pressed representatives from the Department for Business and Trade on the need for local government to be able to modernise and remove the bureaucracy that makes us less attractive to the private sector.

We have also been in direct contact with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government about what exceptional government support might be in place to ease our housing pressures and help us plug the current funding gap.

There is still a long way to go but I’m hopeful that by facing these issues and tackling them head on we will start to find the more creative and long-term solutions we need to restore much needed stability and build future financial resilience.