Council to make £22.8m savings in financial year

Shropshire Council has said it must save nearly £23m from its budget in the next financial year.

This includes £8.5m of potential new savings the authority has put out for consultation until 26 January. These include switching off street lights part-time and increasing council tax by 4.99%.

About £4m of savings would be delivered through plans previously agreed in 2024, including removing one in five council jobs.

The council added there were £11m of measures planned which would reduce the anticipated cost of social care services.

The savings announcement comes as the council published its draft medium term financial strategy on Tuesday, after examining the government's financial settlement announced in December.

The council's report said proposed changes to the settlement would leave the authority worse off by between £24m and £28m.

Although Shropshire's spending power will increase by 3.1%, it has the third lowest increase in the country after Rutland and Herefordshire, the report added.

This year, the council expects to end 2024-25 £37.3m over budget, and would need to use almost all of its £38.3m reserves fund to balance its books.

This is despite an estimate of £50m of savings being made in that time.

In October, Conservative leader Lezley Picton spoke of the pressure on the leadership team which needed to find £62.5m of savings in the current financial year to close the funding gap.

"I find it really tough," she said. "The impact on staff, on all of us, is heartbreaking."

The council's finances have been under pressure for some time.

In 2023, BBC research showed it faced having to make the largest savings, as a proportion of its budget, of any council in the UK.

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