Cheshire East Council publishes latest financial forecasts

Cheshire East Council has published its latest financial forecasting – showing outstanding funding gaps of £18.3m for the current financial year and £25.3m for 2025-26.

Forecasts for both years shows some improvement over the previous forecasts. 

However, they still represent a significant financial challenge, which may require use of exceptional financial support (EFS) from central government.

The council’s finance sub-committee will meet to consider the financial position on 9 January 2025. By law, councils must approve a balanced budget each year and they cannot spend more than they have in their budgets.

The third financial review report, which sets out the position for the current financial year, shows an improvement of £1.8m over the previous review in November. This is the result of efficiency savings already achieved in-year and increased certainty about in-year funding and forecast service demands.

Budget planning for the year ahead continues, with the council due to approve the budget for 2025/26 and the four-year medium-term financial strategy at the meeting of full council on 26 February.

The forecast financial gap for 2025/26 has reduced from £31.4m to £25.3m.

Councillor Nick Mannion, leader of the council, said:

“When the current year’s budget was agreed in February 2024, we were forecasting a gap of £41.9m for next financial year. The latest forecasts show a reduced gap of £25.3m next year and a reduction in the total gap over the next four years.  

“This is a positive direction of travel and reflects the hard work and dedication of officers and councillors in dealing with the financial challenge. However, we must address the remaining pressures and uncertainties to eradicate the outstanding gaps for both the current year and the year ahead.  

“The provisional local government financial settlement received from central government on 18 December, has provided more certainty and increased funding of £4.5m for 2025/26. This, with other changes to forecast income and spend, has the result of improving the 2025/26 gap by a total of £6.1m.  

“However, the increase in funding for Cheshire East, outlined in the provisional settlement, is overall less than the average provided to other councils in England. While the pressures being experienced by this council are not unique, our circumstances are different to many other areas and we need funding to support local need. 

“Our most significant pressures are in social care services for adults and children, including those with special educational need and disabilities (Send). Cost and complexity of need for these services continues to exceed available funding from government.”

Councillor Michael Gorman, deputy leader of the council, said:

“We are committed to setting a budget that safeguards essential services for those in our communities who need our help the most, while working towards maintaining our financial health. And we will continue to champion the need for adequate national funding for social care and Send.

“The council’s ambitious transformation plan is set to deliver significant savings in future years. However, there remains a significant financial challenge.

“The option to access EFS could help the council deal with these immediate pressures and establish longer-term financial sustainability through investment in transformation and improvement. While this reduces the immediate pressures in the short-term, it would bring additional costs to following years, which we are planning for and must manage carefully.

“We must also work to build back our financial reserves to provide increased financial resilience for future years.

“We know that people have high expectations of their council and the wide range of services and support we provide, but we need to make decisions locally to deal with the shortfall of national funding. We do have options to deal with the immediate and longer-term financial pressures but none of them are easy.

“Balancing the books under these circumstances is difficult and complex and we will need to make hard decisions.”

The council is currently calling on residents to share their views on budget setting through a survey. Feedback through this survey, and other engagement activities, will help the council to develop proposals for the new budget and provide councillors with valuable insight to inform their decision-making.  

The Cheshire East Council Budget Engagement for 2025 to 2029 survey 

This is open until 19th January.