Up to £91m of savings identified by Cheshire East Council
The authority needs to plug a budget gap of around £100m by 2028
Cheshire East looks set to approve a cost-cutting plan to "transform" the council and save up to £91 million over the next four years as it struggles to stave off effective bankruptcy.
The cash-strapped council needs to plug a £100 million funding gap by 2028.
A report to next week’s meeting of the corporate policy committee warns: "Failure to do so will mean that the council will need to issue a s114 notice, effectively declaring itself bankrupt."
Cheshire East has employed Inner Circle Consultancy to work with senior officers and councillors to come up with cost-saving and income-generating measures as part of the transformation programme.
According to the report, over the past 12 weeks "more than 100 opportunities have been identified, with potential savings identified in the range of £59 million to £91 million over the next four financial years".
It says these figures do not include a range of digital projects that have an estimated £14 million benefits.
Some of the projected savings are in areas the council is already known to be looking at, such as the possibility of three-weekly black bin collections and remodelling library provision across the borough.
Others include the use of automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) to enforce traffic contraventions and generate income; a hike in fees and charges for council services and a review of properties that have been renovated or extended to uplift council tax bands.
Another suggestion is to invest in building specialist housing provision for people with learning disabilities, care leavers and potentially frail elderly to reduce long-term demand and cost pressures.
Other key aims include reducing the use of high cost agency staff and replacing with permanent recruits where appropriate, as well as making "concerted efforts to reduce the current high staff absence rates and increase overall productivity of the workforce".
The high staff absence rates were highlighted by the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) at the beginning of this week, a day before this report was published.
A freedom of information request submitted by the LDRS revealed that more than half the council’s staff had time off sick in the calendar year 2022 and again in 2023.
Over the two year period this had resulted in the council paying out more than £704,000 to agency workers to cover for staff sickness and resulted in 63,644 lost working days.
Cheshire East has agreed to set aside up to £3 million to fund phase two of the transformation programme.
The report states: "This will be funded through existing reserves of the council in the first instance….
"Without this investment, the council will not have the capacity to deliver the required level of savings that have been identified in the medium term financial strategy, of at least £100 million over the life of the MTFS."
As has been previously reported by the LDRS, Cheshire East Council has very low general reserves which were put at just £5.6 million at the end of the 2023/24 financial year.
The council must submit a transformation plan to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) before it can access the £17.6 million exceptional financial support it applied to the government for earlier this year.
The plan has to be submitted by August 27.
The corporate policy committee is expected to approve the plan at next week’s meeting, which takes place at 5.30pm on Wednesday, August 21 at the council’s HQ at Westfields in Sandbach.