Stockton Council leaders warn money saving measures to come
Leaders have warned that more unpopular measures may be on the way as they agreed on a series of measures intended to save millions.
Stockton Council leader Councillor Bob Cook said people might agree with some of the decisions they would make over in the coming years. The council’s leadership has now agreed a set of changes meant to meet financial pressures at a cabinet meeting.
The measures include no more free parking for the first hour in Stockton and Yarm town centres from February, 20p on school meals to a new charge of £3 from January, and a new waste system including charges on green waste from April 2025, and moving to weekly recycling and food waste collections and fortnightly bin collections from April 2026. There will also be a £2.5m new waste transfer station, closure of five community recycling centres, management “streamlining” and changes to services for children, residents receiving care at home and people leaving hospital.
It is part of the council’s Powering Our Future programme, which is meant to transform services. The authority had predicted it would have budget pressures rising to £8.7m by 2026-7 if it did not take action.
Garry Cummings, the council’s deputy chief executive and director of finance, transformation and performance, told the cabinet: “There is a particular focus of the transformation mission. There’s an update on a number of reviews.
“The programme is key to address the financial challenge. Ultimately if the recommendations are agreed, this will save somewhere in the region of £4.6m towards the target savings.
“There’s also a need for some upfront investment for a number of those recommendations. The report includes recommendation to approve prudential borrowing,” he added, referring to plans to borrow £4.3m to buy new food and green waste bins, prepare the waste transfer station and resurface Wellington Square car park.
“I think it’s clear the amount of work that’s going on right across the Powering Our Future programme,” said Mr Cummings.
Cllr Cook said: “As we said at the outset when we set the budget, it’s going to be a difficult time to try and find the £8m by 2026-27. Obviously we need to look forward, and it’s not just our council that’s doing this, it’s all councils right across the country.
“I think we’ve been starved of finance over the last 14 years in local government and it’s coming to a bit of a head now because you can only plan a certain amount of efficiencies within any organisation. I think with the transformation, we are looking for different ways of doing things to ensure that we can make the services better but obviously cheaper where we can.
“It’s always going to be difficult when you’re looking for savings within budgets. I don’t think any council likes putting charges or fees up.
“But there’s some decisions we’ve got to make over the next couple of years that people won’t agree with, but it needs to be done because of the amount of money we’ve got to look for. We’ll know a little bit better after the Budget on October 30 and see if we’re told what local government’s going to get.
“We’re hopeful that there might be a bit more money but I’m not holding my breath because what we’re hearing in the press is there’s not that much money to go forward. We need to work together as a council to look at ways we can save money and work with the transformation programme.”
Deputy leader and children’s cabinet member Cllr Lisa Evans said of school meals: “Although we’ve increased the amount to £3 per meal, we’re still subsidising that. I think some of our families are on increasing pressures with their own budget, so to put school meals up is very difficult to do.
“Ultimately we have a choice, do we stop doing school meals? But I know that us as a local authority deliver a fabulous service to our schools and the quality of the meals we produce is massively beneficial to some of our children, and might be their only meal.”