Pressures on services and soaring inflation blamed

Devon County Council is experiencing the ‘worst of all worlds’ as it battles to control spending.

He revealed a £3.3m overrun on last year’s budget of over half a billion pounds, with finance member Phil Twiss admitting the current financial year “already looks a lot more difficult”.

He warned: “We clearly need to transform the way the DCC business operates, otherwise our longer-term sustainability wouldn’t be too good.”

Childcare and adult care continue to be the main financial concerns. Together the two departments spent £13m more than planned last year, although underspending in other areas – some due to the pandemic – helped reduce the total overspending to 3, £3 million.

A report to this week’s cabinet meeting added: “After two years of pandemic impact, the council is operating in exceptional times when demand for services is higher than ever, amid rising prices and shortages. labor”.

County Hall leaders are also said to be worried about what will happen to a huge and growing overspending to support children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

The overall figure, which is effectively a debt, now stands at £86.5m.

However, as local authorities have been told to place overspending from SEND in separate accounts until next April, the figure does not appear in Devon’s main balance sheet.

The council has been in talks with the Department for Education on how to handle the balance since December, but an agreement has yet to be reached.

Echoing Cllr Twiss’s description of the budget figures as an “indication of the health of the county council”, new Lib Dem leader Cllr Julian Brazil (Kingsbridge) said: “Looking at it I would say we are on death’s door, quite frankly.

He said it was “unsustainable” that some of the extra money injected into services for children and adults in the latest budget came from reserves. He asked: “If we continue on this trajectory, at what stage and when will Devon be bankrupt, insolvent?”

Finance and public value director Angie Sinclair said a variety of factors meant the council was experiencing the “worst of all worlds right now”.

On whether it was a ‘blip’, she said: ‘I think it’s a blip as far as the pandemic goes, but I don’t think it’s a blip that’s going to last a year. I think it will last a while.

“We have the cumulative effect of the pandemic and the global situation. We currently have 9% inflation. Indications are that it could reach 10% by the end of the year, maybe even more, maybe as early as August.

“We have huge pressures on fuel prices and the county council is not immune to this, so we are seeing massive increases in the cost of our services at the same time as the pandemic and an aging population and the improvements that we are trying to offer in services to children is driving up demand.

Ms Sinclair thinks the council is ‘lucky’ that last year’s overspending was only £3.3million, adding: ‘I think it could easily have been much worse than that. “

Cllr Brazil asked Tory leader Councilor John Hart (Bickleigh and Wembury): ‘How long are you going to support a government that is bringing this county to its knees?’

Cllr Hart said: ‘We regularly lobby the government about funding but as long as the government says we have to collect a huge chunk of our council tax money we have no choice.

“And based on that – if we don’t raise council tax and get the money, we don’t deliver the services to people in Devon.”