Eastbourne has been thrown a financial lifeline

Your website and paper editions last week (echoed on BBC SouthEast) gave significant coverage to the LibDem administration’s distorted rationale for the financial support required from the Government.

You reported the council’s assertion that “..it needed £6.8m for 20/21 and £om the following year as it lost 60 per cent of its income – mainly through tourism – due to the coronavirus.”

We are as sad as anyone about the closure of our wonderful tourism activities but let’s not distort the facts.

It is notable that in their announcements no mention was made of either furlough payments or the Income Recovery Grant received from the Government or of expenditure savings. For instance no Airbourne removes a loss-making event.

When these are taken into account the net shortfall on recoverable income losses (including tourism facilities, car parking, and cemeteries) are really £1.7m.

Had Eastbourne been prudently managed in recent years the Council would have sufficient reserves to cover this shortfall.

The Council’s own analysis of the £6.8m gap presented to Cabinet last week shows that at least £2.2m of the shortfall arose from unachieved savings which were never credible but simply included in order to create a “balanced budget.” Additionally the analysis includes £1.25m of “redundancy and set up costs”, some of which were planned before Covid and some of which have yet to be spent. Reduced rental income from the Council’s misguided ventures into commercial and other property contribute a further £0.8m shortfall.

We are delighted that the Government has saved Eastbourne Borough Council from the horrors of being subject to a Section 114 regime. Permitting further borrowing does not alter the expected huge annual deficit to be reported for 20/21. In due course these figures will be audited and we still await audited figures from the previous two years.

This council has been thrown a lifeline for another year in order to put its house in order.