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 Management Strategy, the Leader could see this had enabled the Medium Term Strategy to be set. He agreed that the Cabinet had not taken the 2.99% council tax increase because their plan had worked well to enable them not to need it. The proposed increase of council tax was modest and asking for the 3% council tax increase to provide funding to Adult Social Care was justified and necessary. No other Local Authority was able to reject the maximum council tax increase and achieve a strong five year budget plan as Thurrock Council did. Nor did Thurrock have to make cuts to services due to the excellent Treasury Management Programme and Officers who were looking outside the Borough to look at how to save money through investments into Thurrock. He hoped that the other Political Parties would support the Cabinet with the recommendations to be put forward at the Budget Council meeting in February.

The Leader went on to say that the 40% increase in the Reserve Fund was great as no other Local Authority could say the same thing. He mentioned that the Council Spending Review was not just something the Cabinet did as this was done across Parties. For this, he thanked the Parties for attending and stated that everything discussed was transparent to ensure all Parties understood what the Cabinet was doing and why. He said that there may be a question of why council tax was increasing when there was extra money available. This extra money had been gained through good financial planning and would be used to fund other projects and improve services e.g. reducing service costs, to fight the Lower Thames Crossing etc.

RESOLVED:

That the Cabinet recommended to Full Council:

1)    That the Cabinet propose a 3% council tax increase towards the cost of Adult Social Care;

2)    That the Cabinet propose a 1.99% council tax increase to meet the increasing costs and demands of all other services and to move the council towards greater financial sustainability for the medium to longer term; and

3)    That the Cabinet agree to the budget proposals set out throughout this report and appendices.

Reason for decision – as stated in the report.

This decision is not subject to call-in (Chapter 5, Part 1 – Article 8, paragraph 10.5).