No cuts in Crawley Borough Council’s budget but reserves could be used to balance books

The budget is set to be approved later this month but was supported during a meeting of the cabinet on Wednesday (February 2).

Balancing the books is required by law and Peter Lamb, leader of the council, told the meeting a budget had been produced which would enable the council ‘to provide services without making any cuts’.

As for the use of reserves, he said: “This is a balanced budget in that all the costs and all the sources of income do match.

“It’s the first year where we will have used substantial reserves as part of the budget – but in this case it is a sustainable use of them.

“In each case the reserves had been set aside for the purpose which we are dealing with at this particular point in time.”

They included transferring £451,730 from the general fund reserve to cover the additional costs brought about by the pandemic.

A further £1.09m will be transferred from the business rates equalisation reserve to cover a deficit from 2021/22.

The general fund budget – which includes all income and expenditure incurred in the day-to-day running of the council – will stand at £14.319m, which is £901k more than last year.

Reserves are built up during good years to help cover the bad years – and the entire country has experienced those recently.

Mr Lamb warned that a permanent reduction in the council’s income could leading to more savings being made.

He said: “Were we to go into a situation where we would permanently see our income reduced, we would then have to make savings decisions.

“[This] was the situation last year when we had to make several sets of savings and cuts in order to balance the budget for what is going to be a number of years’-worth of lower council tax, lower business rate retention in our area.”

The council is expected to collect more than £115m in business rates in 2022/23, of which half will go to the government and 10 per cent to the county council.

An additional government tariff and ‘safety net payment’ will take the total down to just over £5.2m.