Cheshire East Council sets a balanced budget

At a meeting of the Cheshire East Council on Thursday 24th February 2022, a balanced budget was set, fixing the Council tax increase for 2022/23 to 2.99%.

The 4-year Medium Term Financial Strategy is also fully balanced, despite a last minute Conservative wrecking amendment that would have left a £10million black hole in the council finances.

Two thirds of the council’s budget is spent on social care. The budget includes increases in spending on childrens’ services and an extra £4million a year on adult social care. Although the Government branded the impending increase in National Insurance as a ‘care levy’, in reality the money is going to the NHS and councils are being forced to increase spending on social care to meet increased demands.

As a result of the consultation responses to the budget an extra £19million over three years is being allocated to highway maintenance. This sound a lot, but the backlog that has built-up over a decade is well over £100million. Like all councils we need Government funding to properly fix the problem. Emergency pot hole repairs at this time of the year don’t last and are not good value for money. The extra £19million will be spend during the spring and summer months on planned highway maintenance that will stop potholes developing.

Despite the Leader of the Conservative Group on Cheshire East Council stating at the previous week’s Corporate Policy committee that they would support the proposed budget, they instead did a U-turn and reneged on their previous promise, proposing an amendment to set the increase at 2%, by raiding the council’s already low reserves. However, the amendment was ruled out by the Mayor, and the budget was passed.

The current rate of inflation is around 5%, with an expectation that it will rise to 7% in the next few months. Therefore, the increase of only 3% is in real terms an actual cut of around 2%. It should also be noted that many more low income families will be eligible for help with their Council Tax from April.

Sam Corcoran, Leader of the Council and Labour Councillor for Sandbach Heath & East, said ‘This transparent attempt by the Conservatives to cut now and hope something turns-up in the future shows that they have not learned from the series of disastrous unbalanced budgets they set during their time in power That reckless behaviour left the council with threadbare reserves and services cut to the bone.’

Steve Carter, Labour Councillor for Macclesfield Hurdsfield, said ‘This budget shows that the Labour-led administration at Cheshire East Council can be trusted with public finances, both balancing the books and targeting increased investment in vital services for communities across Cheshire East.’