£60m in savings needed at Cumberland Council
It needs to make savings of £25 million in the next budget
Cumberland Council needs to make £25million in savings from the next budget and a predicted total of £60million of cuts over the next three years.
Members of the authority’s business and resources overview and scrutiny were given an update on the strategic planning and budget planning process for the 2027/28 financial year at Allerdale House in Workington on Tuesday (June 30).
The council’s chief finance officer, Catherine Bell, told members that they needed to identify £25million in savings for the next financial year’s budget, a further £25million the following year, and an additional £10million the year after.
She said that £35million of savings had already been identified in the budget for the current financial year and added: “We have to deliver it.”
Councillor Gareth Ellis (Wetheral, Conservative) asked why they were not trying to identify where the total savings for the three years could be made. Ms Bell said that some savings would take time to deliver.
She said a revised timetable was in place which would hopefully bring the draft budget before the scrutiny committee earlier and she added: “We know the scale of the challenge in front of us.”
Ms Bell said it would go to the executive committee in November, scrutiny committee after that, before going back to the executive in February and getting final approval by the full council in March 2027.
She added: “This is a huge challenge, we can’t underestimate it. We’ve got to think differently, and we’ve got to think creatively.”
Cllr Ellis said he was pleased they were looking at what were statutory services the council had to deliver compared with those that were discretionary and added: “I really do support that.”
He said that the council’s financial position was not the same as Westmorland & Furness Council – whose leader recently predicted that the local authority faced the prospect of effective insolvency unless it can deliver tens of millions of pounds in savings over the next three years – but he said it was in the ‘same ball park’ if they did not achieve the savings.
Papers prepared for Westmorland & Furness Council’s corporate overview and scrutiny committee, which met at Kendal Town Hall last month, stated plainly that a Section 114 notice was ‘inevitable without change’.
A Section 114 notice — named after section 114 of the Local Government Finance Act 1988 — is the formal mechanism by which a council’s chief financial officer declares that spending is about to exceed available resources.
Cumberland Council’s director of corporate and transformation services, Jo Atkinson, said Westmorland & Furness had started in surplus while Cumberland began in deficit and added: “We had no choice from day one but to consider options.”
She said that the lower-than-expected Government funding had not helped the council’s financial position and Ms Bell added: “Fair funding has not been kind to us.”
Members noted the contents of the report.