Aberdeenshire Council has set out how it intends to save almost £24 million in next year’s financial budget.
Job cuts and voluntary redundancies are due to make up around £4 million of those projected efficiencies, if the proposed budgets is backed by councillors next week.
But the council has reassured communities that public services will continue to be delivered to a high standard.
The local authority is already facing a £22.5 million funding gap in its current budget after that plan – approved for the 2021 financial year – was hit by the coronavirus lockdown.
That means the budget plan, revealed in papers this week, must address both that deficit and the pressures it expects to face next year, plus a funding gap of £21 million for the coming financial year.
And to do that, the coalition administration intends to save £3 million through voluntary severance, meaning it will open to applications for redundancies across the board, while at the same time potentially backfilling any vacancies.
A further £1 million is hoped to be saved through cuts to ‘workforce’, which unlike severance does not require a ‘golden handshake’.
The broad term ‘workforce’ will be broken down in more detail when local authority leader and Fraserburgh councillor Andy Kille puts the proposals forward to councillors in depth on Wednesday.
Extra income highlighted in the proposed budget includes an added £12.3 million expected from business rates.
That figure is projected by the Scottish Government, which set the rate firms must pay to the local authority.
This year’s budget also includes one-off payments from the Scottish Government, aimed at making up for some of the income lost through usual expected income such as leisure centre memberships and pitch hire.
Those one-off payments aren’t budgeted into the authority’s five-year plan, though, as there’s no guarantee of follow up assistance after this year.
Further revenue funding of £3.01 million is also expected from Holyrood to support the final element of the expansion in funded early learning and childcare entitlement to 1,140 hours per child.
The council will also receive £4.7 million from the Scottish Government after it agreed to freeze its council tax for 2021-22.
The offer of a share of the £90 million fund, to compensate councils who opted to keep bills the same for the upcoming year, acknowledges the hardship caused by the pandemic, with the compensatory cash the equivalent of about a 3% increase in funding for councils.
The budget savings, set out by Aberdeenshire Council’s ruling administration, made up of Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Independent councillors, is putting forward a level of efficiencies roughly in line with that of previous years, albeit the authority is £1.4 million worse off than it expected to be at this point.
A report going before the council on Wednesday states: “The purpose in highlighting the scale of funds available to Aberdeenshire Council is to reassure local communities that key public services can and will continue and that the budget reductions reported through this report, while important, must be seen in the context of the overall Medium-Term Financial Strategy.
“Therefore, the delivery of services to an agreed scope and standard within agreed financial limits will continue.
“The strategic and longer-term approach has resulted in proposed savings matching the initial scale of the deficit predicted at the start of this financial year, some £60 million.
“As the financial position continues to be updated throughout this financial year, the predicted deficit has been revised from £24 million to £21 million for 2020/21 and £22 million for 2021/22, reducing the overall total from £46 million to £43 million.
“As council will appreciate, the final outturn position for the current year will be subject to revision until the annual accounts are completed.
“The reported pressure for 2021/22 is also likely to change as a direct consequence of current year conditions prevailing into this year.
“The process for identifying savings has included a review of all services,
corporate functions, new external funding and confirmation of the use of
technical accounting rules.”