Council tax up by nearly five per cent as Devon County Council sets its budget

Devon County Council is to increase council tax by almost five per cent as expected but calls to cut the number of ‘spin doctors’ and managers were rejected at a crunch budget meeting.

The Conservative administration’s budget was passed by 34 to 14 votes, with amendments proposed by the independent and Green group turned down, as were Liberal Democrat proposals on potholes and libraries.

The full council approved the 2024-25 budget, which includes increasing the council’s element of council tax by 4.99, as it has for several years, with two per cent of that ring-fenced for adult social care, again now a standard scenario.

The council hailed the budget as offering above inflation increases for vulnerable children and adults and more money for potholes.

An average Band D household will see council tax rise by £81.54 a year to £1,715.67 – an extra £1.56 a week. This will be added to the parish and district elements of the council tax as well as the police and fire services.

The overall budget will see a £43m increase in spending, with increases of 10.4 per cent in spending on children’s services, six per cent on adult services and 4.7 per cent on climate change, environment and transport.

Councillors also agreed an extra £1.5million to improve road drainage, added since the target budget was set last month.

Council leader John Hart called it a ‘well-constructed budget’ that looked after the ‘old, the young and the vulnerable’, while director of finance Angie Sinclair said the budget was ‘deliverable and robust’.

It followed defeated amendments from both the Independent and Green group and the Lib Dems.

Fremington councillor and independent group leader Frank Biederman put forward an amendment calling for ‘extra money to maintain funding of our libraries, extra money for Public Rights of Way and 20mph zones, especially on walking routes with no pavements’.

He also called for an end to unequal government education funding that he said saw Devon underfunded by £213 per child, compared with the national average.

Cllr Biederman said: “We are not being levelled up, we are being crushed to the ground.

“This is all on top of the £150-plus million a year cuts in core funding Devon County Council has seen compared to 2010. The government and MPs keep repeating we are levelling up.”

He told the meeting: “We need to reduce our managers; we have a CEO and a deputy, nine directors of service and countless managers before we get to the people that deliver the services and why do we need 28 spin doctors doing our communications? We have 60 councillors who talk to their communities.”

Liberal Democrat group leader, Barnstaple councillor Caroline Leaver said Devon was the ‘pothole capital of the country’.

She said this could be addressed by reducing the budget for councillor and staff transport, with more virtual meetings and home working, having fewer agency staff and making efficiencies in corporate services.

She added that instead of raising councillors’ locality budgets for community projects to £8,000, they could all put £1,000 towards improving library services.

She said the council is being propped up by its reserves  – ‘the family silver’ – and had already used £9m from it to pay for services.

The council is seeking financial support from the Department of Education’s Safety Valve Programme to address its £165 million predicted overspend on special educational needs and disabilities provision (SEND) but will also have to use its own reserves to reduce the deficit over time.

But council leader John Hart said the amendments were nothing more than a ‘hatchet job’ on staff. A ‘rationalisation of staff’ is on the cards in the medium to long term – the council plans to reduce the workforce by 700 to save £25m– but Cllr Hart said this would be done by working together in a sensible manner.

He said: “We have a finite amount of money to spend and we have to allocate it to protect those most in need. But we will ensure that we get the best possible value from every pound we spend on behalf of our residents.

“This budget also recognises the concerns that people have about the increase in potholes caused by the very wet winter.”

Finance director Ms Sinclair added: “It is a clear priority of both political and officer leadership that we must ‘live within our means’ and in doing so include affordable expenditure plans that strike an appropriate balance of service delivery, risk management and financial sustainability.”