Trafford awaits its provisional financial settlement
Might even be today, but more likely tomorrow or Thursday.
This is the week where councils learn the amount that central government is going to top up their funding.
We know the general rules that are going to apply. We know that the Government wants to support councils with high levels of deprivation.
Last year Trafford had to apply for exceptional financial support which allowed the council to increase council tax beyond the normal capping of 4.99% and it provided the ability to borrow up to £9.6m to support the council’s in year budget.
The council are currently anticipating a modest underspend of about £0.5m on this year’s budget. That would allow either reducing that £9.6m capitalisation for the year; or a small boost to the reserves.
If it’s feasible, I’d prefer supplementing the reserves. In my view, they’re far too low.
A favourable settlement from government will help narrow the funding gap. If it’s unfavourable, it presents some difficult choices.
The Institute for Financial Studies (IFS) put out some analysis of the government’s budget approach for local government last month and it’s hard to see Trafford being one of the winners. Most of the policy shifts seem to work against Trafford, so it’s definitely a worrying wait but we’ll see.
Image used under creative commons
NEXT Conference from Berlin, Deutschland, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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