Council asks government for £55m emergency funding

Bedford Borough Council has requested to borrow £55m from the government to help tackle a multimillion-pound funding shortfall.

The Conservative-run authority has a legal requirement to deliver a balanced budget by the end of February.

Bedford's mayor, Tom Wootton, defended the decision and said: "We have to keep the council going and this is the solution, although it is a really painful one."

Opposition leader, Liberal Democrat Henry Vann, said the money was not a gift and warned that "future generations and residents of Bedford Borough" would "have to pick up the tab".

The amount of money councils receive from the government has fallen over the last decade.

However, on a visit to Bedford last week, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said record amounts of investment were offered to them for 2026-27.

He added the government had "changed the structure of the funding, so it is over a number of years rather than year-on-year".

The long term effects of those reductions, however, coupled with the rising costs of providing statutory services, has left authorities struggling to cope.

Bedford is the first council in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire to ask for this support, but across the country another 30 authorities have in this financial year - including a request for £180m from Birmingham City Council.

Wootton told the BBC he hoped the authority would not need all of the money.

He said: "We have got to cover the costs of the Cleat Hill [explosion], and the costs of the blooming [Wixams] railway station," which will now have four platforms instead of two, to cater for the planned Universal theme park.

He added that he was "going to lose sleep" by asking a Labour government for help, but admitted he "cannot see any other way of keeping our social services going".

"We have to keep the council going and this is the solution, and it is a really painful one."

Bedford Borough Council came under the microscope last summer when the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) reviewed its finances.

At the time, CIPFA warned the authority was "already in Section 114 territory", which would have meant it having to freeze all non-essential spending.

Following the review, CIPFA asked the council to come up with an improvement plan to secure its longer term financial future.

The plan was discussed at a council meeting, where Labour and Conservative councillors voted to note it rather than support it, but the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Independent councillor Doug McMurdo abstained.

Lib Dem leader Henry Vann called the improvement plan a "disaster recovery process document" that he said would lumber "future generations in Bedford Borough with debt".

He told the BBC that "Bedford deserved better" than an improvement plan he claimed "doesn't have a clear target".

He added he was hugely concerned by the state of the council's finances, and added that he felt the council had gone on a "spending spree with more and more borrowing" and that "difficult decisions still aren't being made".

Bedford's budget is set to be agreed at a meeting in February.

To try and address what Wootton said was a shortfall in the "£30 millions", the authority also has proposals to charge for green waste and suspend free parking at All Hallows and Lurke Street.

There is also a plan to reduce the size of the mayor's office, but Wootton admitted the staff headcount on the authority may have to fall too - but he hoped that would happen via voluntary redundancy.

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