Ilkley residents and businesses can expect cuts and increases in the cost of services as Bradford Council starts a consultation on its budget and spending plans for 2025-26.
“CAPACITY, capability and organisational cultural challenges” are some of the reasons Bradford Council’s finances have been left in a perilous state – a meeting was told.
The Council is currently having to borrow money and sell assets to stave off bankruptcy, and is not expected to reach financial stability until at least 2029.
At a meeting of the Council’s Executive this week, members were given an update on the financial situation.
A report to members said even with borrowing, the authority would need to make £40m of cuts each year until 2029, as well as raising £100m through selling off assets.
At the meeting members agreed to move ahead with a number of cuts, savings and scheme to bring in more income. These measures will go out to public consultation, which runs until December 22.
Changes include cuts to some school bus services, increased income from traffic fines and charging extra for garden waste collections.
The report argued why Bradford Council’s finances were in such a poor state.
It said: “There are four fundamental reasons why this has arisen:
➢ exceptional growth in the cost of Children’s Social Care from around £100m per year in 2019/20 to around £250m in 2023/24.
➢ the Council is generally poorly funded:
Funding reductions have disproportionately affected Bradford.
Bradford’s band D Council Tax is £145 lower than the average for Metropolitan Districts and 80 per cent of its households are below band D.
Government reforms to local council funding, taking greater account of needs and local resources, have been repeatedly delayed. Independent analysis indicates that implementation of the reforms would have benefited Bradford by around £32m per year by now.
➢ the Council has used large amounts of one-off reserves in recent years to fund recurrent revenue costs without an appropriate plan to deal with this in future. In 2023/24, around £48m of reserves were used and the Council only has £39.6m of general reserves as at the end of March.
➢ capacity, capability and organisational cultural challenges within the Council.”
Councillor Rebecca Poulson, Conservative Leader in Bradford, welcomed that the consultation was starting so early, but pointed out that some of the budget plans needed more detail for the public to know how they will hit their pockets.
She said:
“The last budget had one line about parking charges – it is not until they come in that people see the impact and realise how detrimental these measures are.
“In Haworth parking charges went up 200 per cent – those decimated businesses.”
Councillor Mike Pollard (Cons, Baildon) argued that one reason the Council’s finances were in such a poor state was that it “persistently missed savings targets” – that the authority’s budget regularly included savings that never materialised.
He estimated that missed savings targets over the past decade amounted to £110m.
Referring to the planned savings in the latest report, he said:
“Can you assure that this will not be the same smoke and mirrors we’ve seen in the past?”
Bradford Council Leader Susan Hinchcliffe said:
“We’ve had £350m taken out of our budget in the past decade, so it has been very challenging to make savings.
“There is a massive gap between our income and demand for our services.”
Steven Mair, Director of Finance, said almost all the savings listed were likely to be delivered.
Councillor Matt Edwards (Green, Tong), raised similar concerns to Cllr Pollard, saying:
“The report refers to capacity, capability and organisational cultural challenges within the Council as to why savings have not been made.
“Does that suggest some savings could have been made earlier?”
Cllr Hinchcliffe replied:
“We can always do better, we recognise that. But you shouldn’t underestimate what 14 years of having to make cuts every year has done to this Council.”
She said the Council was making its budget proposals earlier than it usually does, ahead of the 2025/26 budget setting early next year.
She said:
“We need people to come forward and have their say. If they have other ideas on how to save money we’d love to hear them.
“What we know is all Councils will have to be smaller in future – we have a wide budget gap and need to get it down as fast as possible.”
To have your say on the budget plans visit https://bradford.moderngov.co.uk/mgConsultationdisplay.aspx?Id=759
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