Call for more scrutiny of council's £840m budget

Councillors at Staffordshire County Council have called for greater scrutiny of the authority's £840m budget for the next financial year.

The Reform-led council has proposed a budget that includes a 3.99% tax rise and £21.5m of savings for the 2026-27 year.

Members of the corporate overview and scrutiny committee examined the proposals at a meeting on Tuesday, but no cabinet members were in attendance.

The budget proposal and proposed council tax rise are due to be debated and approved at a full council meeting in February.

Committee member, councillor Philip White, who also leads the Conservative group, said it was "incredibly disrespectful" that councillors had not been given a chance to properly challenge cabinet on the budget.

Thomas Baker, committee chairman, suggested the "pressures of the timeline" had made it difficult to arrange sufficient time for scrutiny, but councillor White pushed back on this argument.

He said it was "completely wrong" they were unable to do any scrutiny on an £840m budget.

"The timeline was of cabinet's choosing," White said. "They've chosen to do this late this year.

Why should their choice mean that there is no proper scrutiny?"

He added: "In the circumstances, given that the budget was late, and we've not been able to have the cabinet member in front of us, could we not schedule another meeting of this committee so we can actually do some scrutiny."

White also raised concerns over the decision for a 3.99% council tax rise, as opposed to the maximum 4.99% increase.

While the 2026-27 budget will be balanced, the council is projecting an £11.5m deficit in 2027-28, rising to £25.2m in 2028-29 financial year.

White added the budget was "largely a roll-over of last year's" in terms of what money was being spent on.

"But we've got changes to council tax, we've gone from a three-year balanced budget to a one-year balanced budget, without any apparent plan as to how we're going to fund that," he said.

"There are serious issues here where we could really do with some scrutiny to understand them."

Baker said there had been scrutiny of the budget-setting process by the working group, but conceded that "it could have been better".

Earlier this month, Chris Large, the council's cabinet member for finance, said the authority had worked to minimise a rise for taxpayers.

"We're putting £15m more into highways and we've reduced £15m off the debt," he said. "So really, it's quite a good balanced budget and there's some positive steps there."

The authority had also said an additional £5.5m spend in children's services would see an extra 119 social workers, reduce caseloads and focus on early intervention.

The corporate overview and scrutiny committee voted in favour of exploring the potential for a further meeting, ahead of next month's full council meeting.

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service which covers councils and other public service organisations.

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