Oxfordshire County Council concerns ahead of the budget
The county council are calling for funding to improve transport and social care
As the Autmn budget is only days away, Oxfordshire County Council are calling on the government to provide extra funding to help improve its services in adult and child social care and to help improve transport across the county.
The Autumn Statement will be this Wednesday 30 October, which is when the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves will update the House of Commons on the state of the economy, spending decisions, and could announces rises to some taxes.
Wanting to improve transport
Oxfordshire County Council are calling for there to be more funding from government to help upkeep our roads, such as fixing potholes, and improve transport links across the county.
Leader of the council, Liz Leffman said: “We’ve had our budgets slashed over the years as far as highway maintenance is concerned and we only receive around one third from the government of what we actually need, just to keep our roads in good repair, let alone upgrade them.
“We need improved bus services and train services if we’re going to get people out of their cars and wanting to travel to work and for leisure in a more sustainable way, so we’re hoping that we hear something about that in the Autumn statement.”
However, it’s not looking promising ahead of the budget as Cllr Lefmann says, “The messages we’re getting from the government is that there isn’t any money available, so I’m afraid that we’re going to have to make ends meet.
“In order to do that we will have to make savings to the organisation and we will do everything we can to ensure those savings don’t impact the level of service people get from us.”
Wanting to improve social care
Another problem that Oxfordshire council are focused on improving is adult and child social care.
Cllr Lefmann said: “Our budgets have been stretched for a number of years now. We hope that the government will recognise that we really need more help with adult social care, especially if they want to protect the NHS, and we also need to support our children with better access to better mental health services.
“We will obviously do everything we can to maintain the services that we deliver at the moment and will have to make savings if we don’t get any support from the government."
‘Raising council tax is something we could do’
“What we’re not sure about either will be the rules around council tax, as we have been told over the last couple of years that we can raise council tax to put money into adult social care.
“So, raising council tax is something we could do but we don’t want to do it more than necessary as we know that people are already having to deal with increased costs to other areas of their lives.”
AI could help the council make savings
One of the ways in which the council will make a change to help make savings to their budget is through the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In a world where more businesses are using the technology, it could soon be introduced at the council.
Cllr Lefmann said: “What we will do is look at ways in which we can operate more efficiently, using things like technology and AI. So those are the sorts of things that we will be looking at as we absolutely do not want to make cuts to front-line services.
“But, at the moment, it’s very very early days. We’re just looking at ways in which we can use AI in the future as we know that it’s going to come along eventually.
“So it’s things like providing people with the information they’re looking for more efficiently and maybe doing things such as writing minutes and notes in ways that free people up to do other things.”