Presenting the report, Councillor Hebb announced that Thurrock Council’s budget, and the ability to provide the same services, would be protected by two and a half years. Following years of Labour’s excessive public borrowing, the Conservative Party had taken part in funding reductions to reduce the national deficit from £165 billion down to £45 billion. He went on to state that there would be no top-down cuts to services over the next two and a half years. From the Cabinet’s economic plan, there would be flexibility for a real service reform instead.

Through a Council Spending Review, the grant-funding deficit has been closed and a bottom-up look had been taken to view the way services were run and funded. This ensured market parity and the Treasury Management Strategy which would secure a sound rate of return. The investment approach taken was delivering and provided the Council with extra cash to spend on the community:

• Clean It Cut It had nearly half a million pounds extra;
• Fill It saw nearly £1 million extra;
• Lower Thames Crossing had £380,000; and
• Anti-social behaviour which was a well needed investment had a quarter of a million.

The house building delivery vehicle mentioned in the previous report would provide an income to the Council’s treasury which would enable the funding deficit in the years 2020/21 and 2021/22 to be negligible and managed to be achieved by internal budget management. This would also be put forward in the February budget meeting at Full Council.

Councillor Hebb continued by saying that the Cabinet would be extending the two and a half years solvency to at least three and a half to four years. All that had been achieved in the past 18 months had been done without taking advantage of a 2.99% general tax increase but he thanked the Local Government Ministry on recently announcing that councils could levy a 2.99% council tax increase. He stated that the Cabinet would not be doing this as they wanted Thurrock’s residents to keep as many pounds in their pockets as possible and that the increase was unnecessary for the Council’s economic plans. Therefore recommendation 2 would be the proposal of a 1.99% increase and not 2.99%.

The Cabinet would also be supporting the need to provide more funding into Adult Social Care to reduce issues of isolation and enable the elderly to maintain busy and involved lifestyles. This would prevent cases to grow in the years to come.

Councillor Hebb finished his report by thanking all that had been involved in the delivery of the Council’s vision. The budget would see that Thurrock become the place that it could be, one that would work for everyone living in the Borough.

Councillor Halden praised the work done stating that it was evident that the plan was working because the Cabinet had not taken the additional tax offer. There were greater investments, new IMCs and no council tax increases to the maximum unlike other councils.

From the setting of the Treasury  ...  view the full minutes text for item 100