Hastings council will have to raid reserves to balance its budget

On Monday (February 7), Hastings Borough Council’s cabinet discussed its budget proposals for 2022/23, which are set to go to a full council vote later this month. 

The proposals include plans to increase council tax by 1.99 per cent, make savings of more than £1.35m and to use more than £2m of reserves.

Cabinet member for finance Peter Chowney (Lab) said: “It is a difficult time. We have made huge savings, both in the coming year and the current year, which normally would have given us huge new resources for new services.

“Sadly services have been cut back and back and back. I calculated it as something like £70m now that we have lost cumulatively since 2010 in austerity cuts, which still go on year-on-year. 

“Every year we get less than we got the year before; it is disguised in various ways but the cuts continue. It becomes increasingly hard to manage. 

“We have generated income, we have made massive savings, we’ve cut lots of … non-statutory services … which were of value to people in Hastings. All gone since 2010, when local authorities were properly funded.” 

He added: “You can’t go on like this. You can’t go on not funding local government and expect it to work and deliver when it needs to.”

According to the budget proposals, the council will look to make savings of more than £1.355m in 2022/23. 

The majority of these savings have either been agreed this year (either as part of last year’s budget or later in the year) or agreed previously to that. New savings will account for £521,000 of the £1.355m total figure.

The largest single part of these new savings will come from a reorganisation of the council’s revenue and benefits team, budgeted to save £175,000 a year.

Other new savings are expected to come through transferring staff to externally funded projects, such as the Town Deal programme.

The council will also no longer fund the Stade Saturday events (expected to save £5,000 a year). These were funded by an external grant in 2021/22.

It would also look to make a £36,000 saving by re-tendering its public toilet cleaning contract and to reduce its regeneration activity budget by £10,000. 

The council is also looking to generate funding through the sale of a number of its assets. 

This includes the sale of land at Harrow Lane, the money from which will be used in place of further borrowing on other projects. Doing so would be expected to save around £75,000 from the council’s day-to-day spending. 

The council is also expected to generate a £30,000 saving from selling off its civic silver and regalia.  

Even with these savings, the council still expects to run a deficit of £2,172,294, which would need to be drawn from reserves. 

As a result, officers said it was almost ‘certain’ that the council’s reserves would fall below the minimum recommended level during 2022/23.

The situation was described as a ‘bleak picture’ by the council’s chief financial officer Peter Grace, who attributed the issue to a lack of funding from central government and rising costs, particularly in what the council needs to spend on homelessness (expected to rise to £4.9m in 2022/23).

Mr Grace said: “The bleak picture is that in the spending review in the autumn, which was a three-year spending review, we got a one-year settlement in the end from the government, which doesn’t aid financial planning in any shape or form. 

“I suspect, looking at that settlement, there will not be the cavalry coming over the hill to help this council in the next few years. 

“We need to make a strong case over this next year for more funding to come to deprived coastal authorities and that should be our key priority in my view, certainly as the fair funding or review of funding … takes shape over the next year.”

He added: “If it wasn’t for these homelessness costs, which are spiralling out of control year-on-year, you would have had a balanced budget by now. But every year we are thwarted by these homelessness costs in particular.

“Once again it is making that case to government to fund us properly going forward.”