Council balances books despite financial challenges
Finance03 June 2024
West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) has completed its latest financial year on budget, despite facing ongoing financial pressures and increased demand for services.
Provisional year-end figures for 2023/24 show the Council managed to deliver services within its £383.5m revenue budget, the money it spends on the day-to-day running of services, with an underspend of £220,000.
In the past 12 months WNC also continued its strong commitment towards making services more efficient whilst protecting and maintaining them for residents, by achieving its savings target of £32m.
Cumulatively over the past 3 years £90m of savings have been released, despite making no cuts to services and work continues into 2024-25 to further modernise and use technology to improve services and productivity.
Savings have included significant efficiencies in areas such as adult social care, reducing agency spend, reviewing contracts and office requirements and redesigning and restructuring services such as Planning, Revenues and Benefits and Corporate services.
The latest financial report will be presented to Cabinet at its meeting next week
Like other councils across the country we have continued to face significant financial challenges over the past financial year, due to factors like the ongoing rise in costs and demand for services supporting our most vulnerable residents, such as Children’s and Adult Social care and temporary accommodation.Councillor Malcolm Longley, Cabinet Member for Finance
We have balanced the books and delivered the budget we promised to residents, that addresses the ongoing funding pressures whilst still protecting essential frontline services. This has been due to prudent financial planning and management, a thorough review of our revenue and capital programmes to ensure we are spending the money responsibly and making efficiencies that achieve savings yet deliver better outcomes for residents.
We know another tough financial year lies ahead of us with continued funding pressures and we are not being complacent, with work already under way to plan ahead to ensure we are in the best position possible ahead of our next budget-setting period.
We have now balanced the books over the last three years and controlled borrowing, meeting our commitment to residents to deliver robust resource management.