Shropshire Council is reviewing the detail in this week’s local government financial settlement for 2025/26, but is not expecting the announcement to change its overall budget position.
The Council has set out, and is consulting on, proposals for up to £8.5m of savings including a possible move to three weekly household general waste collections, changing park and ride services in Shrewsbury, cutting opening hours at the museum and castle in Shrewsbury and switching off some of its streetlights.
The council says that if the funding allocation is found to fall short of the total it needs to cover its planned costs, which are being driven up by rising costs and growing demand for services, particularly social care, its savings plans for next year may need to be reviewed.
This will be included in the draft medium term financial strategy, due to be published with the agenda for a scrutiny meeting on 20 January 2025.
The council is already reducing its size by 1 in 5 jobs to make essential savings.
The removal of the rural services delivery grant, worth approximately £8.8m a year for Shropshire, is highlighted as one of the potential new strains on the council’s already stretched budget.
Councils all over the country are under pressure from the rising need and cost of social care services. In Shropshire this accounts for nearly 80% of the council’s overall budget. Shropshire’s rural geography, with fewer than one person per hectare compared to a national average of more than four, means it takes longer, and costs more, to deliver services than it does for most other authorities.
Gwilym Butler, Shropshire Council’s cabinet member for finance, corporate resources and communities said:
This week’s announcement brings many changes to the funding formula for local government, and it will take time for us to work through the implications of this for Shropshire, when we are already facing very tough decisions.
We are in a very challenging position that could be made worse without any funding that takes account of the extra costs of being a large, sparsely populated area – such as long travel times and fuel costs.
We would welcome the opportunity to work with the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government to make sure these factors affecting rural authorities are fairly taken into account, as part of any long overdue review of council funding that the Government is committed to.
We may need to revisit our spending plans for next year, finding more ways to further reduce spending, increase our income and manage demand for our services where we can.
It is more important than ever that local people have their say in our budget consultation, to help shape our next steps.
A draft medium term financial strategy will be taken to Cabinet in January 2025, with more details on the difficult decisions we may have to seriously consider.
