Eastbourne Borough Council Decides On £5.2m Savings Across Two Years

Eastbourne council leaders have agreed a savings plan, intended to shore up the town’s finances.  

On Wednesday (July 14), Eastbourne Borough Council’s cabinet agreed to adopt a set of ‘priority-based budget proposals’ for this year and next, which are intended to address a shortfall in the council’s finances.

The planned savings, some of which were approved last month, include:

• less frequent maintenance works in the town’s parks and seafront;
• an increase to the cost of garden waste collections by £5 a year;
• less frequent street cleansing;
• and shorter opening hours for public toilets.

The plans also make clear that the council does not intend to give money towards Airbourne in 2022/23, which council papers show would generate a saving of £145,000.

Before making any savings (and after the £6m capitalisation agreed by government), the council says it was expecting a shortfall of £910,000 this year and £6.572m in 2022/23.

With the savings, however, the council now expects to run a £1.488m surplus this year and a greatly reduced shortfall of £1.001m in 2022/23. 

These figures were disputed by Conservative group leader Robert Smart, however, who argued that the council’s underlying financial assumptions were ‘unrealistic’, because they were based on the costs and income during the height of the pandemic. 

He said:

“It is clear we have two financial years – 20/21 and 21/22 – significantly affected by covid.

"That is last year and the current year.

"But it is clearly unrealistic to base 22/23 on the lengthy shutdown in June last year and rapidly abating this year.

“It is easy to set an unrealistic target and then smell of roses by achieving it.

"That may show that cuts to services are not required.

"There are some pretty stringent cuts in there. 

“Real efficiencies are always welcome, but to take the largest proposed service change of £400,000 in grounds maintenance … this is likely to produce a completely unacceptable level of service to one that is already slightly imperfect. 

“We need first to understand why net service expenditure, post-covid, must rise by £6m over pre-covid levels.

"I asked for this analysis a month ago. 

“What I am trying to get to is a situation of ignoring the two years which are significantly affected by covid and going back to 19/20 where the net service expenditure is between £13m and £14m.”

This line of argument saw some criticism from Liberal Democrat council leader David Tutt, who said:

“Sometimes I struggle a little bit to follow your arguments from meeting to meeting, because there can be occasions where you have suggested we have underestimated the level of potential shortfall and now this evening you seem to be saying we’ve overestimated.”

He added:

“The approach we took to the priority-based budgeting links to what we see … as the priorities for Eastbourne Borough Council, which we consider to be the most important priorities for the community we are here to serve.

“It puts those at the top of the list of items that we want to deliver.

"Many of those are non-negotiable in a sense in that they are legislative requirements, but not all are.

"Some are discretionary services which we believe we would be doing a disservice to the people of Eastbourne if we were to cut or remove.

“What we have got on our plate … is a list of savings the cabinet have identified.

"If we find as we go forward, and we hope we will when we get to a full year post covid, that our finances have bounced back to their former robust state, then we will be looking to reinstate some of these services.” 

While many of the cuts were approved at a previous cabinet meeting in June, the council did not give detailed figures of what they were expected to bring in at that time.

This was not the case in the July meeting, with its agenda including documents breaking down the savings expected from the cuts. 

These documents show the council expects to make around £1.598m of savings in this financial year and around £3.634m in 2022/23. 

The majority of these savings are expected to come from the “reshaping” of council departments, which is expected to save £705,000 this year and £1.428m next year.

Since April 2020, the council has reported 51 voluntary redundancies and 35 compulsory redundancies – 30 of which were in tourism – as well as one redeployment.