Sefton Council’s budget proposals have cleared their first hurdle as losses at Bootle Strand were questioned.
At a meeting of the local authority’s overview and scrutiny committee at Bootle Town Hall councillors heard how “exceptional pressures” had led the council to propose cuts to some services.
With areas including energy costs, home-to-school transport, children’s services and adult social care creating huge demands on the borough’s budget, Sefton Council has proposed a raft of measures to plug a funding gap for the next financial year.
READ MORE: Mum's 'world collapsed' after baby's diagnosis at 20 week scan
The measures include finding £1m of savings in adult social care, – in addition to £1.2m already identified. Plans also include “transforming services” at council company New Directions and working to reduce the number of people accessing residential support.
The council also wants to review its transport policies and its approach to direct payments support to “align with national best practice.”
As part of the measures, cuts of 15% to the highways maintenance budget have been proposed, alongside an “inflationary increase” in council car park charges – although the details of this have not yet been released.
A recruitment freeze also looks set to be implemented, while leisure centres could see fees go up.
Speaking about the budget last night, executive director of corporate resources and customer services Stephan Van Arendsen told the committee that senior officers had agreed on the proposals as a “deliverable” way to ensure a balanced budget given a funding gap identified for next year.
He said that some aspects of the budget remained uncertain, including around issues such as future energy costs and the ongoing pressures on adult social care and children’s services – which means that this may need to be revisited again throughout the year.
Referring to a section of one of the reports which detailed losses at the Strand shopping centre – £500k this year and a projected £300k next year, independent Cllr Sinclair D’Alberquerque questioned the extent to which covid was behind the shopping centre’s challenges.
Cllr D’Alberquerque said: “One of the things that confused me slightly was the reference to the significant impact of covid in retail businesses.
“Does most of the income from the Strand come from rents that go to the council? If so, why has the council or the businesses at the Strand shopping centre been impacted so badly due to rents?”
He said from his own experience working in hospitality, many had “done rather well” from covid in terms of grants and the furlough scheme – with government help made available for paying rents even when premises were unable to operate.
Cllr Aberquerque said: “So why did it impact from a rent point of view – why does that happen? I was able to carry on paying rent through that process, so it just confuses as to why people were unable to pay or was it not being collected?”
Mr Van Arendsen said: “During covid in particular it was quite a difficult time for all landlords because some firms just said they can’t pay and that was right across the board from sole traders to national retailers who said they can’t pay.
“As the landlord the council has robust processes and employs the right agents to collect. Some of these more national brands just weren’t paying rent at all across the country.”
Committee chair, Cllr Susan Bradshaw said: “There were different rules too about what you could claim and how long-running businesses had been etc. Some couldn’t access the support because of how long they were doing business. It’s great that you did well, but not everybody did. I know people who lost their businesses through it.”
Mr Van Arendsen said another factor for the council was around business rate collection, which large amounts of appeals around rates, which led to challenges during the pandemic in setting budgets.
He said; “I remember standing up here around this time a couple of years ago saying this is one of the most complex budgets we’ve ever had to do from a technical point of view as we had to factor in all these appeals in trying to understand what the council would be collecting in business rates.”
After the budget proposals were approved by the committee, they will now go to cabinet tomorrow before heading to full council for approval in March.
Receive newsletters with the latest news, sport and what's on updates from the Liverpool ECHO by signing up here
READ NEXT
Drug dealer blows kiss to girlfriend as he's led to the cells
Schoolgirl approached by 'suspicious' man as police hunt for suspect
Nicola Bulley latest updates as hunt for missing mum continues
