Likely 12.5% council tax rise will still mean ‘inevitable’ education job losses

“There will be job losses” due to council budget cuts the Council Leader has said, with Education redundancies ‘inevitable’ added the Lead Member for Education.

Wrexham Council have been tackling an in-year budget hole of £23.8m, and are ‘on target to not use any unplanned reserves’ to plug that hole.

However, the budget gap for the forthcoming year is a further £22.6m. The Council are also expecting a ‘likely pressure’ of £29m over the two years following that.

To tackle the £22.6m gap from April this year a range of cuts – or ‘efficiencies’ – are being enacted. £1.5m have already been signed off last month, and the forthcoming Executive Board meeting will look to green light a further £10.5m of savings, which significantly includes a £5.3m ‘cash flat’ position for schools.

The Education budget is taking the £5.3m budget hit, which the council do note means the overall budget for the coming year includes help with school energy pressures.

Another tranche of cuts are to come at the February Executive Board and there could be a further mid-Feb meeting head of the Full Council meeting where the budget is formally finalised.

The Council have also warned that due to grant cuts across Wales the position now is, “if grants are reduced or ceased nationally, the council’s position is that the activity is reduced or ceased, in line with grant reductions”.

Cllr Mark Pritchard outlined the set of grim finances for Wrexham Council saying, “There will be job losses, redundancies, and there’s no area now without pain. Over the years we have remodelled, redesigned services, we’ve merged departments together, huge efficiencies, our structure is I believe, probably one of the leanest senior structures across Wales. So we’ve done everything, and now we’re going into job losses, redundancies.”

“In three or four years we may not be delivered any discretionary services across this authority – and the same across authorities in Wales. We will just be looking at focusing on statutory services.”

Cllr Pritchard described it as a ‘dark dark time’, “It is unpleasant. We know that we are in for a very difficult time going into the future. There is not a lot we can do other than what we’re doing at the moment. We had a budget workshop yesterday, it was very well attended by local councillors, I could see the fear on their faces. I think reality struck them yesterday on what we’ve got to do.”

School budgets from report to councillors – “Real term reduction of 5%, after inflation and additional energy allocation”

Speaking on the extraordinary Education budget, Cllr Phil Wynn said, “I know this is cliche, but we are really in unprecedented times now. That is one of the consequences of the financial constraints that we have to work on, based on the settlement with the Welsh Government, and ultimately, what politically we can secure as regards to an increase in our council rates locally.”

He added, “We are talking about human beings that this is going to impact on how they deliver education in Wrexham. That ultimately will result in staff redundancies, inevitably, because majority of schools spent 75% of their budget on staff, so it’s just an inevitability.”

“Last year, we increased school budgets by £5.2 million from £96m to £102m. What we’re proposing to do is to inflate school budgets based on the various inflationary rates for utilities, teaching staff pay rates and our teaching staff pay rates, general inflation for stationary and the like.

“But, then we will be asking them to make efficiency savings of £5.3 million. Without that £5.3 million, I think it’d be impossible to deliver a balanced budget for the coming year. So that’s how serious it is.”

Cllr Wynn pointed to the the ‘potential 12.5% increase’ in council tax, “It is balancing what we put the rates up locally, what savings we asked for from other departments, because we spend about a third of our money on schools, and our second largest spender is social services – adult and children. The pressures are everywhere, really.

Wrexham.com asked about the impact in the classrooms, if that meant teaching redundancies and increased class sizes.

Cllr Wynn replied, “Those are the consequences that each head teacher and governing body will need to look at. There are forecast reserves that schools will be holding at the year end. So that will be used to reduce the pressure on redundancies.

Cllr Wynn pointed to national grants that are due to be finalised and understood locally, “As soon as we know the terms and conditions of those, we can understand whether we can repurpose some of them to ensure that we keep as many teachers in classrooms.”

Chief Executive Ian Bancroft stressed, “We protected education, whereas many authorities didn’t last year. This is not a cut compared to what they had last year. This is not paying the full inflation. It is cash flat plus some of the energy inflation.

“We know it’s difficult. It is not schools just bearing the brunt of the pressures we’re facing. We’re trying to be equal between where that pressure falls. Schools and education are part of it. ”

Mr Bancroft added, “40% of authorities in England are planning to use reserves to balance to books next year. We don’t want to do that because it risks financial sustainability of a council, that means we are having to look equally at all areas, and we’re trying to be as fair and equitable as possible.

“We’re trying to make sure that one of those areas doesn’t bear the brunt, that there’s an equity between all of the areas. That’s a really difficult equation.

“We really know this isn’t easy for anybody, whether it’s schools, education services, whether it’s local residents receiving services, whether it’s councillors having to think about how they balance services and council tax rises. But, you’ll have seen that this is the hardest budget we’ve ever had to deal with, with the fact that we’ve have potentially £28 million to follow in the remaining two years. It is a really hard situation and we’re trying to deal with it as equitably as possible.”

A sample of other savings are listed as below, with no further public detail on how the figure has been achieved:

• £60k  Reduction of cleaning hours at Redwither Tower and main Council buildings
• £296k  Restructure of teams across all Legal & Democratic Services and Customers & Cymreig
• £100k  Cemetries & Crematorium Maximisation of income
• £40k  Review of Country Parks service and work with community groups and volunteers

There is a remaining £10.5 million ‘gap’ to find. Further proposals will be brought forward in February.