Council overspend in Peterborough reduces but pressure remains to balance budget

The Cabinet was given the good news on Monday, where figures show a new predicted overspend figure of £3.9 million.

This compares to a forecast of £6.5 million reported at the last budget meeting in November 2018.

The overspend is largely due to increases in children’s services.

Cabinet member for growth, planning, housing and economic development Cllr Peter Hiller said he was “impressed” by the budget report, but asked how Peterborough’s situation compared to  other similar authorities.

Cllr David Seaton, cabinet member for resources, said: “Most unitary authorities like Peterborough are an interesting mix, with some performing really well, while others perform really badly. There isn’t much middle ground.

“Peterborough performs towards the bottom end of that scale, but it has to be remembered that we have had enormous cuts to our government budget, and that we are one of the quickest growing cities in terms of population in the country.”

Council leader Cllr John Holdich said: “What we can now say with some confidence is that we are moving towards a fully balanced budget in 2020/21.

“The move to a truly sustainable budget will require a reduction of one off savings so the council is proposing to use £3.1 million of reserves to balance the budget in 2019/20. But because we have done this a number of times over the past few years it will only leave about £8 million of reserves.”

Robert Alexander, Local Democracy Reporting Service