Council warns of overspend as demand for its services surges

COUNCIL BOSSES in North Yorkshire have warned that a decade’sworth of austerity totalling nearly £160m in cuts has led to spiralling demand for services, as the local authority faces overspending on its budget for the first time in nine years.

North Yorkshire County Council has made £157m of cuts during the period, including slashing £40m from frontline services, but it now looks set for a “watershed” budget, directors told a meeting yesterday.

They warned that rising demand for services in the region could now replace austerity as the council’s principal pressure.

Gary Fielding, the authority’s director of strategic resources, said up until now the council had been “grappling with austerity and reductions in funding”.

He said: “That’s still ongoing but what characterises the budget now is not so much a focus on loss of funding, it’s demand going up and up and up for special educational needs, children and adult social care and home to school transport.

“This is a watershed year for the county council.”

Mr Fielding said that while residents faced paying 4.99 per cent more to the authority for its share of council tax, social care costs had risen across the board.

He said he believed austerity would continue until after 2023, partly due to the amount of Government funding that had been pledged to the NHS.

The council’s leader, Coun Carl Les, yesterday also said that uncertainty over Brexit and the long-awaited revised funding formula for councils was making planning for the future more difficult.