A local authority’s administration is going through the small print in council contracts to find savings which might help it out of a budget deficit hole.
Leader of Calderdale Council, Reform UK’s Coun Dan Sutherland, crossing verbal swords with his Labour opposite number, Coun Adam Wilkinson, claimed his administration were looking for savings where they had not.
Reform UK took control of the council in May’s local elections, near the start of the new council year.
Councillors were told there was a £7.9 million budget gap, with the two senior councillors clashing over the cause and how a solution might be found.
Labour group leader Coun Adam Wilkinson (Sowerby Bridge) said Coun Sutherland had expressed concern in his leader’s report an claimed the council’s finances had been left in a poor state while “expensive vanity projects were being progressed.”
Coun Wilkinson challenged this and said the overspend was in line with the national average for councils which had social care responsibilities – costs taking up more than 70 per cent of the council’s day-to-day spending revenue budget.
“The largest overspend by far is in adult social care and as we all know demand for those services have outstripped Government funding for many years now.
“So if you’re going to balance the books, I would ask Cabinet members ‘what will you be doing differently in this directorate, and the children’s directorate, to get these budgets under control?” he said.
Coun Sutherland (Reform UK, Illingworth and Mixenden) said he was surprised Coun Wilkinson “had the gall” to mention the £7.9 million overspend his party’s administration had left behind and accused them of not being able to control spending.
The gap had meant half of the council’s “rainy day money” – its unallocated reserves – had been used in one year, he said.
Coun Sutherland said despite a lot of talk about what the previous Cabinet and scrutiny boards were doing, “nobody actually looked into the detail of contracts to find a better deal, to be able to see where the savings could be found and to eliminate waste.”
“That is exactly what we are doing.
“We are going through all of the contracts to find what we can,” he said.
The group leaders clashed during a questions-to-Cabinet session at a meeting of the full Calderdale Council.