New housing repairs service, reduced library security and staff pay rises - Peterborough council budget round-up

On Friday, it outlined a series of proposals to tackle the first £2.7 million of the deficit, with a further set of plans to be unveiled in January.

The Peterborough Telegraph has covered many of these proposals on our website, but below is a round-up of some of the cost-cutting proposals, as well as some of the future financial pressures:

Reduction in capital financing costs - £367,000 annual saving

The capital budget is spent on infrastructure such as maintaining roads or building new homes.

With the capital budget being reduced this will cut down the amount of money the council will need to borrow for projects.

Changes within the ICT service - £711,000 annual saving

Savings are to be made from sharing the council’s IT service structure with Cambridgeshire County Council, removing entire systems where appropriate, and the hosting of IT systems in the Peterborough DataCentre.

The latter will “provide Peterborough City Council with an income of £50,000 per annum and represents the first step towards becoming a more commercial IT service”.

Housing service - £238,000 annual saving

It is proposed to establish a new permanent housing assistant director role at an annual cost of £127,000 to continue the work to reduce homelessness.

There is also a proposed project to establish a housing management and repairs service which would take responsibility for all repairs, asset management, compliance and housing management functions using a “fit-for-purpose information system”.. This is expected to make a saving of £160,000 in comparison to current contract costs.

There are also proposed improvements to temporary accommodation and traveller sites while income and debt collection is expected to generate a saving of £205,000.

Reduction in security - £30,000 annual saving

This is due to “alterations in the usage of council buildings” and includes a reduction in the number of security officers employed at Peterborough Central Library from two to one to reflect a lower than expected usage of the conference facilities, which security is required for.

Reduction in income from sale of electricity - £500,000 lost in year one, dropping to £300,000 in year three

The council is able to sell electricity produced by its Energy Recovery Facility in Fengate, but energy prices have “been lower than previous years and the amount of power generated by the facility has fluctuated, meaning it is expected to generate a reduced income”.

Pay award - £725,000 annual pressure

This is due to a 2.75 per cent increase on pay which has been agreed nationally and which the council was expecting to be a lower amount.

Increase in bad debt due to Covid-19 - £500,000 one off loss

The council is expecting more businesses, organisations and individuals to struggle to pay for new and historic debt.

Planning - £100,000 annual saving

The council has contracts with several other local authorities to deploy its staff to provide planning policy service support which it expects to make money from.

In addition, the council plans to reduce its budget for the examination of planning policy documents, for example, the inspection fees for the Local Plan.